Tension Between Record Labels And Digital Radio

An anonymous reader writes "Now that digtial radio devices are allowing recording of shows, you knew it wouldn't be long before music executives started raising a fuss. They're worried that users will prefer to record the high-quality audio (for free) to buying a download or CD." From the article: "For now, the Recording Industry Association of America is in negotiations with satellite radio companies and is opening discussions with radio broadcasters over specific products. But over the long term, the music industry says, Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs, as is the case with iTunes."

Comments

Fair use?

[Bananatree3]

But over the long term, the music industry says, Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs

Isn't it considered "fair use" to record a broadcast for personal use? This is exactly like someone recording a TV show with their VCR. Nor is it any different then hooking up a radio to a tape recorder and recording favorite music. I guess the RIAA bigwigs fear anything that makes it "convenient" to record a broadcast.

In light of that, I sure hope they don't start pushing Congress to put DRM chips in every audio recording device out there like MPAA's anti-"analog hole" chip push.

Re:Fair use?

[Guppy06]

"Isn't it considered "fair use" to record a broadcast for personal use? "

"Fair use" is based on the ol' Supreme Court Betamax decision. Unless and until you're able to find a constitutional basis for "fair use," however, Congress can pass a law overturning the court decision. Basically, the court saying "It's not against the law" leaves the door open for Congress to change what the law says.

Re:Fair use?

[JeffSh]

im not sure i would say "fear" more than it presents another opportunity to generate a new revenue stream, even though they've tried it in the past with every format change or new delivery method that's come about...

the difference between than and now is that our government representatives are, more than ever, reliant upon campaign contributions, what with the increased need for exposure which costs $$$, and seemingly more corruptable. therefore, they are more likely to enact legislation that goes against the public interest and towards private interest where before they might have stuck up for the citizenry.

Re:Fair use?

[grimJester]

From TFA: "Similarly, the right of consumers to tape songs off the radio has generally been held to be fair use."

Yet, "XM Satellite Radio pulled a PC-based radio receiver from the market last year over music-copying concerns, and the company says none of its devices can now be used to transfer and store content on a computer. XM says it is happy to continue talking to the record industry about its products."

I don't get this; how can the RIAA prevent companies from selling recording devices if these devices are fully legal? Are people getting so accustomed to the recording industry buying legislation that it's safest to do what the RIAA says, or the risk is too great that it will become illegal before you've made enough money to recoup your investment?

Re:Fair use?

[denissmith]

All uses that are not explicitly covered by copyright law are "fair use" under the 9th Amendment. Wherein the rights NOT explicitly given to Congress or the President are reserved to the People themselves. No explicit grant is required.

Re:Fair use?

[Kosmatos]

Fair use or not, the Slashdot article says:

"They're worried that users will prefer to record the high-quality audio (for free) to buying a download or CD."

And on Wikipedia, for XM satellite radio, the only one I checked, it says:

"Due to lack of bandwidth and too many channels, the maximum bitrate XM broadcast from its satellite per music channel is limited to 64kbs."

Therefore, this is all B.S. since 64 kbps is not generally considered to be high-quality.

Re:Fair use?

[EvanED]

Actually, "fair use" is based on the ol' First Amendment. It was first introduced in the early 1800s.

The ruling that recording "broadcast" TV constitutes fair use however dates to Betamax.

In other words, fair use isn't going anywhere, but the current statute defines it more broadly than the courts require under freedom of speech/press.

Re:Fair use?

[DigiShaman]

64 kbps sounds really nice if using WMA or MP3Pro codec. Obviously not as good as 128 kbps, but still nice. Should the audio be 64 kbps with the standard MP3 codec however, then the difference would noticable to most people with a good set of headphones.

Re:Fair use?

[kfg]

And the founding fathers, particularly Jefferson, had a fair bit to say about the matter, making it explicit that copyright was an incursion against the rights of the people (as partially enumerated in the First Amendment) and to be tolerated only so far as that incursion actually contributed to the public good.

The fly in the oinment is that the above required the power to grant copyright be included in the Constitution itself, using what are, perhaps, the most vauge terms in the entire document.

Thus the court was recently given to the opinion that while it held certain sympathies with those who feel the term of copyright is now far in excess of what the founders would have found tolerable, nontheless the Constitution effectively gives Congress the right to set such term at anything less than forever, since it simply says "limited time."

Welcome to the Brave New World of "limited" meaning "forever and all encompassing minus one."

KFG

Re:Fair use?

[bladernr]

Wherein the rights NOT explicitly given to Congress or the President are reserved to the People themselves.

That is not exactly what the 9th amendment says. To quote:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In other words, just because the right isn't stated, it isn't necessarily denied. Many people confuse privileges and rights, and call their favourite privileges "rights". (Another wide tangent is to point out that what a "right" is is highly dependent on the culture in question anyway - for instance, both Americans and Europeans have a right to free speech, but in America that means you can deny the holocaust ever happened, while a statement such as that is illegal in many European countries.).

