Didn't iMusic or whatever upload users' personal high quality files to cloud, to stream them back in lower quality, and then deleted the originals from the users devices? I remember something like that making the news.
Imagine being a musician and Apple deletes your originals to stream your own music back to you in low quality.
Yes, it did something like that. If and only if the user signed up for, paid for, and enabled the iTunes Match service, the whole point of which is to replace your local files with cloud music. (I don’t find this desirable myself, but I can see how some people might have.)
Apple screwed up big time in the functionality and messaging around it and some people found their original files deleted when they weren’t expecting it. Big problem.
But it was hardly some plot to scan users’ hard drives for copyrighted content and delete it. On the contrary, iTunes Match would happily launder a whole library full of pirated low-quality MP3s into legal, high quality, DRM-free AAC files.
Imagine being a musician and Apple deletes your originals to stream your own music back to you in low quality.