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National Association of Broadcasters Sues RIAA
LordNimon writes "Someone is suing the RIAA and not the other way around! CNET is reporting that the National Association of Broadcasters has sued the RIAA to prevent them from forcing radio stations to pay special royalities if they stream their signals over the Internet. Apparently, the stations don't pay the RIAA for normal broadcast, so they don't understand what's so special about Internet broadcasts. " Interesting twist - I expect to see TV stations and affiliates getting into the same arguement over Internet streaming - sorta an extension of the whole iCrave thing.
Interesting ... if the NAB succeeds, then an internet radio broadcaster might be able to avoid paying the higher royalties by licensing and setting up a small, low power radio station out in the middle of nowhere, and broadcasting the program to the local cows.
On another note - I just thought of this - does the DMCA make broadcasting concerts over HDTV illegal or difficult, because it's digital quality? Just a thought.
"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
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From the article:
The broadcasters yesterday asked a U.S. District Court in New York to rule that sending over-the-air radio signals with recorded music to the Web is no violation of "digital performance" rights under a 1998 copyright law.... The 1998 digital copyright law affects Internet radio stations but not those that broadcast over the air.
Is this the DMCA? What law are they referring to here?
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
With their flapping heads etc..
What goes around comes around. The RIAA just stepped in it a lil too deep.
... an internet radio broadcaster might be able to avoid paying the higher royalties by licensing and setting up a small, low power radio station out in the middle of nowhere, and broadcasting the program to the local cows.
Cool concept! How about Montana, which has a dearth of Techno and Rave stations? And just think of the lucky cows in KMOO's reach, able to bop to the trance beats of euro sounds!
They can take our milk, they can turn us into hamburgers, they can herd us, but they can never take our Freedom!
Will in Seattle
Yeah for the NAB. I'll actually have to switch on the radio in my car now!
Apparently, the stations don't pay the RIAA for normal broadcast, so they don't understand what's so special about Internet broadcast
This argument is rather contrived: what's different (at least from the RIAA's point of view) is that this broadcast stream leads to perfect copies. Yes, you could record tapes (even CDs) from radio broadcasts, but they'd be contaminated by radio propagation and other analog noise. Whereas with the net, you get bit-perfect copies, which are essentially trivial to capture and propagate...
Now if the radio stations promised to wireless broadcast the music across their studio, then re-digitize it and stream it on the net, I'm sure the RIAA would drop its suit at once... So the "we don't understand what the difference is" is clearly specious. Now should they bend over and let the RIAA screw them, or should they stand up for their freedom to broadcast using the best available technology? That's a different issue, and I'm happy that the NAB appear to be showing some spine, at least for now...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Then this odd thing happened with the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) -- for the first time ever, a public performance right in audio recordings (versus just the composition) was granted to record labels for webcasts. A number of members of NAB were, IMHO, quite happy, because this is going to make it considerably more difficult for webcasters to survive. (The royalty rate has yet to be decided, but last I checked, the RIAA proposed a figure of 45% of gross sales as the appropriate figure to be paid.)
It wasn't until they realized that this would really affect them too that they got up in arms. So now we have the bizarre case of them trying to claim exemption from any Internet stream that is also broadcasted over the air: punish them, not us! All of the sudden they want to be special, without realizing that they've stumbled headlong into the RIAA's trap to reclaim those royalties they've been lusting after (perhaps with good cause) for the last five-odd decades.
Of course this brings up some interesting issues is the exception is accepted: what if I'm broadcasting music over cellular? Does that count? What if I'm using a satellite downlink? If my customers are using micro-FM broadcasting units? Methinks the law is going to get particularly hairy with regards to these technologies (a general truism, perhaps!).
David E. Weekly
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
I understand that earlier this year (give or take a few months) the FCC finally decided to grant space on the public airwaves to "microbroadcasters", which they had previously banned. As I understood it, however, particular regulations would apply to this new category of permitted broadcasters. Do you know if royalty rates were set differently for microbroadcasters? (I thought they were, but the topic isn't of particular interest to me, so I could be mistaken.) If they are, your "work-around" proposal probably can't achieve its aim.
Puh-leez. What about radio stations such as WFMU (91.1 FM for NYC-area listeners) which are non-commercial yet stream their content on the internet? What about the fact that they sometimes play records that are not only obscure but possibly over 60 years old? Or does this only apply to popular commercial music?
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
RIAA is messing up big time by treating one medium different than another. On one hand, a radio station takes a song and beams it out to 50,000 listeners, and on the other hand takes the very same song and streams it out to 50,000 listeners. There's no fundamental difference.
Because the internet is new, and software still relatively new, people want to treat them differently from the old media. But their purposes are the same. Internet broadcasts must operate under the same rules as EM broadcasts. Software should have the same copyright laws as books. Websites the same as newspapers.