The previous poster seems correct: "fair use" is a common-law concept, not grounded in the constitution, that can simply be done away with with an act of Congress. Since the legal concept of "rights" in America is based in the constitution, I think that makes "fair use" a privilege, and its defense must recognize that or be doomed.

Re:Fair use?

[AgNO3]

Actually its not the same. TV broadcast use advertising to pay for producion. Some ad fees go back to the producers and some ad time is left for the local station. In Radio all the ad money goes to the station. Radio is a means to promote music so people will buy an album or song or whatever. TV is the final product.

Re:Fair use?

[Raistlin77]

Don't forget to add that XM/Sirius is also not free. So like iTunes, we XM/Sirius subscribers are paying for this content.

Re:Fair use?

[uncoveror]

Not only that, but you have to pay for satellite radio. Users are already coughing up dough for that music. Why should they have to pay even more? The RIAA are mobsters. Don't buy CDs.

Re:Fair use?

[david duncan scott]

Yes, but paying whom?

If I swipe your lawnmower and sell it to your neighbor, does he get to keep it because he paid for it?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

The key words: "XM Satellite Radio". This wasn't a general purpose radio that was pulled, it was one licensed to be used with their proprietary, DRM'd radio broadcast.

Re:Fair use?

[EvanED]

Scratch that, I think. After doing a little more reading, it looks like Fair Use was inherited from English common law, and not derived from the first amendment. That said, it's likely that the first amendment would provide some fair use protections, as in the case of criticism or parody.

Re:Fair use?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If I swipe your lawnmower and sell it to your neighbor, does he get to keep it because he paid for it?

If I copy your lawnmower and sell it to your neighbor, does he get to keep it because he paid for it?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

If something is broadcast over the air and I can receive it, then it's mine to do with it whatever I want. Not being allowed to make copies for other people is a concession I'm willing to accept, if it saves the life of a starving record producer. But that's it. If I can no longer save what is transmitted over the air, then I want my airwaves back. I sure have better uses for them then transmit ads for the record industry.

Re:Fair use?

[Yartrebo]

One would think that the 1st Amemdment would trump whatever is in the constitution, since amendments are changes to the constitution and thus supercede whatever they changed.

I wonder where our current creative interpretation that copyright trumps the 1st amendment came from?

PS: The most vague and stretched term in the constitution + amendments would have to be the Elastic Clause. Copyright is a close contender though.

Re:Fair use?

[Yartrebo]

The copyright holders (Sony et al) get a good chunk of it and they have authorized the broadcasts, just like Itunes.

Re:Fair use?

[MobyDisk]

No, fair use is title 17, section 107 of US copyright law. Although it could be repealed, it is not something that is grandfathered in by English law, or the bill of rights, or a supreme court decision. Fair use is law.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators - Mod parent post down. Fair use is part of copyright law and is not "based on the ol' Supreme Court Betamax decision". "fair use" has the same constitutional basis that copyright law has.

Re:Fair use?

[Trinn]

Actually legislation doesn't even enter into it most likely. Its all because of the cartel nature of the entertainment industry. If the RIAA got angry enough with XM, they'd simply pull any possibility for them to license the music to broadcast in the first place, thereby signaling a death sentence for XM (most likely).

Re:Fair use?

[damsa]

In the US, privelages and rights are treated the same under the due process clause of the consitution.

Re:Fair use?

[Paradise Pete]

If something is broadcast over the air and I can receive it, then it's mine to do with it whatever I want.

Citations? I'm taking the don'ts.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

But over the long term, the music industry says, Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs?

Why are they worried about digital?
The quality of a cheap AM radio is more than good enough for 99.99% of the so-called 'music' these people (and I use that term very loosely) put out.

Re:Fair use?

[kfg]

I wonder where our current creative interpretation that copyright trumps the 1st amendment came from?

Follow the money.

KFG

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting the Supreme Court did not have a Constitutional basis for its decision in the Betamax decision? Do you mean "fair use" is just a fiction invented by some treasonous judges? Why, yes, that appears to be exactly what you have claimed. I would like to see you back up your claim, perhaps with some evidence.

Congress is free to pass whatever law(s) it likes (even Bills of Attainder). But when the law(s) passed is/are unconstitutional, they aren't worth the paper they are written on (except for, in too many unfortunate cases, a one-time get-out-of-jail-free card for some executive(s) claiming qualified immunity based on the passed law in spite of its unconstitutionality).

Re:Fair use?

