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Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King
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Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court

By | March 30, 2011, 3:14am PDT

Summary: Amazon’s Cloud Drive beat Apple and Google to the punch and now the music industry is whining about lawsuits. Amazon is defiant. And the potential spat boils down to this: Are Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Player about storage or streaming music?

Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player beat Apple and Google to the punch and now the music industry is whining about lawsuits. Amazon is defiant. And the potential spat boils down to this: Are Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Player about storage or streaming music?

As I played with Cloud Drive—I still don’t quite get why storing content I bought requires a permission slip from the music industry to use Cloud Player—one screen stuck out repeatedly. It’s this one:

It’s obvious that you can upload documents, music, pictures and video. If I stream pictures do I need the recording industry’s permission for that too?

That screen boils down Amazon’s defense in a nutshell: Cloud Drive and Cloud Player are storage tools. People happen to own music. They happen to listen to that music.

The recording industry will argue that Amazon launched an unlicensed streaming music service. The problem with the recording industry is that Amazon isn’t some college kid that can be sued to oblivion. Amazon has fancy lawyers too.

You’re going to hear posturing from both sides and Amazon has hedged its bets well. Notice the CYA involved here in Jeff Bezos’ letter to customers:

Dear Customers,

Managing a digital music collection is a bit of a mess. it’s possible to buy music from your phone, but then it might get stuck there. It’s possible to buy music from your work computer, but then you have to remember to transfer it to your home computer. Most people just wait until they get home and do their purchasing from there. What’s more, if you’re not regularly backing up your music collection, you lose it in a disk drive crash.

Clearly, Amazon’s cloud Drive and Player are a streaming music issue. Busted!

Then the hedge comes:

We’re solving those problems with two important new offerings: Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player. Cloud Drive is your personal disk drive in the cloud. Anything you put in Cloud Drive is robustly stored in Amazon’s datacenters. You can upload your music collection to Cloud Drive, as well as any other digital documents.

It’s that “other digital documents” part that potentially expands the Cloud Drive and Player beyond the music industry’s reach. Cloud Player only needs a Web browser—another key point. You can argue that the Cloud Player is just a vehicle to access your stuff.

Ultimately a judge somewhere will decide, but unless there’s some injunction—a tough case to make for a “locker”—Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Player aren’t going anywhere.

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Topics

Amazon.com Inc., Music Industry, Music, Cloud Drive, Digital Media, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
elcabong@... 4th Apr 2011
I don't get it. Aren't there lots and lots of free cloud storage services with more coming on line almost every day? What's special about Amazon's or are they just a test case for the RIAA because they are a large recognizable company and if they lose that'll send all the other scurrying?
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Amazon position is not tenable
s_souche 30th Mar 2011
Cloud drive is not a storage service as far as music is concerned. Let me explain.
Operating from europe i was able to sign into the free 5GB service. I generated and uploaded two music file after having read that only mp3 and aac were supported, which seemed strange to me as, as you depict, the service clearly present storage capability with document folder. As said I generated an mp3 and ogg file of the same 440Hz track and uploaded without problem to the Music folder.

Things ere not so clean when I clicked on two file: when clicking the ogg file, chrome took over and started playing my awful sound; when I clicked on the mp3 file thought, I went to a message screen informing me that the service is limited to US customers only.

This means that in Amazon mind, the service is not storage as far as music is concerned, but a music streaming service, subject to IP contractual considerations.
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Video does not seem to be restricted
s_souche 30th Mar 2011
@s_souche I was able to upload and play an mp4 file without a similar restriction....
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
Peter Perry 30th Mar 2011
@s_souche Or it means some features are being tested in the US.
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Apple's MobileMe has offered media file storage for more than a year
doctorSpoc 30th Mar 2011
@s_souche.. you can put movies and songs up there and play them from any iOS device.. there is no web player app though.. you can also share with others.. password protect etc..
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
nomorebs 30th Mar 2011
@doctorSpoc then Apple has done a terrible job in spreading the word about it.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
RDrrr 30th Mar 2011
@s_souche No, it means Amazon wants to iron out the bugs in the US before they go global... and enter into that large can of worms where every worm has a different complaint.
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Streaming from Europe
aliball68 31st Mar 2011
@s_souche I've uploaded 3Gb of MP3 and can stream them fine. I'm in Europe and have tried on 3 different ISP's and they all seem to stream just fine. Maybe it's just a first launch glitch which they will fix later and block me, but for now I'm going to enjoy my songs via the browser happy
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
LilBambi_z Updated - 31st Mar 2011
@s_souche actually this proves nothing. There are many companies that restrict usage by country; whether it be the USA, or European companies.

