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Google Launching Music Service Without Labels
fysdt writes "Google Inc is set to launch an online music locker service to allow users to store and access their songs wherever they are, similar to one launched by Amazon.com Inc in March. And like the Amazon Cloud Drive player, Google music service is being introduced on Tuesday without any prior licensing deals with major music labels, following months of fruitless negotiations."
Except that Google has the wherewithal to buy the music industry outright. The RIAA would actually have to sue and win (as opposed to litigating a smaller opponent into bankruptcy), which might be rather difficult, seeing as how these cloud-storage services merely give users the ability to store their own files for later retrieval and don't really facilitate piracy.
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From the system requirements : "The latest version of Adobe Flash Player must be installed and enabled in your browser (Flash is included with Google Chrome)."
So it's going to be a non-starter for a lot of devices including of course iOS devices but a lot of others too. So right of the bat they go out of their way to alienate literally millions of potential users. Not a good way to dive into a market that has a lot of big players going into it including Amazon and potentially Apple who are rumored, as they always are, to be working on something similar.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
You're overestimating the music industry; while I'm sure that no one wants a long, drawn out lawsuit, Google sees about twice as much revenue than the entire recording industry*. (Plus, they've got a business model that doesn't revolve around suing their users.) I'm not sure that the RIAA's lawyers would be too eager to sue Google; it's easy to arm-twist a $2000 settlement out of a college kid, and if one or two of them do end up going to court, the RIAA can certainly outlast any private individual. However, suing someone bigger than you, who has an experienced in-house legal team, is a whole different ballgame.
* Gotta back up my claims. For the sake of this argument, "the record industry" doesn't contain indie labels; they are too fragmented to coordinate their power. That leaves us with:
Sony Music Entertainment: $1.33 billion
Universal Music Group: $6.14 billion
Warner Music Group: $3.49 billion
EMI: $1.65 billion
versus
Google: $29.32 billion
(all values USD, anual revenue, as listed on Wikipedia)
Sure, if by "worldwide" you mean UK, France, Germany, Austrialia, Germany.
Google is a US company that offers all of their services in the US and only search, maps, and mail outside the US. They do offer some extra services to other countries, especially UK, but they don't really care about the rest of the world.
It's a shame, but that's how it works for us non-Americans. Especially people from the third world like myself. I'm tired of getting snail-mail spam from google, for $50 worth of Adsense, and not be able to get, say, Google Voice. Or Local (even though google really wants my location in my android phone). Or any other service really.
Sure, they claim there are licensing issues, local laws, etc. That's all bullshit. It's simple: they're US based, and the US market is so big there is no need to expand to the rest of the world.
I don't expect to see this service enabled for any country south of the equator, except Australia.
Can other people see my music?
Then how will the RIAA know what I have there, what is the basis for the subpoena?
Also, how will the RIAA know when you obtained the pirated music? The statute of limitations clock in many cases is pinned to the last infringing act - so not only would they have to prove you had the files and obtained the music files through copyright infringement, they would have to prove that they were still inside the statute of limitations (three years for civil suits, five for criminal), which means proving you downloaded the music or shared it with someone else during a specific period of time.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Where's MP3.com right now? They tried this 10 years ago, and got shot down in court. What's different now?
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Of course, anywhere Apple or Google goes, Microsoft has to follow. Poorly. Many of the most brilliant minds in the industry work at Microsoft. Too bad the upper management has a bad case of Apple/Google Envy and spends all their time chasing the latest shiny object instead of defining the future of computing.
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