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Comment by dsplittgerber | Hacker News Reader

A little arbitrage idea: How about going on an illegal downloading-binge and getting every album one possibly could ever like from the past, I don't know, 30 years? Then when you've got your several thousand albums, you go legalize it all for $29.95.

Sounds like value?

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I was thinking the same thing, what happens when you scan pirated music? There are basically two options, 1) it accepts it and gives you a high quality iTunes AAC copy that you can move to the various computers and devices you own and probably has your name and particulars branded in to it. Or 2) they can attempt to detect that it's pirated and block it somehow and I'm guessing that you get a fairly shitty user experience when that happens. I'm also going to go ahead and guess that many of the MP3s you've ripped over the last decade may also "fail" the test and be thought of as pirated.

On the other side, what's it harm? You're providing the media, they are just saving you the steps of uploading it. Now where you'd game the system is if you had like 16kbit versions of some tracks and they upgrade them for you. If that works then there is kind of a new avenue in piracy they may be opening up, you download small lo-fi versions quickly and then iTunes could fix them up for you... They aren't giving you ownership of anything, they're just helping you get the media where you want it, within some parameters.

I wonder if the labels get access to the usage patterns and records, effectively this is Neilsen type information, only way better. Who "owns" which tracks (that alone combined with iTunes buying patterns and some listening patterns potentialy gives you a huge clue in to who are the pirates) who plays what, when, where? Seems like some really really killer social apps could be built ontop of this as well as some incredible marketing information, someone somehwere is going to release a fully remastered, deluxe, Elvis everything box set and ideally (for them) they'd do it at a time when there was an uptick in Elvis listening. You also can measure various popularity trends, see how they move, maximize promotional dollars.

Wouldn't a majority of iTunes users already uploaded a list of all their songs to Apple when activating Genius?

Isn't that just a snap shot? It doesn't contain real time access information.

You could just rip the trends information from Last.fm.

The music's already out there. If you really wanted to go to all that trouble, why haven't you already done it?

And do you really think that if you suddenly show up in a bunch of torrent logs you won't get sued just because you gave Apple $30? It's not like people were getting sued because record companies were breaking into their homes and looking at what was on their hard drives.

Because there was no incentive yet, obviously. Owning stuff on your harddrive is of not much use when you're constantly on the move and want to have easy access to your music and have less and less use for a stationary pc anyway. For many people, streaming services are the future and this is actually the first music industry move to make sense in a long time.

Also, it'd be interesting to see how music firms will justify suing you over alleged torrent downloads when you pay them 30 bucks for legalizing your stack.

The incentive was having the music to listen to, and if you're constantly on the move and want easy access, you own an iPod, which Apple has sold a few of in the past.

And they'll justify it the same way they always have: poorly and completely out-of-whack with the actual damages inflicted.

I'm guessing the music industry is looking at it the other way round.

Right now, the music industry doesn't see a cent from all the kids downloading 1000s of songs to their computer. With iCloud, they have a good chance of getting $30 a year (minus Apple's cut) from many of those same kids, who will still think they are ripping off The Man.

There's a limit of 25000 songs that come from outside the iTunes store.

If you didn't own it before running it through iTunes match then you don't own it afterwards either.

We don't know yet, but one probably will never "own" your iTunes Cloud data the same way you own your music now, I concede that. Still, you'll have access to all your pirated music as long as you keep paying 30 bucks a year.

It's actually a brillant move. Similar to being exempted from punishment if you turn yourself in as an owner of illegal guns/tax fraud or what have you.

I don't see why or how the legal terms of Match would absolve you of any crimes you may have committed to acquire the original song.

They said the iTunes Match songs get downloaded as DRM-free AAC 256K files, so you will "own" it in the same way you currently "own" music purchases from the iTunes Store.

Perhaps, but if you committed copyright infringement when you originally obtained the music, none of this is going to turn back the clock and undo that original infringement

Theres a 25,000 file limit. iTunes purchases not included. [http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/]

Keep in mind it's $29.95 per year. They did say you get "DRM-free" music through the service. But with an annual fee, will you have to continue to pay the fee to access your iTunes Matched music?

> Keep in mind it's $29.95 per year.

Lion is $29.99. iTunes Match is $25/y (this difference adds up)

Isn't iTunes Match more of a music streaming service? This is how Apple explains it works "Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device."

It says 'listen to'. Am not sure if you actually get legit copies of your music.

It gets upgraded to the same format as the rest of your iTunes purchased music. From further in the same paragraph as your quote: "And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality -- even if your original copy was of lower quality."

All the music available in iCloud is available for download, this isn't a streaming service.

You're paying $24.95 <em>per year</em> to get them in cloud. Of course, if you stop paying, you don't lose your original pirated files, but you don't get them in the high-quality versions on all your devices anymore, presumably.

Since the files are DRM-free, and your desktop iTunes is one of the 'devices' that syncs, presumably you'll have the iTunes-downloaded high-quality DRM-free versions of all of your songs sitting in your iTunes music folder waiting to be copied elsewhere. I'm sure Apple has some clause in the terms of service saying that when you stop paying your $25/year you need to delete those files, but they wouldn't have explicitly said it was all DRM-free if it wasn't set up to let you grab the iTunes-quality files manually and do what you want with 'em.

This is exactly what I thought. An amazingly cheap way to launder pirated music. Not that it really changes the legality...

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