And how many people would be foolish enough to share their Amazon username and password (where their payment info is and where every time you log in, or anyone else logs in, you/they are you! They could spend your money as easily as you if they pretend to be you.)
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What a load of BS
John Zern 30th Mar 2011
it's one thing to have a streaming music service where the end user doesn't own the misic that is streaming, but in this case the users purchased the music.
How is this any more different then putting a purchased CD in a computer and streaming the music someplace else, maybe another computer or a surround sound system?
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
voska1 30th Mar 2011
@John Zern

I was thinking that exact same thing. I stream content from my PC to my TV upstairs. Does it really matter if it's off my personal hard drive or cloud drive over the internet. As long as it's not streaming to everyone and anyone the music industry has no say.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
x I'm tc 30th Mar 2011
@John Zern

It isn't. But that's *probably* illegal, at leat in the RIAA's mind.

Recall mp3.com in its original implementation. It sounds a lot like this.
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Yup
MSFTWorshipper 30th Mar 2011
@jdakula In the deranged mind of an RIAA executive you would *literally* need to purchase a CD for *every* room the house. Their greed is boundless.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
NoAxToGrind 30th Mar 2011
@John Zern

Because, that is not how it has been licensed for use. Now you may not like the license and you may think it's very unfair but in that case you need to talk to your elected reps. to change the laws.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
RDrrr Updated - 30th Mar 2011
@NoAxToGrind

B.S. I own the audio files (not the music rights)... if I want to stream my property to myself planetwide then I will. I just put some NAS on my home net and hook my app to it wherever I am. My data file, my data, my connection, my use. Nothing illegal about it... no license required to transmit my data to myself. Until they pass a law that says I can't stream my data to myself, I will. First I need to go purchase an NAS, or subscribe to an online locker and move (not copy) my data there... hmmm. The RIAA, et al, do not own the 'net... they can't say how it can be used. They only have copyrights... and I'm not copying. They won't succeed in banning online storage/access of files, regardless of whether the data is musical or not. I'm not streaming to others, I am consuming my own data... that's what it is purchased for.
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You don't need a license
voska1 30th Mar 2011
@NoAxToGrind

Not one of my CDs has a license yet I ripped them all to my hard drive.

Now if you mean legally downloaded music, that's why I buy CDs. No restrictions. Though I pretty much ignore what licenses say anyways, it's all greek to me. Too long and filled with mubo jumbo that doesn't make sense, not worth my time. I'll use my content as I see fit with in the realms fo copyright law. That's the best I can do with out hiring a lawyer every time I buy online music.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
msalzberg 30th Mar 2011
@John Zern

I think the difference is who has control of the original purchased item. If you stream from your own device to another of your own devices, you have control. Once you upload your music to a system that then streams to you, they have control over the music, not you.
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Make it your own
Robert Hahn 30th Mar 2011
@msalzberg Easily solved by charging a nominal fee for the storage that today is "free." Then it isn't "their" storage anymore; you rented it, same as if you'd gotten your PC from Rent-to-Own.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
nomorebs 30th Mar 2011
@Robert Hahn You are losing your time. msalzberg is simply pissed off that Amazon beat Apple (or that at least the title says so).
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
Peter Perry 30th Mar 2011
The music industry hates it because they know that they might just lose big contracts for streaming if this doesn't disappear but it is no different than say drop box and if Amazon were to create a client that would sync over wifi then this suit would fade fast.
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I'm wondering if
Linux Geek 30th Mar 2011
M$ has a hand in this RIAA nonsense.
it might be envy that M$ does not have a service like amazon's.
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Get real
use_what_works_4_U 30th Mar 2011
@Linux Geek
It must be nice to live in a world where every occurance you don't agree with is easily pinned on one, and only one, "bad" entity. The RIAA has been bullying radio stations and individuals pretty much forever. Remember Zune "squirting"? The RIAA is the reason that a "squirted" media expired after 3 days.

