Michael Robertson's new Oboe service is both confontational (to the industry) and thoughtfully designed (for the user). Robertson, of course, was the founder of the original MP3.com, and it might not be too cruel to say that he was driven out of that business by the spectacular failure of his Beam-It service which resided at the MP3.com domain. Beam-It was the most high-profile attempt to give users an online music locker for playing their CDs. The idea was that instead of carrying around discs—on a business trip, for example—you could just carry a laptop and own a Beam-It account. The labels disagreed. It ended fast.

Beam-It worked by asking the user to insert a CD into a computer's CD drive, to be idenitified and recognized by the service. (CDs purchased from MP3.com were instantly added to the buyer's locker for online streaming.) Robertson built a massive database of music content—not music listings, mind you, but actual ripped CDs—under the theory that such a database fell under personal use copying. How? Because music would be accessed by people who had purchased it.

Of course, the system wasn't difficult to pervert with a borrowed CD, but that wasn't the point of the resulting lawsuit. The RIAA didn't want the ripped database built no matter how airtight it was, and no matter how the service might benefit CD sales. (Google is facing a nearly identical fight with publisheers over its book-copying program.) Will the RIAA slam Robertson for Oboe, which is strikingly similar to Beam-It? Well, there is a crucial difference. Oboe operates by requiring the user to upload the content. In other words, the service positions itself as an ISP, in effect, qualifying for safe harbor under the DMCA.

The result is a cross between the old Beam-It and Epitonic, which provides an online listening locker (the Epitonic Black Box) for its users. Like Beam-It, Oboe allows a universal range of music from all labels. Like Epitonic, users can stream their collections from any connected computer through a Web page. Epitonic's Black Box, of course, can be filled only with music from the Epitonic catalog, so there is no legal gray area. Oboe is as gray as it gets. This will be extremely interesting, and a lot of fun, to follow.

My initial attempts to use Oboe have been partially thwarted by installation bugs, and I have seen similar reports elsewhere. I'll keep working on it, and post a review when I can. Oboe comes bundled with a terrific Firefox extension, and that, at least, works beautifully. More on that later.