As you may know, Apple, Inc. announced yesterday a new service called iCloud that will allow you to store content on centralized servers and share your music / photos / movies amongst several devices (laptop, iPhone, iPod touch, etc.)
One feature that I found intriguing was this:
I’m surprised that Apple is announcing that if you copied the song from a CD, you can have access to an iTunes digital version of it. I thought that the common legal position espoused by content providers (movie studios, RIAA) was that you are not buying the actual song / TV show / movie, but the physical media on it, so in theory you shouldn’t expect to be able to make multiple copies of it (even though, in practice, people do it all the time.)
Is my understanding wrong? Would this new feature have any legal repercussions? Does the $24.99/year licensing fee make any difference? I assume some of that will be going to record companies.
Your understanding of copyright law (and the label’s interpretation of it) is correct as far as I can tell.
The reason that this wouldn’t run afoul of it is that, presumably, the labels have signed on. It’s not illegal for the labels to grant you and Apple to make this copy and have access to it in exchange for money.
Personally, I can’t imagine using this service. Not because it sounds like a terrible deal as offered, but because I don’t trust the music labels not to turn around and sue the hell out of anyone they think has “matched” some pirated music.
I wonder if there will be an easy way to tell which music was pirated vs. which music was copied from a physical CD. I have thousands of songs copied from physical CDs (CDs in my house) in my iTunes library.
On the flip side Apple has filed for a patent on an infrared sensor that will disable the recording/picture/video features on your phone. Presumably so concert organizers can make sure you do not record/photograph anything at their concerts without paying for it. (cite)
But (assuming that some of that $25 is going to the music labels - possibly even allocated by actual content found and matched) they are at least getting some money for those pirated tunes, vs none before.
One flaw that occurs to me…I subscribe to the cloud storage service and virtually “upload” my CD collection. Then I lend my collection to a friend, who does the same thing.
Now we both have access to the same songs, but both didn’t buy the CD, so the system breaks down if the intention is to force a subscriber to buy before playing.