p2pnet - rss feed: Big Music vs Digital Radio
p2pnet.net News:- Digital radio promised to be a pain in the gluteous maximus for vested corporate interests from Day One.
After all, it allows you to do pretty much what you want with the music you’re listening to, including recording it and turning the results into mp3s you can then play back as and when.
Pretty good, huh? Just like back in the days of steam radio with all those wires and tubes and thingies. And tape recorders.
Remember TimeTrax from Scott MacLean, a Canadian who wanted to record straight to his PC in WAV or mp3 format from his XM Satellite Radio PCR receiver?
And Greg Ratajik’s StationRipper, designed to get you a list of available Shoutcast stations you can record, “creating a single mp3 file for each song the station plays”?
Now enter Applian Technologies‘ Replay Music, one of the growing number of applications that lets you plug in and save.
It’s a, “unique streaming music recorder that captures MP3 files from any streaming source,” says the company. “Every song is saved on your PC as a high quality MP3 file, automatically tagged with the artist, song title, album and genre, and perfectly separated into individual tracks. You can even burn songs directly to CDs, or copy them to your iPod or MP3 Player.”
There is, of course, a lot more to digital radio than merely making mp3s, but the ‘recording’ aspect is the bottom line for the owners of the Big Four music cartel, EMI (Britain), UMG (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner (USA).
So they sicced their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) onto it and now we’re getting the standard high-flown, over-blown rhetoric about ‘theft’, starving artists and sales losses, not to mention back-door solicitations to the FTC to do something about it and front door screaming via the mainstream media, & etcetera.
The usual, in other words.
Isn’t ‘violation’ a bit strong?
“It’s like TiVo for radio, but is it legal?” – asks the headline in an MSNBC post, going on:
“Various devices that enable listeners to record Internet radio streams and then convert them into MP3 files are catching on and making Web radio and streaming services more appealing to the general public.”
But, “some legal experts say the recording software may violate digital copyright laws and does little more than promote piracy”.
Hmm. Wonder who they might be?
Anyway, “Obviously if people can use the TiVo-like unit to download a recording from Web radio and pre-program it to search digital radio to find tracks that you want, it’s going to beg a big question with the record industry,” entertainment lawyer Jay Cooper is quoted as saying.
“The thing to ask is if it is a violation and does it need to be examined. Technology’s way ahead of the law.”
Actually, the thing to ask is: Violation of what? And according to whom?
And isn’t “violation” a bit strong for copying a piece of music? It is. But “infringement” isn’t highly emotive and doesn’t look so good in a media puff piece or headline.
MSNBC has Cooper saying that under Big Music’s Digital Copyright Millenium Act, users can’t duplicate copyrighted material from a computer hard drive, only from a digital or analog recorder, and then only for personal use and not for redistribution.
“Webcasters similarly are restricted from promoting the recording of their content,” says the story.
Horror of Horrors!
With the likes of Replay Radio, “users can split, chop, trim and edit their recorded mp3 files from streamed music services,” MSNBC states.
Just like they can by hand, if that’s what they want to do.
“There’s certainly a lawsuit waiting to happen because they’re basically enabling consumers to record and the recordings are not authorized,” Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, is quoted as saying.
Record something without Big Music’s say-so? Horror of Horrors!!! Where would it end !!! ???
But the story has Applian co-owner Tom Mayes saying, “We’ve been doing this for a long time” and pointing out that Replay Music isn’t the only application of its kind.
“I think its too late for these (record) companies to try to put a stranglehold (on technology),” he says.
Right on. But that won’t stop the cartel.
And at least two Webcasters have “raised a red flag” about Replay Radio, says MSNBC.
Who might they be?
Well, one of them is RealNetworks which demanded that Applian take the Real Rhapsody name off the list of streaming music services Replay Music works with.
The other is Yahoo’s MusicMatch.
So this is what you now see for the Replay Radio blurb:
* Napster™
* Rh——™
* Music M—-™
* Y! Music Unlimited™
* Y! Launch ™
* AccuRadio™
And under that, (Legal note: Replay Music is not affiliated with any of these services, nor do we encourage violating any license agreements. We offer this list only for compatibility purposes.)
