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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."
This is a Blunder by the RIAA. Now every broadcaster has more too worry about with Digital TV. Clearly, the broadcaster will have to kowtow to the **AA groups, and broadcaster do not like that one bit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Or can digital radios already do this?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Well, this was only a matter of time. Most people I know listen to Internet Radio more then their own libraries anymore especially on iTunes. Does this mean that Sirius is going to get regulated too because of broadcasting music at such a high quality? What about the people in the 80s/90s who listened to regular radio and recorded songs to tape?
Second, I was always a subtle Howard Stern fan, but now with what is going on with clear channel, his broadcasts are more entertaining then just the stupid fart jokes. He really is going through a struggle, and the FCC/RIAA are seeing great times to strike out with the election.
Let's stop going back in the time machine...
Thanks,
Aj
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artlu.net
Oh come on! There's an (overused) trick to prevent people from creating their music libraries from taping off the radio today: it's when the radio DJ "talks" into the first 10 seconds or so of the song, or fades one song into the other.
That makes every piece annoying enough that I doubt many people are going to want to record anything other than maybe entire programs.
Murray Todd Williams
My post won't really be very helpful...
But I remembered reading once about the RIAA or some recording studio not liking the idea of cellphone ringtones of popular music. This resulted in cellphone companies having to pay royalties for every ringtone that they sell. Imagine... ringtones (the old ones anyway) are just beeps in different notes! It seems that, technically, you're also not allowed to whistle anymore.
Just some lame and useless info for everyone.
I for one am completely and totally tired of their antics. We geeks have power and can be a serious force. I am issuing a challenge at this moment. We need to develop an alternative path for customers and artists to take to bypass them.
I am confident that if we can all band together, we can overcome. I am talking about a distribution system that is based on open standards that allows payment to go directly to artist with minimal (if any) overhead.
Here is what I propose:
-A non-profit organization comprised of volunteers
-Create a website to serve as a repository of songs to be distributed via bittorrent
-Payment taken in the form of Paypal donations
-Payment is artist AND song specific based completely on an honor system
-To encourage reasonable sized payments, offer bonuses for tiered donations
-For example, after $100 is donated to band X, the customer becomes eligble for free concert tickets or something
-Payment is dispursed to artists in entirety
-Artists are encouraged to donate back a portion of their payments to cover costs of bandwidth, etc.
-No DRM to be used and only open formats for music.
-Songs should be available in varying qualities.
Maybe this exact model has already been proposed, I don't know. Comments and suggestions welcome. I have issued the challenge, will anyone answer?
There's a story that gets retold in music history classes a lot.
Around 1800 there was an old and incredibly beautiful choral piece that a particular monastery/order/whatever wanted to, in effect, keep a monopoly on. They'd perform the thing as part of the Mass, but wouldn't share the score with any who weren't in the order and performing themselves. This had been the situation for around two hundred years.
Well, around 1800 a smart-aleck goes to one of the Masses, hears the piece, comes home, and writes down all the notes from memory. (Anyone familiar with Renaissance motets knows what a feat this is.)
That smart-aleck? Mozart.
(Dr. Sanders, forgive me if I got a few details wrong.)
It would be a great idea, similar to the DeCSS Gallery, to document every possible way you can copy/save/record any auido/video stream including schematics and code for DIY hardware boxes (like phreaking boxes) and software in many forms (t-shirts, songs, art, or just plain code etc..). Cover every hardware platform, every media format and every method, from micro-phone-to-speaker to full digital stream copies. Make sure the site shows how much of a joke this is but at the same time gives a useful resource and of course, make many many mirrors of it. If its already been done then great, whats the url? but if it hasnt it would be a great project (funded by t-shirt sales). All these great copying methods from pressing shift to blacking out the edges of CDs to decryption need to be in one place. Device-by-device guides showing you pin-outs and wiring instructions, code for PICs etc and what country sells the tools you need. The site should conform to some basic common sense rules i.e displaying "copyright violation is a criminal offence" etc and the thinking being that what you do with your own property in your own home is your business.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Tape Recorders. And I'd be more worried about the tape recorders than spicific software that can do the same thing, it's easier to record too, just a push of a button. And since you're willing to waste time with all that software configuration to get that 'specific' song, I'm sure you have enough time to get the song off the tape on to your computer..
honestly who runs the legal show for the RIAA? wait.. don't answer that..(a thousand monkeys on typewriters is what I'm abut to hear)
Do your part to talk with your acquaintances and encourage them not to support the RIAA.
Whining on Slashdot won't get much accomplished. Convincing people that they won't be able to enjoy music how they like it in the near future will make a difference.
Just last night I carefully explained to a friend who enjoys listening to Cold exactly why she should take a look at which record labels publish those CDs. It's pretty simple--sure, you may be able to buy the CD now, but the next one might be copy protected. If you buy stuff that is put out by those who aren't part of this major media conglomerate, then you won't be encouraging such business tactics.
I don't know how much of my message was actually heard and how much was just glossed over, but by the time I finished talking she seemed to be at least a little more aware that there should be more to CD purchasing than just finding what you like.