This article has nothing to do with Microsoft and unless you can provide some evidence to suggest that MS might be even vaguely, remotely in on this you are blowing smoke.

Take your paranoid conspiracy theories elsewhere, please?
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
NoAxToGrind 30th Mar 2011
@Linux Geek

I think you meant to say Apple.


Sheesh, you really are thick aren't you?
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
Stan57 30th Mar 2011
@Linux Geek
Actually its linux they have to worry about. If MS really wanted the service they would license or just buy it. We all know what linux does they leech off of others works
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
DNSB 30th Mar 2011
@Linux Geek

While Microsoft is not my favourite company, you come across as a paranoid conspiracy theorist whose beliefs are not going to fly without solid evidence to back them.

By the evidence I've seen so far, neither Microsoft nor Apple nor anyone else trying to move away from the traditional music distribution are on the nice side of the RIAA's naughty/nice list.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
jeverettk 30th Mar 2011
For anyone who doesn't know, Linux Geek regularly connects via a MS based system. S/he is probably not affiliated with any company - just some overstimulated fanboy intentionally misbehaving in order to associate all Linux users with extreme assinine behavior.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
DonRupertBitByte 30th Mar 2011
@Linux Geek

Microsoft and the RIAA are not one and the same. The RIAA has shown dozens if not hundreds of times that they know how to be completely stupid on their own.

Of course not buying RIAA-sponsored music is always a good idea.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
blueskip 30th Mar 2011
@Linux Geek I'd bet there's more truth to that than people know.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
DannyO_0x98 30th Mar 2011
Amazon has one arrow in its quiver: it's the place where the music companies who are cross-owned with the record companies who are cross-owned with the book publishers sell their non-digital wares.
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Who needs you?
Robert Hahn 30th Mar 2011
@DannyO_0x98 Good observation. As far as the RIAA is concerned, if Apple is the rock, Amazon is The Hard Place. Together the two of them could choke the music industry until it passes out.
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Wrong
MSFTWorshipper 30th Mar 2011
@Robert Hahn You forget who creates the content in the first place. It isn't Apple or Amazon. Warner, Sony and the other majors have the content distributors balls in a vise.
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Nothing biased in this "reporting"...
NoAxToGrind 30th Mar 2011
Unless you read the headling.

"music industry whines:"

No, nothing biased here... Pfftt....
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
KBot 30th Mar 2011
@NoAxToGrind

than don't friggen read it spammer
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
pupkin_z 30th Mar 2011
I am guessing there is a way to change the permissions for your folders and files and share the music content with other cloud users. That is exactly what music industry does not want you to do.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
kyron.gustafson@... 30th Mar 2011
@pupkin_z
No, this is tied to your Amazon account. I don't think most people would want to give out the password to their Amazon Account.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
Vesicant 30th Mar 2011
>I still don?t quite get why storing content I bought requires a permission slip from the music industry

RTFM. It's a copy. You don't own the content, you bought a license. The only legal option is to call your cloud copy your one legal backup, but that doesn't give you permission to stream it.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
dmead001 30th Mar 2011
It occurred to me that the whole 'rights' issue could be easily resolved (or changed) if companies like Amazon began to compete with the music industry by signing up artists, new and others whose contracts expired, to record for them, not the RIAA folk. That would be game, set, match!
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I miss the old MP3.COM days so much!!!
OaklawnRick 30th Mar 2011
Back in the day when MP3.COM was seriously running and promoting independent artists, they had a LOCKER system which allowed you to shove your CD into your computer for about 15 seconds to prove ownership, and then it would put all the music files into your locker which you could remotely listen to on different machines later with your protected login. I thought the concept was magnificent and gave us a way to manage our digital stuff on the crappiest and cheapest systems instead of spending a fortune on drive/memory capacity stuff.

