Amazon AutoRip — 14 Years Late 215
An anonymous reader writes "Amazon just debuted a new service called Autorip, which grants you MP3 copies of music when you purchase the CD version. This is a technology people have been trying to introduce since 1999, but only recently have the record labels — and the courts — seen fit to allow it. 'Robertson's first company, MP3.com was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley when it launched what we would now call a cloud music service, My.MP3.com, in 1999. The service included a feature called "Beam-It" that allowed users to instantly stock their online lockers with music from their personal CD collections. ... Licensed services like iTunes were still years in the future, largely because labels were skittish about selling music online. But Robertson believed he didn't need a license because the service was permitted by copyright's fair use doctrine. If a user can rip his legally purchased CD to his computer, why can't he also store a copy of it online? ... the labels simply weren't interested in Robertson's vision of convenient and flexible music lockers. So MP3.com was driven into bankruptcy, and the "buy a CD, get an MP3" concept fell by the wayside.'"
what about resales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Auto-rip raises an interesting question about resales. It appears that Amazon is granting downloads for CD purchases (even retroactively, for CDs purchased years ago). If I've since sold the physical CD, Amazon would not know that. Furthermore, I could deliberately game the system by buying CDs and immediately reselling them.
I know, it's a stupid edge case, and I could already do this by ripping my own CDs today and subsequently selling them, but it's exactly the type of "problem" that keeps the recording industry up at night.
Re:Nice, but that raises a new question. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't we get copies of our ebooks when we buy the dead-tree version?
Well, you [technically] can.... the question should be why can't we legally get a copy of the e-book, when we pay full price for a dead tree book.
...
Also, why are e-books still so expensive? The amount saved by avoiding regular distribution channels should knock more than 10% off the actual book cost
Wishful thinking (Score:2, Interesting)
If you look at the fact, the lesson learnt is the opposite : they were actually very able to bury a service they didn't see fit, at will, for 14 years, and they can still do so for the foreseeable future.
You may wish that their fiefdom doesn't last forever, but for now, the hard fact is : it holds.
Re:Nice, but that raises a new question. (Score:1, Interesting)
How do you buy 'it' twice when the 'it' is two different things, unless you're talking about the text itself and not the form, formatting, etc.?
If you buy the dead-tree version, you're buying the physical copy that you can feel the weight of, page through, put a physical bookmark into, read anywhere - not just in strong sunlight but even where you have no facility to charge your e-reader at all resell just fine if you treat it nice and - if you're one of the people with a book-peen - put it in your conspicuously displayed library for your guests to admire and use for brief talking points and the odd 'take it, I loved it!' suggestion.
If you buy the ebook version you're buying the one that doesn't take up that physical space, that you won't damage and put folds in, that you can take with you - along with hundreds of other books - on an e-reader, a tablet or even your smartphone - and thus read pretty much everywhere you want and transfer between devices (provided not locked to a device or platform) as you please.
Both have their pros and cons, and that is what you pay for - just as you pay for the 1080p picture with surround sound on a disc that seeks in no time or a stream you can access from practically anywhere despite the fact that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, you bought the same content on VHS.
Is it rather nice to get both at the same time? Yes. Do I think that it would be reasonable - to say the least - that you could get the alternative content for a small extra if you already own one version rather than full price? Heck yeah. But that doesn't mean that I think it's unreasonable for them to want to charge you twice for the same content delivered in two distinctly different ways. You can always DIY; just as Amazon's option is a case of convenience - considering you can always just rip the CD yourself, you're welcome to OCR the book yourself and put it on your digital reader of choice. Or you can pay for the convenience / alternative presentation. ... or go the route of 'piracy', then you can have all that without the hassle of paying for it. Piracy is driving the industry's changes of mind very well.. at this pace, we should get the pipedream realized come 2020.
Re:The biggest flaw (Score:5, Interesting)
On the plus side, you can buy CDs as presents and get the MP3 to keep for yourself.......so Amazon might still have a slight problem to fix.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
For clarification (Score:5, Interesting)
2 clarifications for the summary, since I was the 10th engineer at MP3.com and worked there from 1999-2003:
- We lost to the record labels/publishers not because we gave people access to their music, but because we compiled the music library and streamed it without paying the labels/publishers any royalties. Our strategy was to buy a copy of the CD ourselves, rip it, then claim fair use doctrine when we streamed it to someone else who also owned it. This was a supposed grey area in the law that got cleared up REAL FAST in a media-friendly district court. Services that you see now are paying royalties on what they stream. MP3.com later sued its lawyers that gave the advice on the so-called "grey area" it tried to go through.
- We where not a Silicon Valley company, we where in San Diego. Perhaps if we where SV we would of gotten better legal advice :p
Re:The biggest flaw (Score:2, Interesting)
Because otherwise you would be depriving millions of starving record label execs of their hard-earned cash.