RIAA Goes After Satellite Radio

nicholasjay writes "The RIAA is at it again. Now they don't like satellite radio. From the article 'The record industry ... believes the recording capability [of satellite radio receivers] is a clear copyright violation and could take revenue away from paid download music services.' This comes on the heels of both Sirius and XM announcing mp3 enabled players and the ability to record music heard on the radio. Also from the article: 'RIAA may seek $1 billion plus in music rights fees for a new contract covering 2007 to 2012 to replace the current $80 million pact that expires in 2006.'"

Comments

No kidding?

[SilverspurG]

From the article:

"The music industry is an important partner, and we continue to listen to their concerns in hopes of finding a resolution that benefits everyone, especially consumers," said Nathaniel Brown, a spokesman for XM.

I can't quite believe that XM got this far by pulling random CDs off the shelf and spinning them radio dj style without first negotiating at least a few contracts ahead of time. I don't personally believe in license agreements but they must have had to sign a contract somewhere which allows them to get around "for personal use only... not for broadcast".

If the music labels had a problem, shouldn't they have approached it at the front-end?

I'm sick of this suing customers/pointing the evil finger at them after the point of sale. It's fscking stupid.

Re:No kidding?

[PortHaven]

Radio NEVER has had to pay RIAA. Radio broadcasts were deemed "public performance" and had to pay their licenses to BMI/ASCAP/SESAC (the performance royalty companies). In fact, all these royalties RIAA has demanded from satellite radio, web radio, etc. Are completely new previously unheard of royalties. And it's all based on "caching".

For instance, you play music over the web. Your PC "buffers" the stream. RIAA made a case saying the buffering is a recording and therefore they need to be paid.

- The Saj

Re:No kidding?

[pedestrian crossing]

Don't most radio stations have agreements with the various record labels? I seem to remember someone taking care of that paperwork...

Not for the rights to play the music over the air, that is through ASCAP and BMI. Maybe there was some paperwork to arrange to get the promotional copies of the records from the record companies, the but broadcast rights are through ASCAP/BMI.

Re:No kidding?

[jedidiah]

The whole "analog vs. digital" thing is completely and utterly IRRELEVANT. A performance is a performance: period. There is already an appropriate governing body that hands out appropriate licenses under these conditons and RIAA aint it. They should be pimp slapped by the first judge that sees these shenanigans.

          This BS is bogus even by the industry's own self-serving definitions.

Re:No kidding?

[BlkSprk]

The RIAA thinks they have a right here because they are making a case that web radio and satalite radio use buffers and there for copy the music, which real radio dosnt. Just wait folks, soon you will be walking down the street whistling a new song you heard on the radio, and an RIAA lawyer will pop up demanding royalties because you memerized it and are reproducing it at a lesser but still recognizable quality. There need to be a line drawn, I'm half joking, but I wouldn't be suprised if the RIAA made it a reality.

Re:No kidding?

[hackstraw]

Radio NEVER has had to pay RIAA. Radio broadcasts were deemed "public performance" and had to pay their licenses to BMI/ASCAP/SESAC (the performance royalty companies). In fact, all these royalties RIAA has demanded from satellite radio, web radio, etc. Are completely new previously unheard of royalties. And it's all based on "caching".

Your right. RIAA has never been involved with broadcast licenses. Pretty soon we might have things like cable and satellite TV service where people get a monthly bill and pay for the content that they receive. There will however never be a time in our lives where we can listen to music at restaurants, bars, shopping malls, in cars, and our homes. Its not a lucrative business anymore because there is simply no demand for such a service.

Why doesn't the RIAA just buy a big vault, put all of their CDs in it, lock to door, and stand on top of it and scream: "I've done locked up my toys, and nobody, including me will play with them!"

