p2pnet - rss feed: Rewind, digital radio?
p2pnet.net News:- To you and me, digital radio means pure digital sound without the kind of interference you can get on ‘normal’ radio, together with dynamic text information, such as data on who and what you’re listening to, playing back on a tiny screen.
With digital radio, you can also pause, rewind and record live radio music programs and later convert the songs to mp3s for playback.
To Big Music, therefore, it’s yet another example of 21st century technology that doesn’t fit into its 1970s business models and so must be stomped. Hard.
Music fans “could cherry-pick songs off the air and redistribute them over the Internet, further deepening the copyright woes of record labels,” anguishes the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), quoted in a Washington Post story here.
Thus, US regulators at the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) “should ensure that the broadcast format limits such copying so radio stations don’t turn the airwaves into a giant file-sharing network,” RIAA officials said, according to the report, which also has RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol stating:
“A little bit of prudence right now goes a long way,” whatever that may mean.
About 300 stations now broadcast digital signals or are in the process of setting them up, says the Post story.
In the UK, the BBC is enthusiastically promoting digital radio.
“[…] many more stations can be broadcast within the same comparable amount of radio spectrum,” it says on its site here. This means listeners can hear favourite analogue stations plus additional ‘digital only’ services.
Digital radio hit UK shops last month.
“RIAA officials said digital-radio players could soon allow listeners to record certain songs automatically when they are broadcast, allowing they [sic] to build a free library of music they otherwise might pay for and distribute it to millions of others over the Internet,” says the Post story, referring to sets such as The Bug.
Under RIAA initiated FCC restrictions, “listeners would be able to record digital broadcasts for later playback, but would not be able to divide that broadcast up into individual songs.”
Nor would they be able to program players to record certain songs, or redistribute recordings online.
The RIAA, owned by Warner Music (US), BMG (Germany), EMI Group (UK), Sony Music (Japan) and Universal Music Group (France), plans to submit its proposal to the FCC on Wednesday.
June 12th, 2004 at 7:21 am
Music people should get with the times
June 13th, 2004 at 9:35 pm
they aren’t music people, just greedy middlemen stealing from music people and the public
June 14th, 2004 at 12:39 am
With a DVD and VCR, average people can rewind, pause, and even fast-forward through portions of a movie. This is not acceptable. DVD’s and VCR’s should be banned outright, or at least recalled so that we can remove these features.
We all know that only terrorists use the rewind, pause and fast-forward features. Are you a friend of Saddam? If not, then you will not use those features.
P.S. If you are against terrorism you will buy 2 of each DVD’s to help boost the economy. If you need to take out a bank loan then do so.