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One question I had - that I had hoped the article would touch - is what's stopping Apple from compiling a giant list of those that have downloaded illegal music

One question I had - that I had hoped the article would touch - is what's stopping Apple from compiling a giant list of those that have downloaded illegal music and handing it over to the RIAA? Aside from the huge amount of ill will that an action like that would create.

ryusage 15y ago
Because there's no reliable way to identify which files were pirated and which were legitimately obtained from non-iTunes sources. The files all look the same, for the most part. I guess some do have tags that say who ripped them, which would certainly be a tip off. Even then, though, I'm not sure how easily you could automate it to differentiate between tags that indicate piracy and tags that do not.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  The RIAA could actually now start to seed files that are pirated. Just populate the world with them, and sit on them for years. It's their nuclear option if nothing works out, they then have all of the MusicMatch data coupled with their fingerprints that uniquely indicate pirated music.
- kemayo 15y ago
  You could hash the files and say that 50,000 people all had an identical mp3 of a track. Given tagging, subtle differences between CD drives, and the lossy encoding process it'd be fairly probable that they all got it from the same place. Of course, that's not the same thing as proving in each case that they really did pirate it, but it'd be a start as a way of building a list of people to look at.
  - hyperbovine 15y ago
    I have no qualms about downloading an MP3 of a track that I already physically own but am too lazy to unearth and rip. Hope they'll take that into account.
    - kemayo 15y ago
      Ethically I agree, and I think that most other people would as well. However... I'd suspect it's still illegal, especially if you used bittorrent and thus gave copies out to other people.
  - isleyaardvark 15y ago
    Do people think it's likely that Apple would implement such a system? That would take a certain amount of coordination with the RIAA and engineering effort on Apple's part to... screw over their paying customers. I don't think it's likely. Nor does Apple have any need to keep the original data on file. They make a match, that's it, job's done.
    - kemayo 15y ago
      I think it's pretty unlikely. But the conversation had gotten around to "how would they even do that???", so that's what I answered. :)
powrtoch 15y ago
I imagine that even if the RIAA demanded this info, Apple would have no choice but to defend it vehemently in court. The PR backlash you'd get from backstabbing the vast majority of your paying customers cannot be overstated. And when I say "vast majority", I'm referring to the fact that even ripping a mix CD a friend made you or copying an album or 2 off a thumb drive constitutes piracy. Of course, none of this matters because it's completely impossible for Apple to compile this data reliably.
GHFigs 15y ago
The labels stand to gain more from this than they do trying to sue everybody. If they started suing people based on data from Apple, what would be the lesson to pirates? Don't pay for iTunes Match. D'oh! The aim of suing people is deterrence, but you don't want to deter people that have chosen to pay you, even you're making less money (say, per-track) than you would from a fully-legit customer.
tzs 15y ago
Apple has said that no information as to who has what in their library will be turned over to third parties. They have said that they will, for accounting purposes, turn over totals. E.g., they are going to tell the record companies how many total copies of each track have been found by the Match service. That makes sense because the majority of the $25/year goes to the record companies, who almost surely use the track counts to figure out how to divvy up the money. This is the first step toward the kind of system that we eventually are going to have to go to, where people pay some kind of fee or tax into a pool, can listen to whatever music they want, and the pool is split among the artists (or the companies the artists sell the rights to) according to what people are actually listening to.

ryusage 15y ago

Because there's no reliable way to identify which files were pirated and which were legitimately obtained from non-iTunes sources. The files all look the same, for the most part. I guess some do have tags that say who ripped them, which would certainly be a tip off. Even then, though, I'm not sure how easily you could automate it to differentiate between tags that indicate piracy and tags that do not.

kenjackson 15y ago
The RIAA could actually now start to seed files that are pirated. Just populate the world with them, and sit on them for years. It's their nuclear option if nothing works out, they then have all of the MusicMatch data coupled with their fingerprints that uniquely indicate pirated music.
kemayo 15y ago
You could hash the files and say that 50,000 people all had an identical mp3 of a track. Given tagging, subtle differences between CD drives, and the lossy encoding process it'd be fairly probable that they all got it from the same place. Of course, that's not the same thing as proving in each case that they really did pirate it, but it'd be a start as a way of building a list of people to look at.
- hyperbovine 15y ago
  I have no qualms about downloading an MP3 of a track that I already physically own but am too lazy to unearth and rip. Hope they'll take that into account.
  - kemayo 15y ago
    Ethically I agree, and I think that most other people would as well. However... I'd suspect it's still illegal, especially if you used bittorrent and thus gave copies out to other people.
- isleyaardvark 15y ago
  Do people think it's likely that Apple would implement such a system? That would take a certain amount of coordination with the RIAA and engineering effort on Apple's part to... screw over their paying customers. I don't think it's likely. Nor does Apple have any need to keep the original data on file. They make a match, that's it, job's done.
  - kemayo 15y ago
    I think it's pretty unlikely. But the conversation had gotten around to "how would they even do that???", so that's what I answered. :)

powrtoch 15y ago

I imagine that even if the RIAA demanded this info, Apple would have no choice but to defend it vehemently in court. The PR backlash you'd get from backstabbing the vast majority of your paying customers cannot be overstated. And when I say "vast majority", I'm referring to the fact that even ripping a mix CD a friend made you or copying an album or 2 off a thumb drive constitutes piracy. Of course, none of this matters because it's completely impossible for Apple to compile this data reliably.

GHFigs 15y ago

The labels stand to gain more from this than they do trying to sue everybody. If they started suing people based on data from Apple, what would be the lesson to pirates? Don't pay for iTunes Match. D'oh! The aim of suing people is deterrence, but you don't want to deter people that have chosen to pay you, even you're making less money (say, per-track) than you would from a fully-legit customer.

tzs 15y ago

Apple has said that no information as to who has what in their library will be turned over to third parties. They have said that they will, for accounting purposes, turn over totals. E.g., they are going to tell the record companies how many total copies of each track have been found by the Match service. That makes sense because the majority of the $25/year goes to the record companies, who almost surely use the track counts to figure out how to divvy up the money. This is the first step toward the kind of system that we eventually are going to have to go to, where people pay some kind of fee or tax into a pool, can listen to whatever music they want, and the pool is split among the artists (or the companies the artists sell the rights to) according to what people are actually listening to.