Judging by their behavior, I'm guessing that the RIAA is about done with. I'm guessing that music may go to more of a service business model vs a sales model, just like TV vs video recordings. Most video content by most people is viewed via a service such as cable or satellite. I pay something like $80 a month for my HD-DVR and my cable service. I pay about $0 a month for music recordings besides my ISP service bill (which is also my cable company, and yes the music I get is legally tradable). So, my cable provider is getting about $120 a month to provide me with internet, audio and video content. The RIAA affiliated companies gets $0.

The RIAA affiliated companies are done providing content distribution because they suck at it. They do not provide a greatly desired product like MP3s despite the customer demand that is almost 10 years old now. Most "CD quality" audio recordings are only at most 16bit/44.1 kHz, which too is almost 10 years old. Very few _amateur_ audio recordings are that low of a quality any more. For example, I record everything at 24bit and 96 kHz, and many people do that as well too.

I don't know how the moneys go as far as the RIAA vs ASCAP/BMI or whatever broadcast licenses are available. In fact, from what I understand you can pay something like $200 a year for a broadcast license and legally play almost anything you can get your hands on, again with $0 going to the RIAA.

I just don't get it how TV can stay alive, like the big 3, CBS, NBC, and ABC, which freely broadcast their content to the entire country for free _themselves_ with their own towers, and people _still pay_ for cable and satellite service. Remember, one of the biggest issues with satellite is that their customers _demand_ the free broadcast channels as well as the satellite programming.

In summary, the RIAA is done. They will lawyer their way until they die, but they are like a person trapped in the middle of the ocean that is drinking salt water "to stay alive". There inevitable death will only be sooner rather than later. RIP.

Re:No kidding?

[ajservo]

I think other people have covered your licensing fees statement.

Satellite is NOT the same as analog, you're right. It's of lesser quality than the capability of analog signals. Whether or not your favorite Tejano Rap station broadcasts at full strength is up to them, but FM has a far superior fidelity to XM or Sirius. 2600 had an article on this from last year.

Both companies are using a single broadcast signal to project all 100+ of those channels into your radio. Those channels are highly compressed. It's not as though the reciever sends a signal up to the master satellite requesting the "moldy oldies" station and then your radio gets a full on signal. Nope, not at all. You get all the quality it'll deliver all at once for all stations (pay channels included) Don't be fooled into thinking that just because it's satellite it's better.

Silly RIAA...

[zwilliams07]

Instead of going for the little pups, go for the big dogs. Go sue Energy providers! Yeah! Cause you know, we couldn't pirate music if it weren't for electricity powering computers and other electronic equipment. Yeah, that show them!

BS!

[Kranfer]

I can record radio on my Computer, Radio in my car, Boom Box radio etc. Is their goal to encrypt all radio transmissions? Serius and XM radio are pay for subscriptions. WTF?

When are they going to sue my birds for listening to music all day? The birds could start mocking the music exactly!

"Your birds are singing these copywritten songs... We are suing them. They need to appear in court on these days!"

the RIAA is starting to overstep its bounds.

STOP

[CSHARP123]

I have stopped listening to music altogether. I have acquired a new skill of singing. My wife and children have not sued me yet.

Same argument as the VCR

[ploafmaster general]

Seems to me that these XM recording devices are rather like having a VCR for your radio. If it's legal for consumers to time-shift their television entertainment by recording it, why shouldn't the same apply to radio?

One day...

[Anonymous Coward]

One day they will sue themselves... and they will implode.
Hail that day.

Modest Proposal

[rlp]

Here's a suggestion for the RIAA - replace all current music distribution channels with the following:

When you wish to listen to music, you proceed to an RIAA sponsored Listening Center that will be located in most major cities. You wait in a convenient line and then purchase a ticket specfiying which music selections you wich to listen to. After a brief detour through a metal detector and s search for recording devices by courteous staff (former mob enforcers), you proceed to an individual soundproof listening chamber. In the chamber, you are permitted to listen to each musical selection one time. Afterwards, you're free to leave provided you sign a legal document stating that you will not hum or sing any of the songs you've just heard.

