Today a battle squadron of robots arrived in the mail. Tonight, an epic battle was waged. Behold: Lemur vs. Robot.
“Criminal activity online is everyday eroding the work of America’s economy and workforce,” said NMPA President and CEO David Israelite. “Songwriters and music publishers stand with the millions of Americans whose work depends on our nation’s founding principle of intellectual property rights to support efforts to address this illegal activity.
via Mi2N.com – Music Publishers Support Congressional Call For Enforcement Tools To Combat Digital Theft.
Grooveshark is gone from the Android Market. The popular music streaming service was removed from the Market yesterday because it violates Google’s terms of service. The exact terms were not revealed, but CNET notes that Grooveshark’s ongoing dispute with record companies over music streaming – and Google lawyer Kent Walker testifying before the U.S. House Judiciary committee on copyright violations – may have had something to do with Grooveshark’s removal.
via Androinica » Grooveshark gets ganked from Google Android Market. Should Amazon Cloud be nervous?.
So here’s my question: Does this even matter? Since the Android Marketplace is not the only place you can get apps for an Android device, this may make little or no difference in the long term. In fact, from my experience so far, the Amazon App Store is a superior experience to the Google Android Marketplace. Obviously Amazon can sell / give away their cloud player app through their own marketplace, right?
Either way, what happens to Grooveshark is of little bother to me. They’ve been notorious for breaking copyright – as I explained in my book, Starving the Artist.
As anyone who knows me can attest, I am a huge proponent of intellectual property rights. This, however, gives me some pause.
It appears that the major music labels are upset with Amazon for not securing licenses for their cloud music player system. I honestly don’t really understand what the issue is here – it’s really no different from having a portable hard drive you take with you everywhere you go, is it?
Amazon argues that Cloud Drive and Cloud Player are just services that let users upload and play back their own music, just like “any number of existing media management applications.” After all, licenses shouldn’t be necessary for users to play their own music, right? The labels seem to disagree — they expressed shock following Amazon’s announcement, with a Sony Music representative implying that the company was looking into legal options.
via Music Industry Will Force Licenses on Amazon Cloud Player — or Else | Epicenter | Wired.com.
And by the way, if you’re looking for a cheaper solution that so far isn’t under any scrutiny I’m aware of, check out Winamp Orb. Basically it allows you to make your music collection on your home computer available for you to access anywhere. I’m assuming it is a bit more complicated for casual users than Amazon’s cloud is though.
I’m not quite sure what made me think of it today, but for some reason I had T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men running through my mind. This inevitably led me to look up a few of his other poems that I’ve enjoyed (the Wasteland, etc) and I ended up ordering a copy of his collected works from Amazon.
I swear I used to have a copy of his poems before, but I have no idea where they went.
Looking forward to digging in to his mind again.
Microsoft Corp. has sued Barnes & Noble Inc., as well as the manufacturers of the bookseller’s Nook electronic book reader, for patent infringement related to the device’s use of Google Inc.’s Android operating system.