Because good old-fashioned classic copyright is sufficient for software, the DMCA just creates injustice. On the music side, treating internet and EM differently only creates a loss for RIAA. By doing what their doing, even if they win the case, they end up forcing station to one format or another, ultimately limiting the song's audience. Either charge no royalties or charge for all broadcasts, internet or EM.
If you base law on fundamental principles then its application can be applied to everywhere, and understood by everyone.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If the NAB is really so pissed off at the RIAA, then why is it that they play so little music that doesn't come from the RIAA? I do understand that the RIAA promotes music heavily so it has a fan base that the radio stations can count on. But would it hurt them to take a chance and start playing more of their local bands that aren't under the control of the RIAA? This is what I can't figure out--why doesn't the NAB encourage it's members to fight back by playing more non-RIAA music and helping promote it themselves? I can understand why a lone radio station would not want to do this--they count on all the promotional stuff they get from RIAA labels. But if they acted in concert (no pun) couldn't they hit the RIAA pretty hard and at the same time reduce their dependence
numb
Anyone ever listened to live streaming audio over the net? The quality of FM radio is usually MUCH better than some crappy 56k stream being compressed on the fly. Besides, there's still gonna be some jack ass DJ talking over you favorite songs, who the hell wants a "perfect" copy of that?
its that its "new" and the recording industry cant control it.
There are no more insanely high priced barriers to entry, so that means that the companies that have been the only ones that could afford to produce, and distribute music no longer are the only ones that can afford to publish music.
Now, the controlled distribution channels are beginning not to matter... You can slap a fairly professional track using a multitude of tools, put it on MP3, and then get the track out without investing any money in making physical copies.
That scares the heck out of the media industry, because it cuts them out of the loop, so they dont get any money.
DOnt believe for a second that this is about sales of existing works or "piracy" its about control. period.
... hi bingo
Actually the FCC is currently finalizing plans to license 10,100 and 1000 watt broadcast stations. No mega dollar pricetage to get into broadcasting anymore. reasonable startup, minimal regulations. http://www.fcc.gov/mmb/prd/lpfm/
I suppose that if I wanted to, I could redirect an internet brodacast to a file, kill the ads, and listen at my pleasure.
.wav, .mp3, ...), or behavior (to share or not to share).
You mean, kind of like you do with a VCR when you're not going to be home for that season premier of Deep Space Nine?
You can do precisely the same thing with a hauppauge card and a traditional radio broadcast, namely record any broadcast you like with no appreciable quality loss between what your ears hear the first time (listening to the live braodcast) and the second time (listening to the recording on your hard drive, assuming a lossless storage format).
The digital vs. analogue argument is simple misdirection, an effort for entities like the MPAA and the RIAA to gain even more draconian authority over the products they sell us, and how we are permitted to use them in our own homes, using the spectre of "perfect" recording capabilities by the masses as a boogeyman.
Casual users have had an effective means of making "perfect" copies for 20 years now, namely cassette tapes. For most poeple's purposes these constitute "perfect" copies, and are used (and traded) as such. The internet hasn't changed that fact appreciably, even if it has made trading a little more convinient.
Big time commercial pirates do benefit, but then, they too have had the means of making "perfect" copies for nigh unto 20 years, using prosumer and professional studio and CD pressing equipment.
The laws prior to the DMCA were more than sufficient to deal with both, and still are. Big time (or even small time) commercial pirates get busted, have their assets seized, spend time in jail, and so on. Casual users share music and, as often as not, go ahead and buy the CD anyway, either for convinience sake, as a collector, as gifts, or simply because they want the the cover art along with the music.
Whether someone records a song (complete with DJ talkover) or other braodcast from traditional radio or from internet radio makes absolutely no difference, either in terms of the final storage medium (tape vs. hard drive), format (analogue,
It is only a few technophiles like us that really get excited about DIGITAL storage -- everyone else is perfectly happy with lossy mp3 format, lossy cassette tapes, and lossy VHS, and no amount of posturing on the part of the RIAA or the MPAA is going to change that.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If the NAB wins, than they may have cleared the way for "transmitting" other files. Your only left dealing with semantics on what constitutes music, which is nothing more than data. In other words, if they win, we could transmit all sorts of useful data with their same arguement. Wish them the best.
and they are requesting the music they want to hear.... sorta like my.mp3.com, but they don't even have to own the music. But, if you call it a radio station and stream it over the internet, does that mean you don't have to pay for it?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Me, I'm waiting to be able to buy a Linux version of RealPlayer Plus with the recording problems fixed, so I can record an hour of an overseas news station and improve my foreign language skills...and I need the ads too, so that's not an issue either.