But Replay Radio isn’t the only Applian product.
There’s also a, “Web Radio VCR” that “lets you schedule and record radio shows from all over the world, and listen anytime, anywhere. Makes MP3s or CDs”.
And there’s a “WM Recorder” with which you can, “Record Windows Media Streaming Video and Audio with just one click! Recordings are playable on your PC or Pocket PC.”
Stay tuned.
JN
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
Scott MacLean - Big Music vs Digital Audio, p2pnet, September 1, 2004
StationRipper - Ripping from the radio: II, p2pnet, April 14, 2005
Applian Technologies - Streaming Music - To Go!
merely making mp3s - Rewind, digital radio?, p2pnet, June 11, 2005
back-door solicitations - Lockbox for digital radio, p2pnet, May 25, 2004
MSNBC - It’s like TiVo for radio, but is it legal?, May 27, 2005
May 28th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
In the rush to protect their copyrights, the RIAA naturally pushed to eliminate that pesky clause called fair use from the digital world. It has been a thorn in their sides ever since it became part of the copyright and what defined infringement. They wanted to make sure that digital had no such clause within it so that these p2p infringements cases would be legal fodder to collect from.
The customer has been left out of the equation of copyright other than to be the cash cow. This neglect has led to lots of legal questions and so far none of those accused of infringement have gone to court. The RIAA has been content to milk those that will volutarily give up money. The rest are out there in legal no-wheresville. At some point these victims must go to court. For some odd reason I keep expecting the legal powers that are to wake up to the huge backlog waiting to be dealt with. By the shear mass of awaiting court time it will require more judges and court personel just to deal with this one type of case. Those courts already being far overloaded with present day concerns.
There will be those who are found guilty. Within those found guilty will be those that can not pay. After all, one of the prime criteria for being a target seems to be the inablitity to defend themselves due to financial limitations. So what are they going to do with those? Put them in jail? How thoughtful. If they weren’t hard core criminals to begin with they will have the oppurtunity to get a criminal education during the time spent there.
May 29th, 2005 at 3:48 am
Big Music is already extracting exhorbitant fees from the webcasting community through the one-sided statutory ‘rights’ agreement that was imposed on ALL ’small’ webcasters. Contrary to what they be trying to make people believe they are already getting compensated from digital radio, from small webcasters on live365 and ShoutCast to the big services like REAL, AOL, Yahoo, etc. They want to have their cake and eat it too, and stuff it down their pants, and in their pockets, and anywhere else that can manage to stuff it.
Furthermore, unlike the Grokster/Morpheus controversy now before the Supreme Court, these recording technology have a clearly non-infringing use. They can record talk-shows and news broadcasts on digital radio. Talk shows, because the are contemporaneus, largely unscripted, and many times deal with matters of ‘public concern’ are largely uncopyrightable as they fall into the category of a ‘performance’ rather than ‘a creative work in a fixed medium.’ Stationripper, Replay Radio, et al can be used to record these broadcast and that would certainly constitute a ’substantial non-infringing use’.
What the RIAA would really like is for the Government to make any kind of software development illegal with obtaining some kind of Government issued permit, like a ham radio license. Each programmer who then wanted to initiate a development project that would subsequently be released for use by person other than the developer would require a permit from the Government, just like a building permit. The conditions of the permit would allow for inspection of the project documents and code at any time and revocation of the permit and confiscation of all project materials if it was determined that the project was not conforming to the terms of it’s orginal Government approved permit. Before distribution can occur the end result of the project will be subject to a thorough review by some Government agency employing a panel of experts from the intellectual property ‘industry’ who would issue findings about modification and changes that would be required before release. That way, no one like Greg, Scott, or Applian can ever come up with one of these annoying applications that actually allow people to listen to music they’ve already paid for in some fashion under terms and conditions other than those imposed by the RIAA and their patrons, unless of course, they feel like spending a couple of years at Club Fed.