For me, it is COMPLETELY about the record label. I use the RIAA Radar like nobody's business, and I try my absolute hardest only to buy CDs that come up clean when checked there. There are several highly-desirable purchases I refuse to make because I would be supporting the RIAA. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make because I understand the implications of giving in.
Fortunately, my music tastes lean towards electronic ("techno"), which is quite predisposed towards free sharing and downloading. Right now I can give you URLs to four artists' music sites that allow you to download 128kbps or better mp3s of those artists songs without any DRM. There are plenty of indie labels and pro-P2P/sharing musicians out there in other genres, but it appears to me that my favorite type of music has the largest percentage.
They propose allowing you to record "entire broadcasts", not individual songs, for later playback. What do you bet that the next step will be disallowing fast-forward/commercial skip?
"U.S. regulators at the 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."
So the RIAA doesn't want radio to become a giant sharing network?
You're the ones broadcasting your signal into our airspace. You don't want to share? Turn off the transmitter.
Artists do not make money playing concerts; promoters make money, bands break even.
Bands make their money selling CDs* and Official Merchandise. Think of the concerts as a comercial for the CD.
*They make money on volume sales. For a Major Label, the breakeven point for a band could be as high as 1.2 million; ie, they make dollar number on the 1.2 millionth +1 CD. Minor labels, the point could be as low as 100,000 CDs.
I'm slightly confused. As far as I can work out, the RIAA wants to make it illegal to record (or spread) digital (/internet) radio.. well, since when has making something illegal stopped people doing it?
If someone wants a song, whether it be a download from irc or a rip from a radio station, they're generally just gonna get it, unless they're scared off by the gestapo tactics of these organisations.
The other thing is radio is public, so how can they sue you for having something that is essentially publicly available. Isn't that like sueing you for taping a tv show because you were out?
The (apparent) complaint is about spreading music instead of buying it, but if you take e.g. Radio 1 in the UK, it overplays so many songs to death (seriously, 6 or 7 times in the daytime) that you get sick and don't want to buy it anyway. The fact it plays it so much means you won't need to buy it, and the fact it's so overplayed means you'll get sick of it and won't want to.
I realise I've drifted off the main point there.
In all cases, the RIAA have once again spectacularly missed the point, if CDs were a reasonable price, more people would probably buy them. Not all of course, there will always be downloaders, but they're hardly gonna be swayed by a few legalities anyway so all in all the RIAA don't seem to have a clue what they're doing. Ironically, if they bothered to listen to people, they could (and we could) gain a lot more, which indicates that they aren't bothered about gain or money, they just love the power.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
A few years ago, when I was living in ancient Sumeria, the Hunter-Gatherers Association of Mesopotamia were not too happy about those meddling farmers with their disruptive wheat fields, orchards and dairies. "Whose gonna pay a hunter to hunt down an ox or a gatherer to gather berries from the forest when everyone's just growing their own right ouside their huts and giving away the seeds?", they whined to the Chiefs.
Fortunately the Chiefs were wise in those days.
They don't do it to prevent you from making copies of the music, they do it because it's a slicker way to DJ. It sounds better, and more importantly, it prevents dead air. Dead air's a real no-no if you're a radio DJ.
CD quality is nothing more than a marketing term. It is found almost everywhere digital audio other than cd's is sold, from MD's to genre specific streams found on cable and satellite providers.
It's a lie. It is compressed, lacking in clarity and dynamics found on CD. Why more has not been done to prevent the misleading of the buying public over 'CD Quality' is beyond me - heck if Apple is getting berated for claiming World's Fastest PC, one would think 'CD Quality'... Yeah, Joe Q Public really doesn't give a rat's arse so long as it 'Sounds Good'. Blah.
If the signal's were true, uncompressed, CD Quality (as though you were playing the CD in your own box), then the RIAA would have legitimate concerns. But, just like filesharing less than equal 'CD Quality' MP3's have them scrambling over Joe Q. Public's discerning taste in good sound, we'll probably see digital radio DRM in order to prevent less than perfect copies being distributed in order to further their grip on all distros.
Apparently, JQP is content with less than CD Audio. In fact JQP is so content with less than CD Audio that various alternate forms of music distro is cutting into CD sales - even though the audio isn't as good. But it's free, or in the case of iTMS, cost's significantly less.
The fact of the matter is a) CD's are too expensive (for the most part), and b) the mediocre majority just don't care enough about quality to justify continuing to support that model.
.
Find me on iTunes
OT but Howard Stern gets dropped from Clear Channel because he is critical of Bush's War on Iraq.
100% wrong. Howard was gung-ho in favor of the war. He only went against Bush (and the war, if he has complained about that, but I haven't heard one way or the other) when he correctly blamed Bush for Clear Channel firing him.
Well this is the whole bizarre point.
The RIAA has spent all this effort and garnered all this bad publicity over P2P, but there's this alternative to P2P that leads to precisely the same result and it is clearly legal.