RIAA Serves Their Purpose

[erroneus]

The RIAA (and the MPAA and the BSA and all those similar organizations) exist for the very purpose they are acting on in these stories.

If we want to rid ourselves of their existance, we should #1 appeal to their members that they are not acting in the 'industry's best interests' and #2 appeal to the government(s) that these organizations exist to do nothing less than to act a singular means by which large entities are made into a single larger entity by which legal muscle is used to bully and intimidate individual consumers into unfair settlements and otherwise abuse the legal system to their own ends.

These abusive organizations should be striken down completely. If individuals need to protect their interests, they should be required to protect them individually just as individuals are required to defend themselves individually.

Re:The beginning of the end

[Lucractius]

Judge Julie:
This is Case No. 47g, Everyone vs. Everyone. [gavels, and all fall quiet] Representing the side of Everyone is Gerald Broflovski.

Gerald:
Thank you, your honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Everyone has committed a crime here, and Everyone must pay for that crime. My client, Everyone, has been hurt by this crime and must be compensated.

Close . . .

[Rob the Bold]

In fact, all these royalties RIAA has demanded from satellite radio . . .[a]re completely new previously unheard of royalties. And it's all based on "caching".

I think the actual term for RIAA's practice is "cashing".

Re:The beginning of the end

[jim_v2000]

Obviously they are trying to keep their distribution model valid (read crappy CDs)

I vowed earlier this week to never buy another music CD. I ordered a new album of a group I like from Half.com and got it in the mail the other day. I then put it in my computer and tried to rip the music off as MP3s so I wouldn't have to put the CD in my machine all of the time. However, my ripper of choice (Wimpdows Media Player) wouldn't see my cd drive as having anything in it. I though the cd had some kind of protection on it that wouldn't let my machine read it. However, it opened fine with the little player they included...so I tried another ripping program I found online. That pulled the tracks off, but they sounded like static. Then I stumpled across something on Google that mentioned new music cd's installing something on people's machines called "Plug and Play Manager". I checked my running services and sure enough, there it was. Some more research turned up that somehow, from what I understood, it integrated itself with the IDE drivers for my CD drives, and then wouldn't allow any applications other than their shitty player access to the cd. Well, I worked for Symantec awhile ago, and I figured that if I could get viruses off a machine, I could get this thing off.

Well, first of all, this "Plug and Play Manager" runs as a service. And you can't stop the service. You can't end task on the process that the service starts. I couldn't even see the files that it uses, because they are stored in a folder that starts with $sys$... which apparently I could only see from the command prompt. And even tehn, I could only delete the files in Safe Mode w/Command Prompt. AND THEN after I deleted those files and cleared out the registry keys, when I tried to restart my computer, it started to load my cd drivers and rebooted again. Even in safemode. And the Windows repair feature didn't help. I ended up having to format/reinstall Windows.

Talk about bitch DRM...I was pretty pissed. I bought the damn music, and it happened to come on a CD. If I want to copy the music that I purchased onto my computer to listen to it, that's my business. The RIAA can kiss my ass. I'm never buying another one of their disks again.

False: The quality is equal or less

[tkrotchko]

"Analog radio is of lesser quality, "

It is not.

Perhaps it is within possibility that if the satellite providers used a significant amount of bandwidth for a channel, and the analog station compressed the hell out of the FM station, then it might be better, but the reality is that good FM (i.e. WGMS out of Washington DC, or lots of other PBS stations) blows away any satellite service.

On the Sirius service, voice channels sound about the same or worse as shortwave broadcasts; the bit rates are so low that it takes you a couple weeks to get used to the sound. The music is okay, but clearly like low-grade FM; things like Saxophones are rendered so poorly on Sirius that you can barely tell that's what they are. Certain stations (i.e. Classical) are obviously given a higher bandwidth.

But stuff like NPR is better via FM because there is a lot less compression.

The advantages satellite has over terrestrial radio is country-wide access and no commercials. Sound quality is average at best.