Good news for music locker companies

Remember when Amazon and Google set out to launch their cloud music storage services without having record label permission because they said they didn’t need it? At least one judge says they’re right. District Judge William Pauley has ruled in a case involving MP3Tunes.com and its founder Michael Robertson, which were being sued by record labels for allowing users to store illegally obtained music in the cloud. Pauley found Robertson personally liable for storing that music on his own account but ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provided safe harbor for MP3Tunes.com in general. The DMCA is designed to protect a site like eBay from being liable for what someone does on it, the site is more a conduit.

Therefore, if you store something pirated on Google or Amazon, that’s your business, not Google’s or Amazon’s.

The ruling will be appealed, of course, but it’s a big victory for cloud music companies.