[dirty]

The few times I've listened to XM on store demo systems I was not impressed. It wasn't as bad as FM, but it wasn't worth paying for in my opinion. If I'm going to have to pay to listen to music in my car, it should at least sound good.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a 64kbit mp3 assclown.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

scratch that as well

fair use IS based on US Constitutional Principle, Specifically Article 1 Section 8 which talks about copyright

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

the key here "promote the progress", which would be impossible w/o fair use

Re:Fair use?

[Guppy06]

"Are you suggesting the Supreme Court did not have a Constitutional basis for its decision in the Betamax decision?"

It may have had a statutory basis, but that doesn't mean it's a constitutional basis.

"Congress is free to pass whatever law(s) it likes (even Bills of Attainder). But when the law(s) passed is/are unconstitutional, they aren't worth the paper they are written on"

But the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the matter of copyright laws are a purely legislative field (i. e. a political question) and has kept a hands-off approach on all such matters. Betamax was considered fair use because the court felt it fell into the definitions provided by then-existing statute, but Congress has the power to change statutes. If Congress wants to grant "exclusive rights" in new and interesting ways, so long as everybody still has default rights over their own speech (at least before they sign a contract), there's little the courts will say about it.

Or would you rather see the federal courts get even more politicized?

Re:Fair use?

[Guppy06]

"I wonder where our current creative interpretation that copyright trumps the 1st amendment came from?"

Looking at the examples of other repealed content in the Constitution, the First would either have to rewrite the offending content entirely (as was done with the Eleventh Amendment, the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Seventeenth Amendment), or include explicit words like "is hereby repealed" (Twenty-First Amendment). Unless or until there's a new amendment that says something like "The Congress shall not have the power to secure for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries," the First Amendment and the Copyright Clause will have to coexist as far as the federal courts are concerned.

Re:Fair use?

[kkiller]

Nearly. They are using the aacPlus codec, which sounds alright in 64kbps, but certainly is not CD quality.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM_Satellite_Ra dio#Technology">Quote</a>: "Audio channels on XM are digitally compressed using the aacPlus codec from Coding Technologies for most channels, and the AMBE codec from Digital Voice Systems for some voice channels. Due to lack of bandwidth and too many channels, the maximum bitrate XM broadcast from its satellite per music channel is limited to 64kbs."

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Isn't it considered "fair use" to record a broadcast for personal use? This is exactly like someone recording a TV show with their VCR.

Sure it is, as long as the broadcaster is paying an analogous amount to the copyright holder for the right to broadcast the material in each case. I don't know if that's true here or not, but it seems to me that this is exactly what copyright is for: the copyright holder can force the broadcaster to pay them an amount commensurate with what they think they'll lose in individual sales before allowing them to broadcast the material. It's up to the broadcaster how they finance that payment; if their business model is viable, they'll manage, and if not, they won't be able to deprive the holder of income they're due. Either way, it's in both parties' interests to go for the solution that maximises the number of people who will pay to hear the material.

Whether or not the current copyright arrangements are ethical, particularly when it comes to artists signing away their copyright to middlemen, is an entirely different question, of course.

Re:Fair use?

[cpt kangarooski]

Isn't it considered "fair use" to record a broadcast for personal use?

Sometimes it is. Depends on the circumstances.

Nor is it any different then hooking up a radio to a tape recorder and recording favorite music.

Well, no one would bother conducting a fair use analysis for that. It's non-actionable, which preempts the need for a fair use defense.

I sure hope they don't start pushing Congress to put DRM chips in every audio recording device out there

Well, this process started in the early 90's. There's a reason why people use computers to rip and burn CDs and interface with mp3 players, rather than using standalone devices. Minidisc, DAT, Audio CDR -- they're all crippled by the law the record industry got passed. They didn't foresee mp3 players (or at least didn't write the law properly with regard to those) and we've been lucky in the one court case to ban (or cripple) those.

Re:Fair use?

[cpt kangarooski]

No, fair use is based on the Folsom v. Marsh case in 1841. It directly contradicts the statutory law, and was not recognized by Congress until 1976. It has to have a constitutional origin, since it can't possibly be a mere interpretation of the prior statutes.

Re:Fair use?

[StrongGlad]

Probably OT, but in most jurisdictions, the answer is yes, he DOES get to keep it.

Generally speaking, a bona fide purchaser (i.e., one who is not in cahoots with the thief; has no reason to know the item is stolen; and pays good money for the item in an "arms-length" transaction) is immune from any claims by a prior victim of theft.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not legal advice. It's an opinion on the character of the resources involved: spectrum and information. If you subscribe to the concept that your rights end where mine start, then it's hard to justify that you can reserve the exclusive right to use spectrum which passes through me and my property and at the same time forbid me to use the information that you transmitted through me. I am willing to accept limitations, but within reason. Forbidding me to record information is not acceptable. If I can't use the information as I want, at least for personal purposes, then I don't see why I should grant you the exclusive rights to use the radio spectrum. I have better uses for it.

