Apple iTunes Match legitimising pirating?

I watched the presentation by Steve Jobs last night for the World Wide Developer Conference 2011, but what really stuck in my mind was the pause by Steve Jobs at about two minutes before the end of the video.

Steve was presenting the iTunes Match service. As I understand it, this service will scan your hard disk, locate all your music tracks and then upgrade your music to 256kbps for $24.99 a year.

To quote Steve from the presentation, "most of our customers won't need this because they've already bought a lot of their music from iTunes, but for those that do, it's, ah, an industry leading offering, let's put it that way."

The pause and the phrase "let's put it that way" for me, begs the question which industry is making the industry leading offering. Is it the music industry, or is it the cloud based music service industry?

I honestly don't know what to think. Is the music industry using this as an opportunity to take those who have pirated music in the past, convert them to legitimate users, making some money each year for past behaviour with the yearly subscription, and perhaps hoping future purchases will be legitimate. If so that's a significant event in the music industry.

Personally I find the copyright laws to be a mystery. I've tried finding out more about what you can and can't do in terms of copyright, but mostly it seems like they won't let you know what you can do and try to scare you into thinking you can't do anything. I'd really like to see something from the Australian government written in plain English on the things people can do.

I just can't help feeling a little concerned this might expose many people in some way. For example, all of those who use this service will now able to be identified as to what music they have. Imagine if you've produced a song and made sales of say 10,000 to only find out you've now got hundreds of thousands of people with a copy of your music, should you be compensated? What protection is in place for those who use the iMatch service?

To me there are too many unknowns. The statement "let's put it that way" really should be clarified. This is a great opportunity in many ways. I can't help but feel this may be the start of the move of the music industry to a subscription service, a change in how music is consumed, charged for and musicians rewarded.

I will watch this area with interest.

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au