Digital Audio Broadcasting is also digital and broadcast using radio. Or doesn't DAB exist in the US yet?
..How about we spend less fucking time worrying about lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit and go back to having fun?
None of these lawsuits affect us. The RIAA doesnt affect me. The UCITA doesnt affect me. A lawsuit against Yahoo doesn't affect me. A lawsuit against MP3.com doesn't affect me. None of this shit affects me, because I, and we, will all be able to get our hands on what we want for free, anyway. Laws do not and cannot prevent piracy of any media. Laws -encourage- piracy. Half of you people fail to realize there are piracy groups in existance that are older than you are!
I've said it before, and i'll say it again. The damn cat is already out of the bag. No amount of lawsuits will put the damn cat back in it.
For crying out loud, quit worrying, people. If I see another damn RIAA/UCITA/Napster/MP3 lawsuit story on Slashdot i'm going to puke.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Digital will pretty much always have an advantage of perfect serial copies. Each time you record analog to analog you introduce additional noise as well as pick up some signal degradation. No matter how good your equipment is, the real world physical limits prevent perfect copies using analog equipment.
On the other hand you could argue that the data stored on your HD is analog, since it's retrieved with basically the same pickups used to store data on cassette. You can look at and interpret the signal with analog equipment, etc.
Dana Lyons tried to make some money off the bovine population a while back with the immortal classic "Cows With Guns". Heard it recently? Me neither, except once on the John Boy and Billy show. So much for a new market. On the other hand, they DO make lovely jackets, and the upside is that when you're done taking the skin off you can have a burger.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
there is a super analog audio format. it's called vinyl.
a well made vinyl record can have an audio bandwidth as high as 50 kilohertz per channel. compare that to compact disc's paltry 22.05 kilohertz audio per channel. digital recordings lose even more resolution to quantization noise.
digital is amazingly inefficient in terms of bandwidth utilization. an ordinary telephone line carry 6-8 khz audio just fine in analog mode. convert the audio feed to digital and the same phone line chokes.
so even though a cd stores just two 22.05 khz audio channels, the digital signal is actually using 3 megahertz of bandwith - enough for a full ntsc video signal. in fact, early digital recorders used videocassettes as the recording medium.
where digital excels is in error correction - signal errors - also called noise and distortion - can be more easily controlled; digital information is easier to miniaturize - witness the size of a compact disc versus a vinyl record; and digital signals are easier to manipulate - such as the lossy compression seen on minidiscs and mp3s.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Absolutely, but it takes years of classes to learn the proper technique of crawling on your belly, the etiquitte of bottom feeding, and blowing smoke up people's butts to make a good lawyer.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The digital vs. analogue argument is simple misdirection, an effort for entities like the MPAA and the RIAA to gain even more draconian authority over the products they sell us, and how we are permitted to use them in our own homes, using the spectre of "perfect" recording capabilities by the masses as a boogeyman.
I just noticed that, by basing their arguments on the claim that digital technology is "worse" (for them) because it allows copying without generational loss, they are really pushing another hidden assumption on us: they make it sound like the casual copying that people have been doing all this time with analog media was okay only because there was generational loss. Or rather, that they were just being nice and letting us get away with it because the generational loss prevented it from doing any real damage. This carries a heavy connotation of "Okay, kids, we've been going easy on you long enough, but it's time you started playing fair now, so no more copying. 'Mkay?" Also, like the story a while back about them "allowing" DJs to use MP3 rippings of their own collections, it implies that they are an authority that is capable of "allowing" or "disallowing" such things in the first place.
As far as I'm concerned, how effectively I'm able to copy the music has nothing to do with how wrong it is to do so (which is a separate question). How badly it hurts them is irrelevant to me: if copying is wrong, it's wrong, and if not, not. Being digital doesn't make it any more or less wrong, even if the impact on them is different.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Suck it down, punk ass bitches! :)
Rofl, this headline nearly threw me out of my chair when I first read it. I'd love to see the look on their faces when hearing that someone's finally mad as hell, and they're not gonna take it anymore!
Seems the RIAA finally gets what they deserve. I got r3wt on all j00r b0x0rs! I 0wn j00!
Hacksworth
...A reason to love lawyers.
Radio stations typically get free promo copies of CDs/singles/etc., both for airplay, and for giveaways. Mostly this is for "current product" (i.e., the shite the record company rep is pushing right now for airplay). Sometimes, though, if you have a decent relationship with your rep, they'll even get you some free "catalog" (i.e., older stuff).
I used to work in radio back in the 80s. I don't miss it all that much, though.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
CDs have 16-bit resolution - one part in 65536,
That is a signal to quantisation noise level of 100dB+
Vinyl has a S/N ratio of 50dB if you have a perfect pressing and play it on a $20,000 deck in a vacuum mounted in gimbals.
