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Amazon's Cloud Player: We Don't Need a License

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the of-course-you-don't dept.

halfEvilTech writes "Amazon has launched Cloud Drive and Cloud Player without securing streaming licenses from the music industry. But does it need to? Amazon says 'No.' The music industry? 'Yes.'" Do I need a license to stream MP3s from system RAM to the MP3 player? From my hard drive to RAM? From my file server to my machine?

2 of 539 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would hope so. Streaming one's own uploaded music is nothing more than a specialized form of data retrieval. It's asinine to claim that Amazon cannot allow this.

    --
    "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
  2. Evolving case law by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Amazon now has the benefit of CNN et al. v. CSC Holdings, aka the Cablevision Remote DVR Lawsuit, where the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Cablevision's favor and specified that, in part, the specific actions of the remote user instructing the remote DVR to record and play back the copyrighted material served to exclude Cablevision from liability. SCOTUS refused to hear an appeal on this, so other circuits might be inclined to agree with the 2nd Circuit.

    There are probably some differences here (not knowing about the specific functionality of Cloud Player, I won't speculate), so it'll be interesting to see how far Amazon can push the envelope.