Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Protests Digital Radio
prostoalex writes "Afraid that digital radio listeners might soon be able to cherry-pick certain songs and share them with others on the Internet, RIAA urged FCC to consider broadcast regulations that limit such copying. The National Association of Broadcasters is not too happy with RIAA's request, as more than three hundred broadcasters either have digital CD-quality radio, or are in the process of setting them up. Meanwhile, as MSNBC notes, products like The Bug from Pure Digital are already capable of recording digital radio."
Ever hear of taping a song off the radio. A lot of people do it.
Git off ma fair use before aye shoot ya.
No, you see, that would be innovation. The RIAA isn't a company that comes out with products, it's an association of old-school record companies trying to protect their old-school business model.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Unfortunately, the main RIAA customer base is dumb kids who buy manufactured crap like Westlife etc. They will continue to buy that shit and continue to fund these retards.
Hello,
They don't want it to end, that is the plain answer. The RIAA lives of the customers who buy "legal" music (they never remember the Creative Commons license, isn't that curious?). They are not interested in the earnings of the artists, of course; they only stand for their own earnings. Take into account that a musician earns more money playing in concerts, than selling discs.
To sum up: money rules.
Muaaaaaaaaks
--
You'd stumble in my footsteps (Depeche Mode, "Walking in my shoes")
CD quality? I'd be happy if my radio produced FM quality. The typical American broadcaster takes a nice, clean audio signal and then proceeds to mutilate it beyond recognition with a "modulation optimizer" before feeding it to the transmitter. These devices ensure that the transmitter is run at 100% modulation, or greater, all the time, in every audio band. The result is badly distorted audio without the slightest trace of dynamic range. If they will not broadcast a clean FM signal, why should we expect them to broadcast a clean digital signal?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Remember Digital Audio Tape? Wanna go buy one?
Look at what the DMCA is doing to reverse engineering.
Look at what's being discussed to close the 'analog hole'.
Our nation is sacrificing it's technological competitiveness in the name of the entertainment industries. We have already sacrificed a LOT, though it's still reversible.
One of my Senators is Patrick Leahy, and maybe it's time for me to become a single-issue voter. His response to my last letter on this was not satisfactory, I need to try again - well before November.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The comment about fears of "cherry-picking" songs probably tells more about the industry's real fears than they intended. Their biggest fear, I think, isn't simply about piracy (which can always be fought as a crime) but that listeners will become accustomed to listen to what they want, when they want. The existing structure of the music industry depends on using the radio and favorable product placement to boost certain artists; that's why those artists are willing to sign such unfavorable contracts. If the people in charge of the music industry lose control of popular taste, they're finished no matter what else happens.
I've had XM for over a year and listen daily in the car. The reason I got XM was because I absolutely hate the junk that is heard in Clearchanel dominated market I live in.
Not once have I thought of recording anything from XM. Since most XM radios have line outputs for amplifiers, it would be easy to plug in a laptop and record to wav or even mp3 with no problem. This article put the idea in my head, courtesy of the RIAA. Good job guys.
I've bought quite a few CD's from "new" artists that I actually had a chance to hear on XM. XM definately helps the labels sell more CD's since Clearchanel doesn't play what the public wants to hear anymore.
The few decent artists that are played to death on broadcast radio don't seem worth the $15 to buy. Hell, I could hear the same song every time I turn on the radio anyway. But the ones that I hear on XM are new and aren't jammed down my throat. I WANT to buy the CD's. Nobody feels good ripping off the underdog artists, but we all write off the radio artists as the enemy, thus they are exploitable.
The RIAA seems to want control over which artists are popular more than they want money from listeners. In any other business, the stockholders would have voted out anyone who repeatedly made such bad decisions. It just makes no sense.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
We're geeks, right? We're the sorcerers of the modern-day world. Without us, nothing happens and no-one works.
The RIAA can try this all they like, but if they succeed in getting the restrictions they want, we'll break them, we'll show others how to break them and we'll pirate the content out over the web just to make sure they learn that if they fuck with us they'll get hurt.
There's a lesson pending for the RIAA, and its this. Our rights as consumers are not up for renegotiation, and we don't want our rights to be protected (enforced) by expensive and unreliable DRM. RIAA, you can accept this, or you can pay up for the technology only to see us painlessely circumvent it. We will not be governed by you. That's not the way it works
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU