Amazon on Cloud Player: we don't need no stinkin' licenses | Hacker News Reader

Amazon on Cloud Player: we don't need no stinkin' licenses

arstechnica.com

83 pointsabraham57 comments

I like the license part, bear with me.

I grew up with the vynil lp, which definitely was a product. You went to the record store and bought an actual physical product, 30 cms of diameter with a play time of usually 20 minutes per side. I could play it, lend it to a friend, gift it to somebody. The product was independent of location or device; devices playing LP's where standardized.

The RIAA was actually founded to standardize the equalization curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization) for the playback of music and not as a money grubbing -, mob like -, thuggish organization suing teenagers and dead people.

Then came the CD. Still a product. With different specifications and playback devices then the LP, but still interchangeable, playable everywhere and in every country. Definitely a product, which you bought, owned, could lend, gift, use as a coaster, whatever. It was yours to own.

Then suddenly the product turned into a license. CD's where no more actual CD's, but some crippled data container, to prevent copyying, licensed to you for use. Possibly the licensed product contained some dreckware, which wrecked havoc on your computer and was stealthily installed without your knowledge or consent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit).

When you download a song (legally) nowadays you only license it. Ideally the copyright owners would like to charge you on a per country basis.

Going to Amsterdam for the weekend? That's an euro, sir, since your song is only licensed for Germany.

I'm aware that we're not there, that the licenses are in fact more open now as when Apple started to offer music downloads. But I'm pretty certain that this would not be the case if the music industry had their say (see 3 Euro ringtone downloads).

Where the hypocricy comes in that a license would imply that you only pay once.You pay for the right to use a song. Reality however, and I leave that as an excercise to the reader, looks very, very different.

I close my rant with the link to this interesting essay by Steve Albini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_albini) :

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

Are you German? I don't know who would say "an euro" unless you pronounce it oi-ro.

Actually, Swiss.

And yes, Euro is pronounced oi-ro in the German speaking parts.

And e-ro in French, so your "an" works both ways if you're Swiss, I guess :)

What do you say in the US/UK? (I am German)

I only know the rule to say "an" if a word starts with a,e,i,o or u, so why not Euro?

Because Euro is pronounced you-ro, and the rule for using "an" is if the word starts with a vowel sound ("you" is not a vowel sound). I'm Greek, so we say Ev-ro, but we have no "an" :P

Thanks - it's new to me that "you" is not a vowel sound. Isn't it pronounced exactly like "u", which is a vowel? So generally never use "an" if a word starts with "u"?

It's the 'y' sound that pronouncing 'u' like 'you' causes.

Your rule is too general though.

A uniform. An understanding.

(note that the u in understanding doesn't have a y sound to start it)

That makes sense, thanks!

Just to make things more complicated, in the U.K. and certain parts of the U.S., you will often here people say things like an historic, because they tend to drop the "h" sound when they pronounce historic; it sounds fine when pronounced that way. If you pronounce the "h" in historic, it sounds awful to say anything but a historic.

The word is phonetically noted ['jʊərə], and j is indeed not quite a vowel!

In Ireland, an english speaking eurozone country, we say "a euro"

Have the licensing rules for CDs changed? If I look at the backside of a CD, there will be a lot of fine print? I tend to still buy CDs because I felt more comfortable to do with the extracted MP3s as I please. Also, CDs are often cheaper (especially second hand from Amazon Marketplace).

I would think that two things changed:

- There's potentially a lot more boilerplate warning of dire consequences on media nowadays - The attitude of an industry that completely missed the boat and tries to squeeze out every last cent.

While you may argue that: "Why not, it's their product" and this is certainly true the consequences on culture are bad to dire.

Sampling and re-mixing comes to mind, or, for example trying to cash in on the ringtone of a phone in a movie, which makes it extremely hard to ensure that all rights are secured. Or in the case of a student or a hobbyist making a movie (and, for example, uploading it to Youtube) makes it outright impossible to actually produce something without falling foul of the law.

I am not condoning theft of music ,movies or software, but the copyright laws have shifted into a direction, which are outright unhealthy for a society.

When they launched this product, it didn't even cross my mind that it would run afoul of anything. People are doing what they want with the data that they own.

My guess is everyone involved, on every end, is aware of this. Certain people just want a cut of everything, and will try any argument they can.

...in particular people from industries that were once more profitable than they are currently. There is nothing like decreasing revenues and companies going to the wall to make people get greedy.

Well, either you find new revenues or (a) people's salaries stagnate or (b) fewer people receive salaries.

Well, you have to admit that the perceived option (c) "sue some people to make them pay you more for doing the same" would look appealing.... If short-sighted.

Except you don't have ownership of digital content, you have a license. You have an open-ended rental on tough and seemingly conditions, and that's all you "have".

I guess lawsuits have become the record industry's core business, rather than selling music.

Wow, that's a really profound statement for me. Mind blown, thanks to you, dear sir.

The fallout, or lack there-of, from this will be interesting to watch. Any legal battles fought over this will certainly further shape precedent as more and more of our digital media moves to personal online storage and streaming.

(Not to mention that I'd love to see Amazon and the Record Corps duke it out over this!)

The funny part is this will likely help album sales, but I'm sure the record companies will rush to cut down the money tree Amazon just planted for them before it grows too big.

It's already helped album sales a little. I bought 5 albums browsing through Amazon MP3 this morning after seeing the announcement.

Yeah, there are some "brave new souls" in the industry, but I've already heard major labels are lawyering up re: Amazon

Wait, so use of partial downloads (say reading from a stream buffer) is legally different than the same use of a full download? (If my connection is fast enough for the second song to _fully_ buffer before the first one finishes playing, does this change anything, since the player is now reading from effectively a "full download"?)

Only then did Amazon allegedly begin to address licensing issues before going ahead with the launches—licenses or not. "I've never seen a company of their size make an announcement, launch a service and simultaneously say they're trying to get licenses," the anonymous exec said.

If I recall correctly, Apple announced the new name change to iOS, launched iOS4, and then made the deal to license the name with Cisco after the cat was out of the bag

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco_and_apple_agreement_on_ios...

I believe it was the same deal with at least "iPhone", which was also Cisco-owned at time of announcement. Maybe one other, too.

I think Amazon and Apple should just start their own record label, save a fortune by cutting out the sleazy middle-men and give artists a much bigger % cut from albums to attract hoards of artists. Why wouldn't it work?

Apple is probably barred from doing this due to the issues with Apple Records.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

Ah yeah forgot about that. Maybe they should buy Apple Records :) Clear up all sorts of confusion in the process

Anyone remember MP3.com (specifically my.mp3.com) from about 10 years ago? The lawsuits eventually shut that useful and efficient service down.

I thought about this when reports of Google music started to appear and the way Amazon sees it is completely my point of view. If it is my content that I upload to that service, then it really isn't Amazon's duty to care about licensing deals. The analogy to an external harddrive mentioned in the article explains this very well. You could even go one step further and replace the external harddrive with your own webspace to make that analogy even more similar to Amazon's service: Imagine you upload your music to your own webspace to be able to listen to it wherever you are. Not very practical, but there's no way one could argue that there have to be any additional fees involved. This shouldn't even be news.

So when Google has to negotiate with record labels this tells me that users apparently don't simply have upload their media collection. There have to be more features, similar to former lala.com maybe. Otherwise Google shouldn't even feel the need to contact any record labels. After their music is bought it's none of their business anymore. At least that's my opinion.

Uploading your music to Dropbox would be a good example. As far as I know nothing stops me doing that, and it achieves a fairly similar functionality to the proposed Amazon service. Dropbox even use Amazon's servers to store their data (I believe).

There is actually a (minor) difference. Amazon really is streaming the MP3s, while if you play one from Dropbox it downloads and plays and plays (technically it could be played while downloading, but this is actually uncommon).

There are slight technical differences - in streaming MP3s there is metadata embedded inside the files - see, for eg the second part of http://nicklothian.com/blog/2009/03/18/random-mp3-metadata-c...

Exactly why this would make a difference for licencing purposes I'm not sure, but I would note that there is a special "streaming" licence.

The Dropbox client for iPhone also "streams" MP3s, as far as I can tell. (Streaming as in playing while downloading)

Step 1: Threaten Amazon to try to extort license fees.

Step 2: Spread FUD in the press to scare users away from Amazon.

Step 3: Get a judge to compel Amazon to disclose user identities and their MP3 watermarks.

Step 4: Amazon drops all your CDs from their web shop

I am really excited for an actual lawsuit but I'm afraid Amazon will just settle out of court.

Comparing it to a hard drive may actually work in court but trying to explain the server optimizing code that grabs copies of the exact same song locally on the server rather than re-upload 30 million copies of the same Ke$ha track would be tough.

Still. I'd love to see this in court. I'm going to go buy some Amazon MP3 albums now to support the service.

Amazon probably does treat all copies separately in order to maintain the distinction of a personal backup service and not a music broadcasting service.

If the music industry goes after them for this, they apparently completely missed the boat on pogoplug and the service they offer.

I stream movies/music and view files remotely via an external drive hooked up to my pogoplug server at home. Supposing I moved it to a friend's place in following the 3-2-1 rule of backing up, would I then need a license to play my songs?

They only care about trends that threaten to go mainstream. Why do the leave usenet alone for instance?

Or they only worry about trends that have a forerunner with deep pockets. Suing amazon is probably much more appetizing then suing pogoplug...

Did no once else even consider that there would be a problem with this? I figured it was just access of my data that I upload to a server and that only I can access. I already do the same with MediaTomb, but I didn´t know it would make a world of difference to move to a third party instead of my own private server.

I think Amazon is right. This is just another form of "backup" for the user. I hope that they win the stare down.

slightly OT, but anyone know why lossless formats aren't available yet?

I'd assume it would be a good deferentiator from the ITune Store, Also, given that they are now charging for storage space, it would seem to align itself with this model too.

why lossless formats aren't available yet?

The general public doesn't care

Judging by the amount of "pirated" lossless downloads available I don't think that's entirely true.

Practically, it has to be playable by iPods, if a lossless format is to be agreed upon. (and you would need hardware decoder for that format, otherwise battery life becomes an issue.)

If I care enough to buy audio in lossless format, I'd probably spend the money on a CD and just rip it instead.

I do care about lossless format but I don't care about physical products. I'll never buy another CD again but would be happy to pay for a lossless download. Of course there are none, so I frequently find myself heading over to dark side (where there are plenty).

Ditto. Its still easier to download lossless music than it is to buy the CD and rip it yourself (which the record companies would consider illegal anyways).

Um, so if Amazon doesn't think they need a license to stream my music to me, how come I can upload music, but not listen to it if I'm outside the US?

Their interpretation is of American law, and so doesn't apply to you. They probably want to keep the legal complexity down to a minimum for now since they'll already probably have a battle on their hands.

applause

Well done Amazon

Apple should follow suit.

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