Re:Fair use?

[ClamIAm]

the Constitution effectively gives Congress the right to set such term at anything less than forever, since it simply says "limited time."

I feel the Constitution should be amended so that "limited time" is defined better. I don't know if there's some strange irony here, but pre-Bush II Iraq actually had a pretty sensible copyright provision. No more than 25 years after an author's death, and no more than 50 years total. I could live with that. Life plus 75 could give a work nearly 175 years of protection. Is this at all sane?

Re:Fair use?

[drauh]

great. any finite time is less than forever. talk about a case for more rigorous mathematics education... and i'm only being partially facetious, here.

Re:Fair use?

[Aurisor]

1) No.
2) Yes.

Re:Fair use?

[Mancat]

If you copy his lawnmower and sell it to his neighbor, what does he lose?

Re:Fair use?

[EvanED]

Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F.Cas. 342 (1841), is the earliest US case I've found that establishes Fair Use in the US. It's cited as such, both on a couple informal websites and at least in one later decision. Folsom does not cite the First Amendment. Folsom does not cite the "Progress of Science and useful Arts" clause (properly done it would also require the 10th Amendment). In fact, Folsom doesn't cite The Constitution at all.

However, Folsom DOES cite Dodsley v. Kinnersley, Whittingham v. Wooler, and Tonson v. Walker, three British cases that established Fair Use within English Common law.

Re:Fair use?

[gnasher719]

'' Isn't it considered "fair use" to record a broadcast for personal use? ''

Don't know about Windows, but there is some Macintosh software out there that claims it can record songs from Internet radio with Artist + Title added automatically - and not just one station, but as many as your Internet connection allows. That might be 8 MBit / sec, enough for 64 128 KBit streams.

I don't know whether that is legal or not, but I wouldn't consider it "fair use".

Re:Fair use?

[zcat_NZ]

Infomative, but WRONG.

fair use covers those cases which should normally be covered by copyright (copying all or part of a copyright work with the intent to redistribute) but where an exemption has been made because the use 'adds creativity'. Example; making a parody, commentary, etc.

UNREGULATED use is use of copyrighted material where copyright law has no legitimate business interfering. Playing the material you legally purchased through whatever equipment happens to be capable of the task. Backup copies, library lending, personal copying (such as home recording) where the intent is not to distribute the work to others. Copyright law has no legitimate business interfering with these uses at all.

Attacks on fair use are only a small part of the problem. The MAFIAA have managed to persuade the vast majority of the population that ALL use of copyright material has to be under permission of the copyright holder. As if unregulated use never even existed!!

Give us back our ownership rights!

Re:Fair use?

[Generic Guy]

If I swipe your lawnmower and sell it to your neighbor, does he get to keep it because he paid for it?
If I copy your lawnmower and sell it to your neighbor, does he get to keep it because he paid for it?

This is kind of a asinine hypothetical, given the context of the article in question. Let me rephrase it for you:

If I copy your lawnmower and keep it, does the lawnmower distributor still deserve a chunk of money for it?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you copy his lawnmower and sell it to his neighbor, what does he lose?

Instead of lawn mowers, lets try "chip testers". You agree to sell three Chip testers to your neighbor. He reverse engineers the first one and cancels the order for the other two. He then starts selling his almost identical "chip tester" to everyone for one third the cost, because reverse engineering the tester was much cheaper than developing it. Everybody begins buying chip testers from him instead of you, leaving you stuck wit the bill for developing it in the first place.

Gosh, your right, what did you lose in that senario? [It is in fact a true story, and despite not losing anything according to "mancat", the company went bankrupt]

Re:Fair use?

[ShaneThePain]

no.

Re:Fair use?

[CODiNE]

Actually didn't the Betamax decision give us the right to time-shift only? That was the sufficient non-infringing use of VCR's which allowed us to have them right? Keeping an archive copy for perpetual use was not a right given if I understand correctly. It seems the time-shifting argument has been abused to mean "If it was on TV it's mine forever"... but technically we have no such right do we? Anybody know if legally we can record shows and watch them more than once?

Re:Fair use?

[skeptictank]

Are all the satellite radio bitstreams limited to 64kbps per channel?

Re:Fair use?

[teknomage1]

How the hell did you copy a lawnmower?

Re:Fair use?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How the hell did you copy a lawnmower?

With a hacked Xerox. I also managed to put it inside itself, and now I have two.

Re:Fair use?

[sumdumass]

What in the first amendment would trump copywrite law or vice versa??

Re:Fair use?

[cliffwoolley]

In my humble opinion, FM radio sounds substantially better than the digital satellite radio I've heard. The compression artifacts in the digital radio with that low a bit rate are VERY apparent to any kind of moderately discerning listener. One particularly annoying problem is that the highs (e.g., cymbals) get to sounding really "crunchy". To me, it's the radio equivalent of having somebody run their fingers down the chalkboard. It's that bad. At least with FM radio (that's properly modulated) the worst of the problems is a propensity for excessive bassiness. I can live with that a lot more readily than I can distorted highs.

