Recent legislation may offer cloud music services a silver lining in today’s technological age.
Cloud services allow users to create mobile music libraries of songs they own, which can then be streamed on any device with Internet access, including laptops and smartphones. The service allows users’ music collections to break away from being tethered to one specific device holding the files.
The U.S. District Court in New York ruled in favor of cloud services last week, giving users of Google’s Music, Dropbox and others a more simplified process of listening to music online.
The case made it to District Court after record company EMI Group sued music service MP3Tunes for copyright infringement. EMI believed users of the service violated the rights of artists when they stored 300 terabytes — more than 70 million songs — of music online. EMI contested the amount of legally obtained data and wanted to see what songs those users had in their account.
EMI accused MP3Tunes and sister company Sideload.com of letting users store pirated music on its music locker service. The courts didn’t agree with EMI’s sentiments.
The decision won’t affect consumers, said media law professor Craig Freeman.
“It’s not as revolutionary as people would like you to believe,” Freeman said. “It’s a good first step for companies, but it will not affect the ago.”
Moriah Ammons, business and biology freshman, likes to use her friend’s music playlists to get new music.
“Since [my friend and I] listen to the same type [of music], I just share off of his,” Ammons said. “[The cloud] will make it easier, and you won’t have to pay so much anymore for law.”
 
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