Or are you claiming that mass-stamped vinyl is accurate to 10 nanometers?
As to 50KHz frequency range that gives a mean horizontal resolution of a micron or so; more believeable, but hardly likely to make it though a mechanical tranducer and back out through a speaker unblemished.
As your ears have afrequency response that tails off around 18 KHz, but amplitude sensitivity of about 80dB, CDs are usually making a better tradeoff.
I don't know what digital sound you have been listening to over a phone line, but DSL lets the same line carry uncompressed CD-quality audio with ease, or full-motion video with stereo sound using compression.
Modems suck because they are converting digits to squeaks and bleeps to pass through analogue switching (and, these days, digital switching at 8kHz sample rates).
If the RIAA through this - and similar lawsuits - manages to put enough restraints on the material produced by its members, it will eventually become so difficult/expensive to use what is currently mainstream musical material, that people will look to other alternatives for filling up their webpages, radiostreams or whatnot.
This could be exactly the kind of opportunity that off-label or independent artists need to gain a foothold; "Sure, you can stream Madonna on your Internet radio station and pay an arm and a leg for it, but then again, you can also stream this very excellent song for free - who cares if nobody's heard of the artist today, it's great music, and she might as well be huge tomorrow"...
My message is that the more successful the RIAA is in clamping down on music "piracy" on the Internet, the less successful RIAA-generated content will be - provided that there is an alternative source for quality content. And there really is a lot of good stuff out there, even though it needs to be arranged a bit better...
Like, what if the Slashdot-process was applied on legal mp3s? We've done a shot at this - take a look at Repliq!
In the interests if health and safety, i should point out that milk isnt *that* good for you... http://www.notmilk.com/
The above post could lead you to believe no royalties are ever paid - that's not exactly true. In the US, commercial radio stations pay licensing fees to ASCAP and BMI. These are doled out to the copyright owners based on some sampled estimate of airplay.
CDs have 16-bit resolution yes. in theory that should give you 90 db dynamic range. but ADCs are hard to design. most lose the least significant bits. and since pulse code modulation is linear you loose 5.625 db dynamic range with each error bit. plus the distortion these errors cause sounds awful. then you have problems of click jitter (did you know that clock crystal rates change with temperature?) so digital recorders add dither. dither is pink noise added to the signal to make sure the least significant bits are always lit. the bits are then removed later through signal processing. so now cd doesn't have quite the sn ratio that's been advertised. now as for vinyl's ability to record ultra high frequency sounds. the pits pressed into the surface of a cd are small. but the high frequencies inscribed into the surface of a record are smaller still -- often smaller than a single wavelngth of light. back in the '80s a manufacturer designed and built a optical record playing system. it used a laser to read the grooves of a record. the system had to use interferometry because the information in the grooves was too small for the laser to read. the machine cost a fortune to build. diamond styli can read those grooves. contact line diamonds have a thin knife edge that is indeed smaller than the finest grooves in a record. an yes, those mechanical systems are capable of preserving and recording those high frequency sounds. and truntables that can achive good sound cost less than $1,000. your the roll-off argument has been used by digital recording apologists for years and it still doesn't hold water. if you want to make sure that your recording will have good frequency response at 18 khz, you have to make sure that it has the ability to extend far beyond that. by your argument, 3d games don't have to bother with more than 25 frames per second because that's all our eyes need to perceive continuous motion. gamers know better. finally, can dsl carry cd quality sound? well, to carry uncompressed cd audio you need a bit more than 1.4 kilobits per second (16-bits per sample * 2 channels * 44,100 samples per second). i suppose that could be carried by 1.5 kilobit dsl line or a t1 line. but there's not much room left for communications overhead or for replacing lost packets. and then you have dsl's 3 mile limit. my original argument still stands. digital is inefficient at delivering continuous analog material like audio or video. for example, fm radio delivers two 15 khz channels (limited to 15 khz for political, not technical reasons), and two 8 khz subcarrier channels, all within about 100 khz of bandwidth. to do the same in the digital domain you'd need between 1.5 and 2 megahertz of bandwidth. to reduce the bandwidth necessary for digital broadcasts, you need to use lossy compression, an unacceptable tradeoff for critical listening.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
If they win though, I think the whole iCrave thing should be looked at again. iCrave wasn't doing anything wrong, and when you consider the amount of people who actually went to the site because they didn't get those channels, the potential for hits is crazy.
Think about it? Where I live we don't get UPN, having that on the net would be cool. The same would be for people living outside the US. You know they only get 4 channels in England and they are boring as hell.
The potential for world wide coverage is very real.
Same with the Radio stations, having listeners world wide would give them a whole new listener base. And they have been doing it for the past couple years without dealing with this crap.
The RIAA should get lost.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier