MP3Tunes.com – an online music locker that allows
users to store their music collections online for private, remote access
anywhere in the world – recently dispatched an e-mail to users alerting them of an ongoing lawsuit between the site and Big-Four
music giant EMI.
“As you may be aware, the major record label EMI has sued
MP3tunes, claiming our service is illegal,” writes MP3Tunes.com founder Michael
Robertson, “much is at stake – if you don't have the right to store your own
music online then you won't have the right to store ebooks, videos and other
digital products as well. The notion of ownership in the 21st century will
evaporate.”
The e-mail is only the latest turn of events in MP3Tunes' ongoing lawsuit,
which has been going on in some form since September of last year, and until
now, successfully flown under the radar. Last March, EMI unsuccessfully tried
to force the site to turn over “all music files” for the site’s 125,000 users –
a request MP3Tunes protested on the grounds that it would place the site under
a gigantic technical burden and invade users’ privacy.
EMI claims that MP3Tunes.com illegally
aggregates musical works covered under the label's extensive copyrights, and
to that effect it asked a New York court to declare MP3Tunes’ business model illegal.
While I feel that these claims are simply untrue for
MP3Tunes.com – users cannot share their libraries in any way, and each user’s
library is secured behind a username and password – the same cannot be said for
MP3Tunes’ sister site, sideload.com,
which aggregates music freely available on the net for transfer (“sideloading”)
into a user’s MP3Tunes locker.
Many of the MP3 files and such that are available on the net
are indeed free – but a large portion, scattered across assorted websites for
various purposes – are not. Unlike the MP3 download portals of the late nineties,
which stored large libraries of music on a central web server, it would appear
that sites like sideload.com attempt
to seek out the millions of music files placed in nondescript locations: sometimes
it’s a band offering free mp3s, sometimes it’s a user uploading a handful of
files to their web space for various purposes. In either case, if a user found
an MP3 in this way and attempted to use MP3Tunes’ sideload feature to transfer the
track into their locker, the file will likely appear in sideload.com’s
database.
While I am tempted to blindly follow Robertson’s assertion that EMI’s
lawsuit is an assault on the 21st century definition of ownership, his
argument is complicated by MP3Tunes’ sideloading feature. The concept of secure
online storage, private to each user and designed for the placement of goods presumed
to be legal, becomes polluted by a feature that allows users to scrape tracks
anywhere off the net: take said scraping, give it a name, and throw in a search
engine for scraped URLs … and suddenly you’re The Pirate Bay.
Indeed, the similarities between Sideload and BitTorrent
trackers are striking: neither actually store content – though MP3Tunes does, for
separate purposes – and both claim substantial legitimate use for their search
engines. Both essentially point the way for users to download content, and both
facilitate an otherwise disparate process – seeking out .torrent files in one,
and seeking out MP3 URLs in the other – in an effort to make the process easier
for users.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I have
an account at MP3Tunes.com. I received it as part of a transaction with the
genius-but-ill-fated AnywhereCD.com,
which sent me MP3 files of CDs I ordered in order to tide me over until physical
copies arrived in the mail. MP3s were delivered to me through a new MP3Tunes
locker, created in my name, for me to stream or download at my convenience. AnywhereCD’s
delivery concept is something I found — forgive me for reusing this word – genius:
much of the music I buy online, through sites like Beatport
or Digital-Tunes.net, allows for nothing
more than a limited download window, which is usually about a month or so. Placing
my tunes in a digital locker cures my unease with the “download window”
approach, and providing me with a locker of essentially unlimited capacity
gives me the music backup I wanted – and all this in addition to the files I
ordered. Talk about value!
But this brings me to a more important point: if EMI attacks
MP3Tunes, then it is essentially attacking the legally-acquired, verifiable purchases
of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of users. I have no doubt that I would
not have heard of MP3Tunes if it weren’t for AnywhereCD, and I am sure that my
case is only one of many: many people bought music via AnywhereCD and many more
took advantage of its $7 going-out-of-business firesale. If MP3Tunes is brought
down, or its users’ libraries are modified in any way related to EMI’s
chain-rattling, then users risk losing legitimately purchased goods.
Yes, users can simply re-rip their music. Many don’t know
how, though, and many that do actually believe that iTunes will produce high-quality
music rips – or, at the least, rips equivalent to those sold by AnywhereCD – out-of-the-box.
Regardless of users’ ability to recreate what they could possibly lose, the fact of the matter is
that EMI is essentially attacking users’ legally acquired goods – and this is
the essence of Robertson’s “assault on ownership” argument. Unlike the
BitTorrent trackers I mentioned earlier, MP3Tunes is trusted by most of its
125,000 users to store copies of their music for safekeeping. And again unlike
BitTorrent trackers, I would surmise that most of this music is legally
acquired and stored per the format-shifting and place-shifting provisions of
Fair Use, and consumed strictly for their private consumption.
I, for one, will not tolerate EMI’s chain-rattling. The
music sitting in my locker is mine.
It was not licensed to me. There was no hidden clause, no strange EULA to
click through, and no agreement that I would give up my rights in order to
drink the digital Kool-Aid. I purchased music through AnywhereCD specifically
for this reason, and frankly I only buy music online when it is offered to me
on these terms – if I can’t, I’ll purchase the album on CD or vinyl. It is my
right, as an American consumer, to place my property – regardless of whether it
exists in the digital or physical realm – in the care of firms like MP3Tunes,
and legally EMI cannot screw with that ability without running roughshod over
my property rights.
Would you allow someone like EMI to search your rented
storage room? Or your house?