A federal court judge ruled on Monday that cloud music service MP3tunes does not violate copyright laws when it stores only a single copy of a song on its servers, instead of one copy per user. With all of the cloud music options out there right now including Google and Amazon, there are a lot of people very happy about this decision.
MP3tunes was sued by EMI because instead of searching a user's music library and uploading all files to their storage solution, the service would instead check its existing online library for a match. If a previously uploaded song already existed on the servers, it would simply be added to a user's locker without uploading a new copy for the user. This practice was excellent for MP3tunes because it kept their storage growth from getting out of control. The policy was also helpful for users whose ISPs might be tracking bandwidth usage, capping heavy users and/or charging overage fees.
EMI was upset because it believed this was a violation of copyright and that a separate copy of each song needed to be stored per user. The federal judge sided with MP3tunes, but it wasn't a carte blanche ruling. The practice is legal as long as the user's file exactly matches the file already hosted on the MP3tunes servers. If a user happened to rip the song off of a CD with a different bitrate, producing a different file size with different attributes, then the file would have to be uploaded in order for the service to be legally compliant.
All of the major cloud music services like Amazon and Google are likely sighing happily with relief right now. Even more interesting than those services though is how this ruling impacts Dropbox. Dropbox uses exactly the same process with all types of files. If a file's hash is checked against Dropbox's servers and a match is found, the file is simply added to your online Dropbox without the file actually being uploaded. It's a nice way to save bandwidth, although in this case it seems to have some security risks.
Amazon and Google do not currently use this system. Every file, for every user, is uploaded. The files are never checked against the servers. Apple on the other hand has the blessing of record labels due to licensing deals and as such, their cloud music solution will have master tracks. Only the files the service hasn't seen before will be uploaded and no matter what bit rate your song was recorded at, you will hear the master version Apple has stored on their servers.
For Amazon and Google, this ruling means they can implement a service much like MP3tunes. Even a rudimentary file check, as long as it proves the files are exactly the same, could save users bandwidth and the companies a huge amount of storage space. Perhaps it's beneficial that I waited to upload my entire music collection to Amazon's cloud music service. If I wait just a bit longer, I may not have to upload all of that data after all.