Why I could possibly want to both pay for the satellite service AND record it for posterity is beyond me. I'd rather just buy the CD and have it sound the way it was intended.

Re:Fair use?

[kfg]

. . .and i'm only being partially facetious, here.

You're a better than man than I am. I went for it all the way.

KFG

Re:Fair use?

[TheDugong]

What, are you retarded? A lawnmower copier. What else would you use?

Re:Fair use?

[Heembo]

You get 128kbs on their website via online streaming, and that service is include with membership.

Re:Fair use?

[mabhatter654]

Actually, like another poster said, there is no "common law" right to invention or copyright... It's the inate right of every human to absorb and recreate what they see and hear. The constitution takes away that right for the "common good" ... if it wasn't written into it, the Feds couldn't ever create copyright!! It's a funny sort of thing happening lately where the real rights of men that can never be defined are being userped because they're not expressely allowed. We're becoming a nation of fiat law versus common law.. where it's not legal UNLESS there's a law for it... or at least there should be .. that's a scary thought.

Re:Fair use?

[Yartrebo]

speech and expression are copyrightable and copyrights can impinge on free expression.

One example I can think off right away is Disney's WWII propaganda films. They're illegal to copy due to copyright (WWII wasn't that long age) and Disney refuses to sell new copies, yet they're very important in the study of racism, US history, fascism, and corporate-government relationships - all quite relevant to today's political discourse.

Another is that documentaries must get copyright clearance if so little as a TV is in the background of one of their shots or a radio can be heard, however faintly, in the background. For politically sensitive documentaries, that clearance is often hard to get for any price. Though there exists 'fair use', it is so painful for a court to rule against you that directors will just not use the material.

Copyright also means that one must get permission to copy virtually any news article to promote your agenda. While it's usually possible to rewrite everything and hire a staff to take pictures for your use, this makes free speech a priviledge of the very wealthy, since it is extremely expensive to get world news firsthand and expediently without copying.

DRM (which gets its leverage via copyright) intrudes far, far worse - essentially implenting prior restraint.

Re:Fair use?

[drsmithy]

I feel the Constitution should be amended so that "limited time" is defined better. I don't know if there's some strange irony here, but pre-Bush II Iraq actually had a pretty sensible copyright provision. No more than 25 years after an author's death, and no more than 50 years total. I could live with that. Life plus 75 could give a work nearly 175 years of protection. Is this at all sane?

No independent, arbitrary number will work in the long run. They will all be replaced by newer, bigger independent and arbitrary numbers (as has been done up until now).

Since copyright is fundamentally an economic tool, I say copyright term needs to be linked to the economic aspect of whatever it's protecting. Either the amount of revenue it generates as a proportion of the creation costs, or something depending on the demand for the product.

There is certainly no justification whatsoever for copyright protection to last beyond the creator's death and, IMHO, little justification at all for it to last even close to their lifetime.

Alternatively, we could just bin the idea of copyright altogether and rely on the free market, telling content producers they may protect their content as best they can with the technology available to them (my preferred solution).

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, Sirius and XM use spectral band replication. The MP3Pro format also uses this and produces some pretty good results with 64kbit/s (~ equivalent to 128kbps MP3). It ain't CD quality, but it is a reasonable substitute for much of the population.

Re:Fair use?

[roman_mir]

Yes, by copying any material object without getting some license first you are certainly violating some patents (this is from point of view of legal stuff.)

From point of view of morality: if an organization spent a considerable amount of effort (read time/money) on design/development/testing of some specific technology, which you are now making worthless by removing the natural monopoly on this technology from the licensed distributor, you are making the work of these people just as worthless (but not useless, if there are people who are willing to use this work.) Thus you are preventing the same organization from profitting from its own creations, which in turn may mean that this organization will not be able to produce anything else of any value.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

Unless there is specific wording saying that copyright is repealed in the amendment then that simply isn't the case. For example, the first amendment has the "establishment clause" and the "free exercise clause." These can not both exist at the same time without some tension, but we them as checks on each other. Likewise absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist when there is copyright but they are both enumerated in the constitution, so we have to come to a compromise.

Re:Fair use?

[sumdumass]

Well the disney movies and the news articles are trying to use someone elses speech. It isn't really your free speech.

The documentry issue as well as the others have an exception to the copyright clause in some cases. But as you stated it probably is a hassle to use those exceptions. Still i'm not seeing the link between your free speech rights and the use of someone elses materials or content.

I belive that educational use in copyright law allow for material to be used in an educational form. The study of racism, etc, should be covered by that if you can find an existing copy. I'm not sure if the first amendment would compell someone to copy somethign just so you could review it though. Of course this is my opinion from reading it directly and not taking into acount for any interpretations that may exist.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

Absurd. It wasn't like we had a copyright office etc. working and then the first amendment came along and we shut it down and then later big business brought it back. The copyright office was set up almost immediately after the first ammendment was written into law and none of the people who voted in the law nor the people who drafted the amendment saw any contradiction. For an amendment to repeal something that is explicitly enumerated elsewhere it has to has to explicitly do so as well. There is a difference between a constitution that says "1a)Congress may create copyrights for limited time...3b)People have the right to freedom of expression" and one that says "1a)Congress may create copyrights for limited time...3b)Section 1a is hereby repealed."

For example in the first amendment itself you have conflicting language in that you have both the establishment clause and the free exercise--the tension between the implications of the two has been well documented in supreme court decisions spanning many many years.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

"There is certainly no justification whatsoever for copyright protection to last beyond the creator's death." Please qualitfy this. If I copyright something today and die tomorrow, why shouldn't my estate be allowed to receive the copyright? If I had lived an extra day what would that change that my copyright should last an extra day than if I hadn't?

Re:Fair use?

[kfg]

I haven't a clue how your post is responsive to mine, but:

It wasn't like we had a copyright office etc. working and then the first amendment came along and we shut it down . . .

No, what we had was a copyright office etc. working under British rule, shut it down and then opened a new one after the First Amendment came along.

The copyright office was set up almost immediately after the first ammendment was written into law and none of the people who voted in the law nor the people who drafted the amendment saw any contradiction.

Absurd. It was a matter of great debate and commentary at the time.

"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land..." - Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison on reading just drafted Constitution; Decemeber 20, 1787

Please note the phrase "restriction against monopolies." He is refering to copyrights and patents.

"The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression." - Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Madison; July 31, 1778

In point of fact one of the stimuli for the First Amendment was the idea of copyright included in the Constitution. It was included to make it clear that the power of speech and the press was innate and reserved to the people and that copyright was overtly an incursion upon this right.

. . .and then later big business brought it back.

Nobody has even suggested anything of the kind, however, big IP business was created by the monopoly powers granted by Congress and then big IP business used their money to succeed in expanding those monopoly powers from very limited copyrights of only 14 years duration to almost all inclusive monopoly rights that last for generations.

As an example of how copyright law has been expanded and manipulated by the interested parties go and try to find free Bach sheet music. It is possible, but it is not easy.

KFG

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

"Please note the phrase "restriction against monopolies." He is refering to copyrights and patents."

I don't buy it. If that is what he was referring to then why would he say "I do not like... the omission of [some rights to serve as preventative measures]." He wasn't writing this to claim that the Constitution itself violated any of these points, just that it didn't stop the congress from in the future violating them.

Copyright is spelled out in the constitution, if he had a problem with it he wouldn't phrase it, "there is no right enumerated which prevents the government from issuing and enforcing copyright and patents," rather, his complaint would be the more immediate, "there is an explicit right (of congress) enumerated that specifically goes out of its way to allow them to do just that!"

Re:Fair use?

[Yartrebo]

The Disney examples are relevant because they're perfect examples of the military-industrial complex. It's also why Disney hates people mentioning the films. The films are the primary sources. Not copying parts (or the whole) of the film is like writing a paper using only secondary sources. It's far less credible. It's like writing a paper about Soviet or Nazi propaganda without having the propaganda materials available to corroborate your claims.

Virtually noone watches those films for pleasure. Today, they're entirely political and historical.

Well the disney movies and the news articles are trying to use someone elses speech. It isn't really your free speech.

The disney examples are generally attacking Disney and the US government, and are in a totally different class, but here's to addressing the later: Free discourse should not put any hinderences to expression. Often the easiest way to express oneself is to reference or flat out copy (with attribution) already written statements. Blogs are good example of this in practice.

Oh, and I can add another item to the list of copyright vs. free speech: Scientology. Look up http://www.xenu.net/ for how they use copyright to sick lawyers at their critics.

Re:Fair use?

[sumdumass]

Ok, Scientology, this an exelent example. Especialy when that group is claiming to be a religion. Reporting on a group and thier inerworkings is free speech. Using thier material might still be subject to copyright law though. Maybe someday someone with enough money will gain enough legal ground to beet them.

Unfortunatly, I'm not sure I see the relevence in the disney case. Your still free to comment on thier actions. You can comment on the actual movies themselves. But taking thier property to enforce your free speech is a bit of a stretch on the first amendment. Copyright law allows for newsworthy items to be duplicated, educational uses and critics already. So if you can get ahold of them then I'm not sure whatb would stop it form being used in those manors but, the first amendment doesn't compell them to give access to anything they own. It is copyright law allowing you to use someone elses content for your free speech.

