Amazon’s just unveiled its Cloud Drive, including a Cloud Player, enabling you to upload your music and then play audio across PCs, Macs and Android-based smartphones. This is massive and the sort of thing people were hoping Google and Apple would do, but Amazon’s got there first.

This also means Amazon’s the first to test the murky legal situation of back-ups. In the UK, fair-use laws barely exist. The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in theory enables you to make a copy of software and games, although it’s in part been superseded by the Copyright And Rights Regulations act, which stamps all over the prior law by making it illegal to exercise your rights should you circumvent copyright protection technology.

In music, things aren’t any clearer. There’s a general misunderstanding in the UK that it’s fine to make copies of music you legally own; in the old days, that meant transferring vinyl to cassette for your Walkman, and now that means ripping CDs to a PC or Mac, or (technically) making copies of digital audio files by placing them on an audio player or smartphone. Interestingly, the BPI (the UK equivalent of the RIAA), while generally taking a typically hardline stance towards filesharers (ZeroPaid), announced in 2006 that it would refrain from suing people making copies of purchased music for their personal use (Macworld). BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said:

Traditionally the recording industry has turned a blind eye to private copying and has used the strength of the law to pursue commercial pirates.

We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties and make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format we will not pursue them.

This is an eminently sensible decision, of course, but, importantly, it is at odds with UK law. Therefore, while Jamieson once said this, there’s nothing to stop the BPI changing its mind, being overruled by another party, or from some other organisation (such as a record label) suing you for ripping your CDs.

Naturally, then, this also means Amazon’s in the same position. According to the Guardian, Amazon claims it can circumvent rights legislation by claiming its online storage is the equivalent of an external hard drive. Craig Pape, director of music at Amazon, said:

We don’t need a license to store music. The functionality is the same as an external hard drive.

But note who (or rather what) that quote is referencing: Amazon. In other words, Amazon is indemnifying itself and putting sole responsibility for rights issues on to the user. Now, this is fine, because it’s the same as any other online service, but in this case Amazon is suggesting to users that they use Cloud Player for their music. In effect, Amazon is directly tempting people to break the law, but noting that it won’t be liable for any comeback.

I’m wondering how record companies will react. If they’re smart, they won’t care, since Amazon’s offering is a step up from the likes of Spotify in encouraging you to upload content, which you may have bought legally in some format. Most importantly, I’m also wondering how the law will react, because if Amazon’s service says anything, it’s that the UK desperately needs fair-use (i.e. copying of media—across formats, if necessary—for personal use) utterly enshrined in law.

As we all know, Charlie Brooker Is Right About Everything (YouTube), but he’s especially right about Rebecca Black’s Friday (YouTube) in his Guardian op-ed How to tweet bile without alienating people. Or making 13-year-old girls cry. If you’ve missed the story, a 13-year-old’s parents paid for her to make a vanity pop song and video, which became a YouTube hit and attracted the kind of bile and hatred usually reserved for mass murderers and idiots who don’t indicate on roundabouts. (Seriously, those orange lights aren’t fucking decoration, drivers.)

Having never listened to the track before, I just popped over to YouTube and, once the Flash plug-in deigned to play the video, watched and listened to the whole thing. What I found was a run-of-the-mill pop song with vapid lyrics and pretty horrible auto-tune on the vocals. What I didn’t find, crucially, was:

• Anything that prompted any kind of outpouring of hate;
• A song any worse than plenty of crap that regularly climbs the pop charts;
• Something any worse than the kind of songs I used to write when I was 13, bar the lyrics. (Although, to be fair, it wasn’t written by Black, but by Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson, who I’m guessing are somewhat older than 13.)

But the online response has been utterly shocking, and shows how idiots use the internet to insult, bully and harass, while hiding behind pseudonyms. (That even happens on this blog, where people regularly leave comments saying what a total arsehole they think I am, and then sign off with a name like lolcakes—how brave!) What’s particularly great about the Rebecca Black incident is that the hate has resulted in press, and the press has resulted in the song being propelled up the charts. Being level-headed, Black has made a pile of cash that she’s subsequently donated to the Japan relief efforts. One wonders how many of the dickheads slagging her off on the internet have donated.

Even if you only have 140 characters to play with on Twitter, the important thing is to be constructive; just telling someone to die in a fire makes you about one step up from a cauliflower in the awareness ladder. Or, as Brooker rather brilliantly puts it in the aforementioned Guardian article:

In summary: bitch all you like. Just don’t be a dick about it. Poise, people. Poise.

A lot has been made of Google’s decision to delay the publication of Android 3.0 source code for the foreseeable future. One of the best write-ups is on Ars Technica, where Ryan Paul suggests Google is being hypocritical and contrary to the idea of open in the sense of software:

Android has become an insular platform developed almost entirely behind closed doors in an environment that is hostile to external contributors and is mired in a culture of secrecy that serves a small handful of prominent commercial hardware vendors and mobile carriers.

I’ve been moaning about this for a while now, not because I have a hugely vested interest in open-source, but because I believe that if you’re using an aspect of your product as a major marketing plus, it’s something you should stick to.

On Twitter, two points were made to me recently, seemingly countering my argument. First, Damien McFerran stated:

Google stopped playing on the ‘open’ thing ages ago, most Android phones don’t even advertise that they’re Android.

And then Nigel Whitfield said:

Is openness really a marketing gimmick? I really think, outside geeks, no one gives a damn.

I agree with both comments, but these points are also related and link back to the original argument about Google’s increasingly spotty track record on openness. Google may have—to some extent—stopped playing the openness card, but its advocates haven’t. And, yes, geeks are the only people who really care about ‘open’, but they still have a lot of clout when it comes to purchasing decisions. More often than not, a non-techie will ask a techie friend what to buy when considering a new smartphone or tablet. Geeks will sometimes push Android over other systems on the basis of its openness, no matter how disingenuous Google is being about that, and, often, purchasing decisions will be made on that basis, despite it being of little or no direct benefit to the purchaser.

This is why it’s still important for Google to play the open card—it gives the company an underground sales force of sorts, to counter the mag-friendly shiny shiny of its current major rival in the field, Apple. (The other major card Google holds is, of course, price: Android sales have sped past iOS, on the basis of lower cost of ownership—although that does mean a number manufacturers dependant on Android are forcing themselves into the same low-profit cul-de-sac that most Windows PC manufacturers are currently slumming it in.)

This one’s gold: Why Tablets Are Just a Fad, on PCWorld, by Katherine Noyes. For some reason, Noyes appears particularly miffed at the suggestion tablets are obliterating laptops and netbooks in mobile computing. It’s all she can do to stop herself screaming “No, you idiots! Laptops forever,” before jumping off a cliff with 15 Sony Vaios glued to her head.

Ever since rumors of Apple’s first iPad began to look credible back in 2009, I’ve been watching the tablet space with a mixture of wonder and confusion.

Which is presumably why you wrote the article you did, but do go on…

After all, the devices really don’t offer anything you can’t get on a smartphone

Aside from, say, a bigger screen that hugely impacts on the usability of complex apps and makes reading books and watching movies a lot nicer.

or a notebook computer,

Apart from massively superior battery life, a slew of handy streamlined apps, a lack of lap-burning temperatures and touchscreen capabilities that actually work.

and their form factor is inconvenient, at best.

Unlike those super-convenient laptops, with their super-convenient form factors. CLAMSHELL FOREVER!

Yet strong sales are backing up the hype–at least for now–suggesting something about the devices has caught on with consumers. What is that mysterious “something”?

The tactile nature of computing? The huge number of available apps? The high level of usability that means even toddlers and centenarians can use the devices?

Purely marketing, I believe.

Oh. Stupid me.

Apple is nothing if not master of the glitzy sales pitch, and there’s never been better proof of that than the iPad’s current success.

Fair enough. 15 million consumers can’t be wrong. UNLESS THEY’RE TAKEN IN BY APPLE’S GLITZY SALES PITCH!

Mark my words: The device–and all the others of its ilk that have sprung up for a piece of the action–are nothing more than a passing fad, at least in the mainstream.

I’m sure you’re right, assuming we ignore the iPad’s ongoing success. And the iPad 2’s huge early sales. And the iPad 3 rumours that are already circulating. And the fact every single major manufacturer in this space is desperately trying to rip off Apple and create its own ‘iPad’.

1. Limited Functionality. As far as I can tell, tablets do not offer any significant functionality that’s not already available on a smartphone or notebook computer

Which, as hinted at earlier, are two entirely different things, with different use-cases.

yet they lack critical components like keyboards.

