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Timing matters so much. There were definitely companies that had exactly this business model in 1999. They were sued into oblivion. Well, I suppose they kept o
by vessenes 16y ago
Timing matters so much.
There were definitely companies that had exactly this business model in 1999. They were sued into oblivion. Well, I suppose they kept one copy of the files for streaming back, as opposed to one copy per person.
I doubt very much that Amazon will be sued by the RIAA over this, though. Timing and giant lawyer posses. The stuff business empires are made of..
- ryanwatkins 16y agoAnd the point about the former services keeping a single copy and this one keeping one per person. I'm sure thats a key distinction. The former services like mp3.com were not positioned so much as "upload your mp3's here" but "put your CD in the drive to prove you have the rights" which gets tricky. Which brings the point about how they're offering Amazon purchased MP3s stored for free. Wonder if for these they are keeping a single copy or actually duplicating them. And potential issues there ...
- Someone 16y agoWith the right choice of filesystem (i.e. One that does block-level deduplication) 'duplicating' the files is as good as free. If Amazon were small and unknown, lawyers could have a field day on that. I think what is more important here is that Amazon has a good relation with content providers. They bring in money, and help them keep power against the iTunes store.
- vessenes 16y agoExactly; this is a follow-on play, not a startup play. In other words, the world had to wait around for a big company to do this business.