Maybe i'mm missing somethign. I can see the want to use the originals. I can see the impact it would have. However i just cannot see were the first amendment allows you to compell them to lend you a copy. If you can obtain a copy by any other (legal)means, then i don't see how they could stop you from using it though. OR is this the case? This article seems to show they are availible.

Re:Fair use?

[kfg]

He wasn't writing this to claim that the Constitution itself violated any of these points, just that it didn't stop the congress from in the future violating them.

Quite the contrary. He was specifically arguing that the creation of monoplies by government fiat did violate these points. He was quite vociferously against them.

. . .he wouldn't phrase it . . .

He not only would, he did, and it was understood as such. Here is part of Madison's reply:

"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government. But is it clear that as encouragements to literary works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely less danger of this abuse in our governments than in most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few. Where the power is in the few it is natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger can not be very great that the few will be thus favored."

Note the phrase "literary works and ingenious discoveries."

You may not understand the formal written language of the 18th century, but they did; and they were clearly discussing the monopoply powers to be granted by copyrights and patents; Jefferson was arguing that a Bill of Rights was necessary to oppose the excesses of government and business monopolies which should not be allowed to exist; and Madison, as he would continue to do in his writings that came to be part of the Federalist Papers, as well as those arguments by Hamilton, argues that the Constitution already protects against such excesses including those of business monopolies granted by government fiat without the need of a Bill of Rights.

I'm just pulling out snippets from piles of written documents. Go to the library and read the piles. You will see.

KFG

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm completely ignorant on this sort of thing, but I'm throwing out a wild guess that, in the first case, the neighbor could take you to small claims court to get back the money that he paid you for the lawn mower, provided he can convince a judge that he didn't know the lawnmower was stolen.

I stick by the general guideline that all comparisons of intellectual property to regular ol' property suck.

Re:Fair use?

[drsmithy]

If I copyright something today and die tomorrow, why shouldn't my estate be allowed to receive the copyright? If I had lived an extra day what would that change that my copyright should last an extra day than if I hadn't?

Because copyright is, ostensibly, an incentive for you to create new things. You can't do much new creating if you're dead.

Do you think employers should continue to pay employees' wage to their "estates" after they die ? If not, why not - what's the difference ?

Re:Fair use?

[bit01]

Welcome to the Brave New World of "limited" meaning "forever and all encompassing minus one."

Unfortunately a classic example of a mathematical amateur making a mathematical judgement. Any reasonable person would've said limited with respect to a person's lifetime.

---

Unregulated DRM = Total Customer Control = Ultimate Customer Lockin = Death of the free market.

Re:Fair use?

[kfg]

Unfortunately a classic example of a mathematical amateur making a mathematical judgement.

No, the question before the judge was one of law, not mathematics, a field in which the judge is an expert. What is the legal definition of "limited."

I think, however, that you will find the mathematical definition of a set of limited counting numbers (since by axiom our units are years) is any noninfinate set.

Any reasonable person would've said limited with respect to a person's lifetime.

What has this got to do with mathematical definitions? "Reasonable Person" is a legal term.

KFG

Re:Fair use?

[1u3hr]

Because copyright is, ostensibly, an incentive for you to create new things. You can't do much new creating if you're dead. Do you think employers should continue to pay employees' wage to their "estates" after they die ? If not, why not - what's the difference ?

If you're an artist who is, say, 85 years old, or have AIDS, or live in Iraq; who will publish you, fearing you could die tomorrow and they'd lose most of the profit? Thus no incentive for you to create. So while I don't think the current centuries of copyright protection are a good idea, I'd support something like 14-20 years after the creator's death. Creative works can earn money independently of the creator being living or dead, so the "wages" argument isn't relevant.

Re:Fair use?

[drivekiller]

"Don't buy CDs." First sensible comment in the whole thread. Consider culture as a superset of software development. Scratch your own itch (play your own guitar) and be free.

Re:Fair use?

[bit01]

Your reasoning is a good example of "When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

This is a common problem with many of the lawyer posters on /. - they often have a blind spot to the fact that much of the terminology and ideas they push have reasonable definitions outside the particular legal definitions they've been trained to use. Since written law is applicable to so much of human activity it's easy to fall into the trap of assuming the law is the definitive description of human activity but that's simply not the case. There is no definitive description and other points of view are equally valid.

In other words just because there's legal definitions of the terms you mention doesn't mean there's no other definitions as well. In this case I was making the point that the supreme court's legal definition of limited time is bunk compared to other definitions. It's also quite arbitrary and does not correspond either to the points-of-views of either what I regard as experts on limits and infinities (mathematicians have many definitions depending on the context) or the general populace (most "reasonable people" have the intuition that "limited time" corresponds to a small fraction of a person's lifetime e.g. "on sale for limited time" or "I'm only going to be here a limited time").