Man, if only my iPad had a software keyboard or some means of connecting to a mechanical Bluetooth keyboard.

In fact, you can get a laptop with considerably more memory and storage and a much better CPU for a significantly lower price, as my PCWorld colleague recently pointed out.

Presumably, your PCWorld colleague didn’t point out that only geeks care about tech bullet points, and that CPU speed doesn’t remotely dictate how fast a device actually feels? No? Ah.

So why the hysteria? It’s a fancy new toy, and–in the case of the iPad–one from Apple, at that. Never underestimate consumers’ desire to impress each other with the latest and greatest gadget, especially if they’re Apple fans. “Latest and greatest,” however, doesn’t tend to stay in one place for long.

Tsk. Those 15 million idiot Apple fan-boys, eh? (Let’s ignore for the moment that many people buying iPads are entirely new to Apple, and the majority of iOS device owners don’t own a Mac.)

2. It’s Inconvenient. Unlike smartphones, the tablet form factor is too large to fit in a pocket or purse, yet it doesn’t offer anywhere near the functionality of only slightly larger devices like notebooks and laptop computers.

But you can fit a laptop into your pocket or purse? I don’t understand.

I just don’t see why you’d be willing to carry one of these things around–in addition to a phone, most likely–when you could have something convenient (a single good smartphone) or powerful (a laptop).

Oh, OK. Either it has to be mobile or it has to have a 426 GHz processor. Got you. That makes sense—if you’re a crazy person.

3. Waning Excitement. It’s true that other manufacturers are still hot on Apple’s trail with their own iPad-like contenders, but the release of the iPad 2 made it clear that excitement with the devices is already fading.

Mm. Those queues were only slightly longer than the ones for the original iPad, and the device only sold quite a lot more units. Wait. What was your point again?

Reviews of Apple’s new tablet were generally mixed,

True. The fuckers didn’t even include a free unicorn.

suggesting that reality is beginning to sink in.

And not that people had unrealistic expectations. WHERE IS MY GODDAMN UNICORN, APPLE?

4. Remember the PDA? Back in the 1990s, PDAs were the must-have device du jour, but they went on to spawn today’s smartphones. And indeed, the value they offered–and still offer, in smartphone form–is hard to argue with: portability, organizational tools and Internet connectivity, to name just a few. The natural evolution in this space led from something bulky but useful into something conveniently portable and useful; why would we want to go back again?

Because I can’t use GarageBand on my iPhone. Or (comfortably) read. Or create art in SketchBook Pro. Or play Civilisation Revolutions, Halcyon or World of Goo. Or work with Keynote. Or— Oh, sorry, you were being rhetorical, weren’t you?

It’s no secret that I am not an Apple fan

Man, I’d really never have guessed. GOOD JOB IT DIDN’T COME THROUGH IN YOUR ARTICLE OR ANYTHING.

as its devices are so closed and restrictive

Yeah, those Apple bastards and their walled gardens. Luckily, that’s not the case elsewhere. I’m looking forward to a weekend of installing the Mac version of iLife on my Windows PC and Microsoft Office on my Xbox.

…

What?

For that reason, I’d be far more inclined to look at Android tablets such as the Motorola Xoom–which, I should add, could certainly be useful in niche applications such as health care and inventory control.

CURVEBALL AWOOGA ALERT!

So, tablets are rubbish, boring, inconvenient and overly-hyped, apart from when they’re not made by Apple? And only for niche applications that the iPad already excels in but Android doesn’t? Right. Got it. Carry on.

For my purposes, though, I just can’t be bothered. I see no reason to own a tablet, and fully expect them to fade out of the mainstream over the next few years.

Much like your relevance as a tech writer.

Apple is evil. Google is good. That’s because iOS is closed and a walled garden, but Android is open. Presumably that’s why Google is delaying distribution of Honeycomb’s source code (Bloomberg).

Google argues Honeycomb isn’t ready to be altered by outside programmers; depressingly Andy Rubin, vice-president for engineering at Google, is quoted as saying:

We didn’t want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut.

We have no idea if it will even work on phones.

So it might be open at some point in the future, presumably when it least affects Google’s own business (such as, say, when it’s no longer useful to RIM) and currently doesn’t work on phones; additionally, half the carriers will ignore Honeycomb anyway, to ‘encourage’ customers to buy new devices rather than upgrade old ones.

Open.