some speculation there though. I understand streaming to a device. But DOES Amazon offer an online player via their website. IE - can you play the music on a browser on their site via a controller they've created ...
Wrong. If you remove Flash and Adobe Air from your Windows/MacOS X computer the player will not run. The application is running on your computer. Not their servers. If it was running on their servers deleting Flash/Air would not make a different. The "controller"
is the player. The servers do push bits back to your computer as the application requests them. However, that is a point to point, secured data stream that just happens to be music data. The player itself is on your computer. Where the data and/or the executable code for the player are stored are immaterial. "online" connotes where bits are stored not execution.
the only computational workload being done on Amazon/google servers is flow control ( sending enough but not too little/ too much to the app) and compression ( related to flow control but adjusting the content. ) This is just a specialized FTP service. All it is doing is transfering files in an efficient manner.
Likewise, on Andriod phones there is no Flash at all and it is an app. Again only goes to demonstrate that this is is
not dependent upon a browser. Even more clear with Google's version since can play a subset of the music that is tagged in an offline mode ( a local copy is cached so can play when not connected to the internet. Again completely under user control. Normal mode no caching. )
p.s. I know for theatrical video - how it's delivered matters because of Actors Equity. IE - a PR company can give a website video and they can run footage from a broadway production as per ALL of the union agreements in place. BUT - there are rules of usage. For example - the footage can only be used for news features/reviews - not for entertainment. Ads cannot appear on the same page as the footage. And prior to 2010, there was also a limit on amount of the footage that could be used.
Completely different situation. How delivered is immaterial. It is
who it is delivered to that is the critical difference.
PR company .... broadcasting content to random people who do not have a license to the content.
Amazon/Google .... transmitting to a single user the same material that he/she uploaded into the site in the first place. It is not a copy that Amazon/Google had that is being "broadcast" to a random user.
First, it is
not a "broad" cast in the normal usage mode. it is to a single user. Random joe cannot see , access, or play this file. That is completely unlike the PR website whose primary purpose is to introduce the material to folks who are not familiar with it ( it is not to show the play to folks who have seen the play 3-4 times. Quite the opposite).
The abnormal usage mode ( user gives away account info disregarding the EULA for the service) is really out of Amazon/Google's control. They are not selling or encouraging that. Quite the opposite the files are suppose to be only transmitted back to yourself. If there were "shared folders" or "guest passes" to the content maybe there would be an opening for an issue.
if the PR firm only allowed the holders of video rights to access the file that would be analogous to what is being offered here.
Second, the PR firm is acting on behalf of the holder to provide service to a third party. In contrast the amazon/google service (storage and bandwidth) is on behalf of the license holder. I can see why the RIAA wants to squeeze into the relationship because otherwise they are cut out.
Amazon's Music service is only integrated with the cloud disk service. It is not the same thing nor does it need another license.
The old LaLa service was a different story. They only matched metadata and then streamed back the copy they had. There some traction for them needed to license that copy since there is not uploading mechanism of a file to send back. It was never uploaded in the first place. Likewise that file will be replicated onto multiple servers so that the streaming can be scaled. So not just one but many duplicates. They probably should pay for that.
it is open question whether Amazon/Google are doing de-dupe. If they are not then there is one-to-one relationship between copies uploaded and those being returned. If there were 1,000,000 licensed uploads then serving up 1,000,000 files to the folks that uploaded them shouldn't require more licenses. To shut up the RIAA lawyers probably better to just pay for the extra disk space usage. For the large fees they are probably trying to ask for it is probably just cheaper to buy the extra disks and for the lawyer fees to shut them up.