MP3.COM also had an interesting philosophy in allowing you to download one or two songs from new albums for free and if you really like them you could buy the whole thing allowing the artist to learn more about his/her talents on what was liked and what wasn't. Heaven forbid, you don't see that kinda stuff anymore. No, instead you have to kiss the butts of all the controlling corporate folk to get or learn about unknown artists and none of it is FREE...
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
KBot 30th Mar 2011
Look face of the matter is this: forget buying mp3's. Say you own vinyls and cd's. you make mp3's from the cd's that show metadata from the cd. You own the cd and the right to make digital copies. With the vinyl, you make those copies and the metadata won't show it's from the vinyl. This could be flagged as stolen, which is 1 problem. The second problem is the act of downloading mp3's. here is where you own the license to play the song, but don't own the digital copy. So assuming everyone sticks to cd's, the music biz can't do crap as in this case you own the file and can store it anywhere and copy it as many times as you want. The illegal part is giving it to others. The music biz's argument falls apart when you look at it this way: lets say I have my music stored on a hard drive at home. This computer is configured to be allowed to be accessed from outside my home. If I share the folder and mount it to my other computer, (not at home right now), I can play my music through any music player I desire. Does this become illegal? iTunes allows this through local networks without the need to mount a network drive. This is a classic case of the law not properly working in the real world.
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We don't need no stinkin' cloud!
bgrove777 30th Mar 2011
Pro musician for +35 years -I record or rip all interesting content and store on my in-house disk array - load up the portable player or pen drive when I travel.
Can't wait until this "cloud" crap dissappears and we get some clarity on SECURE storage and streaming services - meaning "Fkoff digital cops - these are my digital assets to manipulate at my own discretion"
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
ShaneK 30th Mar 2011
I would say that a cloud drive is only a streaming service if you share that space. Other than that, it is no more a streaming service than any other network drive .. or space on a workstation drive. It is that sharing that makes it illegal.
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Doesn't matter
MSFTWorshipper 30th Mar 2011
@ShaneK RIAA will claim that Amazon users will share their accounts with friends, thus violating the contract. Who will enforce it?
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Music industry isn't paying attention
bigdaddyellison 30th Mar 2011
So what did I do first after getting my cloud account? Bought 3 MP3 CDs. I don't mind paying for music and the easier it is for me to have my music anywhere, the more likely I am to listen to my own music rather than Pandora. If the Music Execs were paying attention, they would see this is the key to increasing revenue. The biggest problem with buying music these days is having to sync it to the 3 different devices I use to listen on (tablet, laptop, phone).
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A classic example of...
MacCanuck 30th Mar 2011
"It is easier (and more convenient and self-serving) to ask for forgiveness after doing something than for permission before it."
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CloudPod?
psion@... 30th Mar 2011
The RIAA has been complaining ever since cassettes were invented that the sky is falling. Since I'M the only one who has access to my music, what is the difference between putting tunes up on Amazon, or on an iPod??
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
Gabriel Hernandez 30th Mar 2011
RIAA Lawyers should really need to understand how this works. You upload your purchased music into Amazon's cloud, then you can connect using your http browser to Amazon's service and you can listen to your previous purchased music on any computer you have. You can't stream anyone elses's music, since your library is private, also no body can see what is inside your library. I think everyone of us has used iTunes stream option to listen to tracks which are on your neighbors house, this is even more private since you can only listen this to the music you upload.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
Techknowledgie 30th Mar 2011
Ummm, I didn't see anything in the article that said the RIAA and their buddies are actually complaining. But if they ever do, I have some suggestions about what the entire world should tell them to do with their complaints.
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haha
MSFTWorshipper 30th Mar 2011
@Techknowledgie You think the troglodytes at RIAA know technology? They're still mentally frozen in the 1980s.
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
gunsnammo 1st Apr 2011
Amazon FTW!
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RE: Amazon debuts Cloud Drive, music industry whines: The screen that will end up in court
elcabong@... 4th Apr 2011
I don't get it. Aren't there lots and lots of free cloud storage services with more coming on line almost every day? What's special about Amazon's or are they just a test case for the RIAA because they are a large recognizable company and if they lose that'll send all the other scurrying?

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