There are definitely potential issues in storing one's music on "the cloud" or depending on it as your music source. There are plenty of examples of problems in related areas. One of the most famous is the 2009 episode when Amazon went into the Kindle Readers of customers who had already bought Orwell's "1984" novel and deleted it. They later apologized, but there was no small amount of irony in that move.
This past February, 5,000 ebooks became unavailable on Amazon due to a dispute with the publisher. Music availability comes and goes at the whim of copyright holders. I remember about 10 years ago that my wife, a Jimmie Spheeris fan, tried to replace one of her old LPs with a CD and found it unavailable. Used copies were over $100. It seems Sony pulled the distribution rights from Rain Records. That made it illegal to sell new copies. Had this music been on a cloud service, it would have simply disappeared. The availability of movies similarly depends on the copyright holders. Try finding a quality copy of Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" in the US right now. (The UK version is wonderfully restored while the US version looks like it was made from a worn out 6 hour VHS tape.) A related concern is the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) which gives amazing authority for copyright holders to go searching for violations. Subpoenas to ISPs for user info are now commonplace. (I have a friend who was recently notified by his internet service that they had turned his name over to a plaintiff's law firm for allegedly downloading a movie from a bit torrent site. Interestingly, he does not own a TV and I can personally attest to his computer cluelessness.) I do not find it inconceivable that some of the aggressive copyright holders will decide they are entitled to prowl through collections uploaded to the cloud in search of "violators" and then demand you prove your possession of same is legal. That could entail a lot of work and possibly even significant expense if one has to hire a lawyer. In short, I'm just not very trusting of the cloud to look out for my best interests. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ mlsstl's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9598 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95885 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
