Amazon’s AutoRip

Amazon opened it’s new AutoRip service. In a nutshell: for eligible albums (read: where the content providers let them) that you bought since 1998 (and going forward) they’re automatically adding a digital copy of the album for you to their Cloud Player.

I had three reactions upon hearing the announcement:

1. That’s pretty dang cool. I got approximately 40 albums added to Cloud Player as a result of this service, broadening the set of music I can easily access across any of my devices. Of course, it’s not perfect; it added a number of albums I’d actually bought as gifts for other people, since they can’t distinguish between stuff you kept and stuff you gave away (although a mechanism to transfer ownership to someone else’s Cloud Player would be nice).
2. I can’t believe the content providers agreed to let them do it. Actual useful functionality agreed to by the music companies? I wonder what the terms of the agreement Amazon worked out are.
3. Having been given an inch, I immediately want a mile. Similar access to digital versions of movies I’ve bought on DVD would be awesome. Access to ebook versions of books I’ve bought from Amazon would be even better. Heck, I’d even consider a limited service charge per book for the sheer convenience of access to much of my library in digital form. I suspect I’ll have to keep hoping for that one for awhile, though. Book publishers are sadly still working out that whole DRM thing…