Google and Amazon cloud music nears judgment day

A David versus Goliath legal case that could affect new cloud music services from Google and Amazon is on the verge of a decision. In August, a judge is expected to rule on EMI's four-year-old case against tiny music locker MPE3tunes.com and its founder for alleged copyright violation. MP3tunes.com founder Michael Robertson …

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Music ftw!

"Music lockers – per se – are not very interesting. They're kind of like music museums."

Says you. I used to carry around 20 gigs of mp3s on my phone's 32 gig SD card.

Now I've uploaded them to Google Music and my SD card is breathing a sigh of relief.

I also use Slacker, but yes, I like having access to my all-time favorite songs. What I'd really like is to be able to upload all 250 gigs of my mp3s, but that might not come for free, and you totally lost me at the part about "purchases".

...whoops, I guessed I just unmasked myself as someone with a gargantuan collection of pirated music that I've been adding to since I was a 13 year old using Napster on dial-up, i.e. the kind of user the RIAA is complaining about. So this whole situation might be my fault.

tl;dr I got mine, bitches!

[bob 46]

20gb of music = ridiculous

At approximately 1mb/minute, 20Gb is enough music for over 40 years, if you listen 8 hours per day, 7 days a week, without repeating a single track. My contention is that if your SD card was straining under all that music, the sensible thing to do would be dump some of it on your computer, as you're not going to listen to more than a tiny fraction of it within the lifetime of your phone, your SD card and probably yourself.

[Woodgar]

Re: 20gb of music = ridiculous

Good call.

To the original AC: If you're going to troll like a wanker, you could at least try to use numbers with some sense of reality built into them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haters gonna hate

Reality? Reality is, most iPods hold considerably more than 20 gigs. How is it unrealistic to carry around that rather paltry amount on a smartphone? (Especially since the iPod is very nearly obsolete due to the increasing popularity of said smartphones.)

Also, the math on display here is preposterous. According to Winamp, these 20 gigs are ~200 hours of music. I commute 2 hours a day and typically listen to music while I'm working, so this is about a month's worth. But I don't just copy a bunch of singles and do random shuffle, either. I'll often want to listen to a particular artist or album, and when you get to bands that have 10 albums, the space starts to fill up pretty quickly.

That said, my full collection would take months of straight listening. It's no exaggeration to say that there's stuff in there that I will probably never hear, although I try. All I'm sayin' is I can't wait for an unlimited locker so that I don't have to pick and choose, and I can just sync my download folder to The Cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

20GB is about 2 weeks, not 40 years.

At 1MB/min, 20GB is about 2 weeks of continuous playing time. Seems like a reasonable amount. iTunes tells me I have about 400 albums, 12 days of playing time and about 20GB of music files.

[nsld]

Are they going to sue

Everyone with a home media NAS letting them play music on different bits of hardware?

If I buy a CD am I only allowed to use it in one CD Player?

Hey EMI I have a Pogoplug come sue me!

Twunts the lot of them!

[Richard Porter]

Get real, EMI!

"EMI believes that you must either buy a copy of Lady Antibellum's Need You Now for every PC, iPod, or smartphone you want to play it on, or that you must pay EMI every time you play Need You Now on a new device."

So if you'd bought a 45rpm Beatles' single on Parlophone you'd have had to pay EMI a fee or buy another copy for every record player, radiogram and hi-fi deck that you played it on? Come on!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Devices -- Copies

You probably could not have played your Beatles' single on every record player, radiogram and hi-fi deck simultaneously. More to EMI's point, that same Beatles' record couldn't have been played at the same time by you, your friends, and anyone else in the world to whom you offered access.

While I disagree with EMI's overall argument -- I think it's their business model, not their customers, which must change -- online storage does indeed "cloud" the copyright issue.

[Trev 2]

Isn't there an allowance for backing up your music?

Pretty sure in the UK at least your allowed to make a copy of your music for backing up purposes, so presumably this is no different to copying it to tape for use in the car, assuming of course you don't play both copies at the same time?

Maybe this doesn't apply in the US, but perhaps if not then move the service to the UK?

Also going to be fun when all data is stored "in the cloud" instead of the local hard drive if Google etc gets their way, so doesn't that mean effectively you won't be able to store your music anywhere anymore?

[J. R. Hartley]

the music industry has lost the plot

"so doesn't that mean effectively you won't be able to store your music anywhere anymore?"

Ha! Let's see them try and stop us!

[scarshapedstar]

Fahrenheit 486

Imagine a dystopia where DRM-riddled cloud computing is mandatory and anyone caught with an old-fashioned hard drive has their house set ablaze by RIAA thugs...

[Mectron]

Imagine reality whre the law is actually applied

this will mean EMI, RIAA's entire membership, MPAA's entire membersip, Sony and countless others simply shutdown with breaking the law on a planetary scale.

[Anonymous Coward]

no

"Pretty sure in the UK at least your allowed to make a copy of your music for backing up purposes"

No, it's illegal in the uk, you aren't allowed to format shift.

[A J Stiles]

But

Nobody has ever been prosecuted for format-shifting either. And if they ever are, and if they take it to a Crown court, and if there are just two people on that jury who have ever taped an album to listen in the car, not only will they be found not guilty, but format-shifting will be legalised by precedent.

The labels really don't want that.

[Bronek Kozicki]

hopefully not for very long

It seems like the prohibition of format shifting in the UK might be on its way out. Hopefully media companies do not have much money left for hard lobbying they were used to.

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=hargreaves , http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13429217

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow learners?

