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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?

15 of 539 comments (clear)

  1. As I and many others pointed out yesterday by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    My.MP3.com tried out a similar argument years ago, and it cost them a $53 million lawsuit (which bankrupted them). And in many ways this is even worse. MP3.com at least required you to prove you actually owned a disc before you could stream it. Amazon will let you upload ANYTHING (pirated, ripped, bought--makes no difference) and stream it.

    Now Amazon certainly has a better cadre of lawyers at its disposal than mp3.com did. And it has a lot more muscle with the industry (since it's once of the leading music retailers). But, even with that, this is still a stunningly ballsy move on their part. Hell, Sony sues people for even looking funny at their IP.

    And, yes, I hope Amazon wins out on this. If nothing else, it would set a nice precedent for Google and Apple to open up their upcoming music cloud services in a similar fashion.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My.MP3.com tried out a similar argument years ago, and it cost them a $53 million lawsuit (which bankrupted them). And in many ways this is even worse. MP3.com at least required you to prove you actually owned a disc before you could stream it. Amazon will let you upload ANYTHING (pirated, ripped, bought--makes no difference) and stream it.

      That is exactly why the Amazon service looks like it might stand up legally. The user has to upload the content rather than it originating from a central source. This may seem like a subtle distinction but it changes the legal standpoint massively.

    2. 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
    3. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by Cheviot · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is a different situation than my.mp3.com. In that case the website stored one copy of each piece of music, required the user to verify they owned it, then allowed you access to their stored copy. This was found to be actionable as they were allowing multiple people to download one master copy of a MP3, essentially repeatedly pirating that MP3.

      Amazon is establishing a separate cloud drive for each user. If you buy a MP3 they copy it to your personal drive for you. They also allow you to upload your music to that drive. There is a separate copy of each song stored on the cloud drive for each user, and the only MP3s Amazon copies to the drive are legally purchased. As the user can only download what they have uploaded or purchased, no piracy occurs, at least on Amazon's part. Users may be storing pirated music on their personal cloud drives, but these are private file storage areas and do not allow MP3s to be exchanged among users, thus the cloud drive does not facilitate piracy.

    4. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How they see it in non-important in the end though. They've already made their position clear on the matter. What matters is whether or not they can convince a court that they are being illegally harmed. That's often a whole different reality than how a party wants to "see" an issue.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    5. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by mclearn · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, TFA states that if you purchase an MP3 from Amazon, it is automatically synced to their service. But other content will have to be uploaded, yes.

    6. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by chaboud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You need to read up on the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions. ISPs and hosting providers are *not* responsible for the content pushed to them by users. Besides, it's a private, per-user setup.

      What about the content that you put on Sky Drive? In GMail? in regular email? On your ftp server at your hosting provider?

      It is not the responsibility of ISPs to audit and police every bit that passes over their equipment. Simple common sense and the law both agree with me (a rare gem in itself).

    7. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are differences between taking your bought and paid for music collection and putting on a file server you own, and streaming your own music to your devices

      Where does the difference start?

      1. I rip my CDs and play them, is this legal?
      2. I stream the ripped music from my laptop to my hifi, is this legal?
      3. I store it on a file server on my local network and stream it to whichever computer / device I want to use, is this legal?
      4. I move the file server into a colo and stream it from there, is this legal?
      5. I replace the dedicated server with a VM on someone else's system, is this legal?
      6. I replace the dedicated VM with an account on someone else's system, is this legal?

      None of these steps look like they would be illegal in any jurisdiction where format shifting is allowed.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    8. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by caseih · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So... it's legal until Amazon starts running a dedup algorithm on their disks. Crazy.

    9. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What matters is whether or not they can convince a court that they are being illegally harmed.

      That shouldn't be too hard, since the judge that will hear the case will probably be a former RIAA lawyer.

    10. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You could even calculate a hash before uploading, and skip the upload if the file is already somewhere in the cloud.

      No, this is exactly what you can't do and what killed mp3.com. As pointless as it sounds to a computer scientist, it matters where the bits came from. They must come from YOUR copy, not someone else's copy and not some central master copy.

      For example, I could have a hacked client that only passes you the correct checksum values, and suddenly you give me access to lots of files I don't have. How did that happen? Oh, Amazon committed copyright infringement. In fact, no matter what it's copyright infringement because they rely on borrowing your fair use rights. Since your fair use rights don't involve taking a copy of someone else's CD, neither do theirs.

      The only way Amazon is safe is to let you access exactly what you uploaded, no more and no less. They can probably get by with deduplication as long as a skilled expert witness explains that everyone still have to upload their own copy and that it's simply a storage optimization. Anything else just crosses the border from ballsy to insane.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  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.

  3. Re:Why that case should have failed. by hedwards · · Score: 5, Informative

    You didn't buy a license you bought a copy. CDs do not come with EULAs or ToS that dictate otherwise and I've never opened a jewel case and found such an agreement. Admittedly, it's been years since I bought anything from a major studio, but I doubt that much has changed.

    Consequently, if that's how they view it and expect it to be treated, they'd be liable for all sorts of false advertising and fraud suits.

  4. Re:I think ... by hedwards · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hear that if you say RIAA three times in a row in front of a mirror that the MPAA sues you for copyright infringement.

  5. Re:Putting Amazon.com vs. the RIAA into perspectiv by xbytor · · Score: 5, Funny

    You forgot the $73 trillion that they'll be collecting from LimeWire.