









Comments     Threshold


RE: I Don't Get It
By michael2k on 4/15/2011 7:29:10 PM , Rating: 2
The difference?

Amazon signed a contract saying they would pay for every track downloaded from Amazon MP3 servers. Amazon UK doesn't have Cloud Drive, so you can clearly see their FAQ:


Your Amazon MP3 purchases can only be downloaded once... We are currently unable to replace any purchased files that you delete or lose due to a system or disk error.

How exactly can it be legal for Cloud Drive to allow you to download multiple copies when the exact same infrastructure in Amazon MP3 can't?

See, if Amazon stores it for you and allows you to download it multiple times, they are committing copyright infringement in the strictest interpretation regardless of how common sense it is.

Let me flip the question on you. What is the difference if I download my DRM-free track from Amazon MP3 after I accidentally delete it from my hard drive, or if Amazon stores the track for me on Cloud Drive and I download it to that same laptop? Why bother with Cloud Drive in the first place?

RE: I Don't Get It
By bodar on 4/15/2011 8:03:45 PM , Rating: 2
That makes sense, but I didn't see anything that said it's specifically a contractual obligation. It's heavily implied though, because they already know what I've bought from them in the past, so in theory it shouldn't be a problem to send me a new download link. The only thing I can think of is that they didn't want to code some kind of track recovery system, but that seems really easy to do.

Still, it's ridiculous that it's licensed like that, but hey, if Amazon agreed to that, then unfortunately I think they're gonna lose. More importantly, the customers lose. Score another one for the record mafia if this is the case.

Re: the Cloud drive's purpose -- the cool thing is that you can upload tracks from your own MP3 collection, so it's not like you are limited to just your Amazon MP3s or are in any way locked in to Amazon MP3, like the old iTunes DRM.