These are the companies whose obsession with flaky DRM systems meant they were effectively out of the market for years while their potential customers found they could get a better product for nothing. Once you have trained people to expect free music, they are looking for excuses not to like you when you try to have them pay for things, and taking a high-handed attitude to what stuff they have paid for just makes it easier to rationalise freetard activity.

Given that nearly their entire back catalogue is on Megaupload, Rapidshare etc, you do wonder what planet they are living on.

[Dick Emery]

Confidence

Having confidence is no good. Time and time again we have seen stupid decisions being made by judges based on antiquated or 'grey' laws or simple (miss)interpretations made by the judge on that day.

Never underestimate the power of money too. Also it's a good idea to look into the background of a judge to see if they have any history of falling on the side of copyright cartels or indeed if they actually worked within or close to the industry in prior employment (Just look at how many are now in positions of power after being mandated by Obama's rule).

Plus of course you have the whole appelation process to contend with. What may be won in the first round may be lost in th second (Or ultimately if heard by the supremes and I ain't talking about the one Diana Ross sang in here).

I never make assumptions on law. If I were a betting man I would stick with horses. It's probably less rigged.

[VeganVegan]

Wrong analogy

The music companies should have used beer for their analogy: you only ever rent the stuff.

[Mr_Fixit]

Err...

Right... so now Im not allowed to store my music where I like?

Gotta laugh at the PDF - talks about distribution...

Riiiggghhhtt... Someone correct me if Im wrong, but if I put some music on my generic fruit branded MP3 player, which will also be transferred to my fruit phone... have I broken the law?

It appears so...

Good thing I dont care then :)

[Field Marshal Von Krakenfart]

I can't think of a good title

For a start, isn’t it obvious why the copyright mafiaa are going after a relatively small operation like MP3tunes rather than Amazon and Google, the mafiaa are hoping that their finical clout will enable them to bully MP3tunes into folding, because the cost of fighting the mafiaa will be more than MP3tunes can bear. I hope MP3tunes will win.

I’m just a little curious too, if EMI win, will SONY have to stop making mini-disk players as well????

I’d appreciate if somebody could tell me what labels EMI own, I have quite a few duff CDs (and records) that despite have no evidence of physical damage, either refuse to play or refuse to play a particular track. If EMI have only licensed me to listen to that piece of music, then I expect to full and specific performance of that contract in perpetuity, i.e. I expect EMI to keep their full back catalog in production so I can get a replacement at any time.

In fact now that I think of it, I have a copy of Muds RAK/EMI 1974 Vinyl LP “Mud Rock” that has degenerated over time, if EMI truly believe that they have only licensed me to listen to the music I’m sure they will be happy to replace it, after all a music company wouldn’t like anyone to break the law, would they?

I also thought that this sort of issue had already been decided in the courts regarding software, that it is not a license to use, but a sale with conditions, I’m sure the elReg hacks and hackettes will have that one filled away somewhere.

On a more serious note, though, if I were to format shift and upload my entire collection, and being a HiFi buff it would probably be to lossless format like FLAC, how am I supposed to access it? Am I to listen to it on my android phone? Given its battery usage I doubt if it has the capacity to power my Sennheiser headphones for too long, I’d need to lug a 12V car battery about with me just to keep the thing powered. And don’t get me started about the crappy amount of bandwidth or what I get charged for using the interwebs on my phone!!!!

I won’t be able to listen to it in work because all the company bandwidth needs to be kept for the CX so he can check out the call girls for his next business trip.

And just how the hell am I going to receive any streaming service when I am travelling on the worlds most effective mobile faraday cage, aka a commuter train, while its in a tunnel or a deep cutting.

I think I’ll stick with my minidisk player (even if its from sony, (I bought it a long time ago))

[Cameron Colley]

@Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

Why would you store your music in the cloud as FLAC if you're only wanting to hear ATRAC-quality sound? Why not use hight quality MP3 or Ogg/Vorbis or AppleWhatever (depending on preference)? Personally, I lug a load of FLAC files around with me -- but I found Ogg/Vorbis a lot more like ATRAC than MP3, a good thing in my opinion, when trying out other formats.

[zen1]

re: Trev

If memory serves correct, in the US we are allowed to make an archival backup, without penality. But transferring those archives over to other machines for others to use is against the law. But I could be wrong.

The music industry done fucked up and flat out missed the boat on this one, in terms of a low cost delivery mechanism and are trying to bilk the old physical media scheme (cd, dvd etc) for what it's worth AND are expecting consumers to bend over and grab their ankles.

FU EMI, when I purchase a song, I will use it on whatever device I own. Will I give it out to others? no, because that is theft. But if you think I am going to purchase multiple copies of the same product, then I don't give a fuck how great it is, you won't be seeing a penny from me. That's like buying a new car for every day of the week and then purchasing them over again once the next month comes along.

[Hardcastle the ancient]

Easily Solved

I buy my music direct from the artists.

Nothing Sony, Simon Cowell et.al. want me to listen to is worth paying for once, let alone again.

http://www.maryanahata.co.uk/

http://amazingtunes.com/

http://staticcaravan.greedbag.com/

[Sentient]

Losing customers.

Just like everybody else I want to be able to listen to all my music anywhere.

Just like everybody else I think some music is better than other.

Just like everybody else I am not going to pay twice or thrice for songs that I play maybe once a year.

[SpaMster]

What a load of garbage

Is it just me, or are they trying to say if you buy a cd in the shop, it's illegal for you to put it in anybodys cd player apart from your own? and if you own more than one CD player, you have to buy an extra copy of the album for each cd player. How there expecting to win this i have no idea.