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Forget Laundering Unauthorized Music Via Music Match, What About AirDrop Darknets?
from the slipped-that-one-right-by-the-goalie dept
In my initial post on Apple's iTunes-in-the-cloud Music Match offering, I noted the ability to effectively "launder" unauthorized tracks through the service. That's because it will scan your drive for all tracks -- those from iTunes and elsewhere -- and make authorized high quality, DRM-free versions of all of those songs available to you on any device "forever." In theory, this means if you have a lot of unauthorized music, if you pay your $25 and join up, all of those unauthorized tunes become "authorized" via iTunes. Not surprisingly, it's this aspect of so-called "legitimizing" unauthorized files that seems to be getting so much attention.
To be honest, I don't think it's a big deal, beyond the simple note of surprise that the major labels actually allowed this to happen. Beyond that, all the buzz about "legitimizing piracy" is a bunch of hot air. The simple fact of the matter is that once people had these songs on their hard drive, they were effectively legitimized. The only lawsuits were really over distribution. And while there may have been some efforts (such as in the Jammie Thomas case and the Joel Tenenbaum case) to establish where certain files came from, those were minor points and wouldn't be impacted by Music Match. Basically, this whole focus on "legitimizing" those works is a red herring. No one was getting in trouble for those works on their hard drives, and just because they move into the iTunes cloud doesn't mean that anything changes. At all.
What may be a much bigger copyright issue is the one raised by James Grimmelmann, who points out the much-less-press-generating announcement of AirDrop, and how it creates local, encrypted, peer-to-peer networks over WiFi. As Grimmelmann notes:
To be honest, I don't think it's a big deal, beyond the simple note of surprise that the major labels actually allowed this to happen. Beyond that, all the buzz about "legitimizing piracy" is a bunch of hot air. The simple fact of the matter is that once people had these songs on their hard drive, they were effectively legitimized. The only lawsuits were really over distribution. And while there may have been some efforts (such as in the Jammie Thomas case and the Joel Tenenbaum case) to establish where certain files came from, those were minor points and wouldn't be impacted by Music Match. Basically, this whole focus on "legitimizing" those works is a red herring. No one was getting in trouble for those works on their hard drives, and just because they move into the iTunes cloud doesn't mean that anything changes. At all.
What may be a much bigger copyright issue is the one raised by James Grimmelmann, who points out the much-less-press-generating announcement of AirDrop, and how it creates local, encrypted, peer-to-peer networks over WiFi. As Grimmelmann notes:
This is going to be yet another darknet vector. Imagine walking into a cafe, browsing someone else’s iTunes library, asking them for one of their albums, and getting it via AirDrop--all without knowing whose computer yours is interacting with. Sony’s rule on dual use technologies almost certainly absolves Apple of liability from any resulting infringement. Instead, this is yet another example of how technological changes are increasing the velocity with which media circulate, regardless of what copyright law may have to say about it.Kind of makes you wonder if the labels knew about that as part of their agreement over Music Match...
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Sounds like the RIAA
The labels gets their massive amounts of money from Apple (if Google's $100mill wasn't enough, how much did Apple pay), they get their cut from iTunes, they get to double dip with this service, they get some money from the illegitimate songs, and they still get to sue if they find someone uploading (probably twice because it's on the iCloud). Apple probably gave them every single little thing they wanted that Google and Amazon refused.
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Re: Sounds like the RIAA
The reports we noted yesterday said $150 million advance on 58% royalty rate on the new service.
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Re: Re: Re: Sounds like the RIAA
I also believe this is going to make it easier for them to go after people as those tracks will be watermarked with people's iTunes account info, so they are triple dipping they hope.
There's a lot of questions left out that need to be answered I wonder when all the pieces will fall into place and we get some real info.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Sounds like the RIAA
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People will spend thousands in order to avoid spending hundreds. It's cool.
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I disagree. I do know some heavy duty pirates and they are spending hundreds to save thousands. Which begs the question, how do you turn them into legit consumers? And how do you turn people like myself who neither buy or pirate into consumers? The answer is to lower the price. Myself and probably many pirates would buy at the right price assuming you get high quality, DRM, virus free files that I can play on any device at any time and share with at least my family. No way will people buy two or more copies of each song/movie/book just so that each member in the family can have it.
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Labels could still sue
So, you really need to think about the possible consequences of this before saying it will legitimize piracy when it may do the opposite.
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Re: Labels could still sue
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http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/06/itunes-match-apple-takes-icloud-to-another-level.html
"By scanning the user's music collection with iTunes Match, Apple appears to have one upped both Google and Amazon on speed and ease of use. iTunes Match replaces existing music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if Apple can match it. That makes the matched music available in minutes and uploads only unmatched music. What happens to these "replaced files", if you stop paying $24.99 a year is not yet clear."
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*DRM-free*
Of course, what people now have are AAC files--files which won't play on many devices other than iPods. And, of course, the AAC files are now tagged with the users appleID, so if any of the file should accidentally get out into the wild (if your iPod or PC is lost or stolen, for instance), the user can be sued for piracy--something that wouldn't be as likely if the files they ripped from their CDs g
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Re: *DRM-free*
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Re: Re: *DRM-free*
Nobody said otherwise, so what are you disagreeing with?
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Re: Re: Re: *DRM-free*
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I though that feature was only between Macs?
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and once all of the cool kids have it, you know the rest of us will find a way to have it too.
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Not true. I'm probably going to pay that $25/year price for access to my music library, including my downloaded songs, from anywhere. There's your change; Apple found a way to monetize my infringement.
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Not really...
Not really. You could say that if Apple was charging per song for cloud services, but since it is a flat fee apple doesn't gain anything from your possible infringement.
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AKA
Isn't this known as "squirting"?
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Yes congrats to the labels for demanding and receiving money for another companies work, tech, hardware, service, support and innovation. Congrats to taking profits away from a company to collect fees for songs I already paid them for. Congrats on being huge jags.
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