And it's not just P2P. The whole notion of the PVR is almost identical to time shifting digital radio. The end result of using time shifting technology on digital radio and HDTV is identical to using P2P. The user ends up with a hard drive full of MP3s and MPEGs. But this is hardly an argument in their favor, this is daming evidence against their earlier quixotic foibles.
The conclusion that digital radio and PVR technology brings to center stage is what everyone has said all along --they were wrong. P2P was legit all along and this is the best evidence. The identical result of P2P still arises even without P2P. The simple fact is that this has never been a moral issue, it has been a technical issue that they have tried to simply run from because they procrastincated too long on innovating.
The digital radio issue isn't the **AA's next victim, it's the last straw.
It is an argument for legalization. Copyright was concieved of as a balance. Since copying is now so easy, the cost to society of restricting it is much higher.
One way to look at constitutional protections is to see them as a set of restrictions that are designed to prevent the government from being able to pass, or enforce laws that are obnoxious burdens on freedom.
It's very telling that drug laws require serious weakening of the 4th ammendment to enforce. It's now to the point where enforcement of copyright law will require even more obnoxious violations of the 4th ammendment, by some interpretations, the 3rd ammendment, and by some interpretations, the 5th ammendment.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Actually there were a few tape recorders in cars. One was a double-cassette recorder made by a Tiawanese company and put out by JC Whitney and CO. I know - I had one. It even had a microphone input on the front.
The problem with tape recorders in cars - at least when I had mine - was vibration. I couldn't record anything really without a lot of engine/road noise as well as wow and flutter in the tape when played back.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Have you read this:
http://museekster.com/allofmp3info.htm
scroll down - see legal
They have already, the Boys Scouts or Girl Scouts of America were sued for failure to have a license for camp fire songs.
They paid I think a nominal sum, which sets a precedent.
Maybe the RIAA should propose a ban and boycott by all performers for a while? Wasn't that done sometime in the 30's or 40's?
Sing songs written before 1923.
Pretty much half my stock in trade. Die Gadanken Sind Frei goes back perhaps a thousand years and is still, unfortunately, topical today.
Stephen Foster, Scot Joplin, Civil War songs. Lots of good public domain stuff out there.
Unfortunately Mississippi John Hurt didn't record until 1929 and that's when the copyright starts counting from, Robert Johnson later than that. The blues, a pure folk medium, is propriatary. Even given life of the author plus 50 years it will be some time before it becomes public domain, and many publishers are claiming that the clock starts at the time they copyrighted it, not at the time it was first protected by copyright, and if they can assert that legally the there's a 95 year clock on Hurt starting in 1963.
This isn't the first time Congress has fucked up royally.
KFG
Not entirely true... Up until (I believe) 1976, copyright law regulated the right to "publish," not "copy" -- there is a subtle but huge difference between the two.
...when recording from an analog signal that was reconstructed from a digital one?
i.e. I could take my XM satellite radio (if I had one) such as the XM PCR Radio (as reviewed by another site other than the XM Radio one). I could plug the output into the input of my sound card... and capture the audio going in. The article I linked to above mentions the fringe benefit of being able to record from the XM PCR Radio using a third party program, thanks to the fact that the radio is designed to be plugged into the input of a computer sound card.
Of course there could be local noise which the analog signal would be susceptible to, and the sound card needs to be good enough to re-encode the decoded digital signal...
But really... can the degradation be that great... and how good are even the 'cheap and nasty' sound cards at capturing and re-coding audio?
Because as countless others have posted, people have been taping the radio for years. And right now, the technology exists (and is likely to continue to exist for some time yet) that allows us to circumvent any so-called digital protection by going through the analog chain.
Or does it really require a very high end PC with the best sound card around? Personally, I think not, because I think that technology has advanced far enough for even 'bog standard' PC equipment that is sold even in places like Wal-Mart have just about enough computer power and sound card hardware to create a CD-quality digital recording from a suitable analog input. But then I am not an audiophile, so I cannot state this as absolute fact... and would appreciate any clarification.
Thanks, Mark.
So the industry gets caught -- yet again! -- with their hand in the cookie jar, cooking their own damn charts by having big hits played in the middle of the night shift as "ads" to avoid soiling themselves with the 'payola' scarlet letter. Now, their lobby groups wants to prevent people from 'cherry-picking' tunes off super-snazzy digital radio?
WTF?
If it's an open secret that most music now is shit and every album is designed to have one, maybe two, big hit(s) to draw in the suckers, what's the problem? Doesn't this solve the industries lagging money woes and distribution issues? They simply drop free (ad-driven) radio as a medium and move exclusively to digital (subscription) radio, demand a huge jack in price and a big 'ole piece o' the pie.
No fuss, no muss. The broadcast flags become unnecessary (in the beginning at least), as they^H^H^H^H^H the artists are being paid for their 'labors'.
Personally, with the advent of studios in a box and whatnot, I'd think more performers would forego big studios altogether, hit the road and sell CDs out the backs of their cars. A groundswell starts and you use the Internet for world-wide distribution outside the usual chains. That is, of course, assuming it really is still 'all about the music' and not mere, grubby cash and swishy lifestyle perks.
Odd that...
Kingstrum