This problem unfortunately means that legal reasoning frequently builds castles in the air that have little correspondence with reality. The legal logic is solid, but just like much of mathematical logic it's abstract and doesn't reflect reality.

---

Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.

Re:Fair use?

[kfg]

The Constitution is a legal document written by lawyers, using legal definitions and intended to interpreted as such.The creation of definitions is often arbitrary, but they are defined in the first place to remove that arbitrariness, particularly in law, which I think we can perhaps agree should not be applicable arbitrarily. At least not under a Constitutional government.

The context of limited time with regards to copyright already existed under British law which allowed for copyrights in perpetuity.

The reason for the particular phrasing is because, in fact, reasonable men were arguing about it and could not come to a mutually agreed upon "reasonable" limit to monopoly terms, the idea of "limited" already being understood to include multiple generations (unto the seventh generation and such).

Are there many definitions of "limited" depending upon the context? Certainly.

But we're talking about a particular context here, not "some" context, and thus a specific definition of "limited."

Not in perpetuity. Something less than forever.

I do not agree with current copyright law, in part because I am Jeffersonian in my view of this matter, and in part because much of current copyright law is in violation of all legal principles as they have ever been defined or understood before.

But this particular ruling is not, no matter how badly it sucks.

The flaw is in the Constitution, not the ruling, just as it was for issues of slavery, which all reasonable men, by the very virtue of reason, must abhor; and yet was an American institution we had to fight a civil war over to finally see abolished.

The solution is simple. Place an explicit limit on terms of rights in the Constitution, or remove the clause outright.

KFG

Re:Fair use?

[bit01]

why shouldn't my estate be allowed to receive the copyright?

why should my estate be allowed to receive the copyright?

Anybody paid by the hour isn't going to get more after they're dead.

Unless they're a zombie.

---

The name "Copy Right" is incorrect. It's really "Copy Control Privilege". "Patent" is incorrect. It's really "Idea Control Privilege".

Re:Fair use?

[bit01]

which you are now making worthless

Nonsense. Possibly reduced in value but not worthless. In fact, if the copier wasn't going to buy it then it doesn't reduce the value at all. In fact it increases the net value to society as a whole. A net ethical and moral good, whether the originator likes it or not.

by removing the natural monopoly

The unnatural monopoly enforced by artifical laws you mean?

on this technology from the licensed distributor, you are making the work of these people just as worthless

Please, enough with the emotive, content free language. This is not an either-or situation. Just because something has no copyrights or patents doesn't make it worthless and just because it has copyrights or patents doesn't make it worthwhile.

Current copyright law is only one of an infinite number of copyright law possibilities. Discussing these possibilities is one of the things done on /. . The lazy, parasitic freeloaders at the RIAA will never consider alternatives - they're making too much money for minimal work using existing copyright law.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

Re:Fair use?

[drsmithy]

If you're an artist who is, say, 85 years old, or have AIDS, or live in Iraq; who will publish you, fearing you could die tomorrow and they'd lose most of the profit?

If you're a bus driver who is, say, 85 years old, or have AIDs, or live in Iraq; who will employ you, fearing you could die tomorrow and they'd lose any ability to make money from you ?

That's actually an interesting example you have, given that if copyright didn't extend past death the publisher would be in the best position imaginable - the only copy (at the time) of a given work and nobody to share the profits with. Shortly after first publishing, of course, duplicates start to show up - but then all the profit is going to the seller with the most efficient production, in which case your hypothetical publisher will live and die by the measure of how well he does his job, as he should.

Thus no incentive for you to create.

There's as much incentive to create as there is to do any other sort of work.

Creative works can earn money independently of the creator being living or dead, so the "wages" argument isn't relevant.

So can the result of other workers' labours. The computer systems I have setup will be saving money and/or generating revenue for their owners _long_ after I have ceased being paid by them.

To put it bluntly, what justification is there for people creating copyrightable products get such an incredibly sweeter ride - and be excused the pressure of market forces - than any other kind of worker ?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you have justed used a mirror... seems like a lot of work otherwise.

Re:Fair use?

[CrimsonAvenger]

It seems the time-shifting argument has been abused to mean "If it was on TV it's mine forever"... but technically we have no such right do we?

No, no, no!

We have only Rights to keep copies made for time-shifting for limited periods. Certainly no forever. Say, forever less one day? Or perhaps we should be generous to the poor Copyright holders, and limit our time-shifting to the life of the media less one day?

Re:Fair use?

[roman_mir]

Nonsense. Possibly reduced in value but not worthless. In fact, if the copier wasn't going to buy it then it doesn't reduce the value at all. In fact it increases the net value to society as a whole. A net ethical and moral good, whether the originator likes it or not. - useful but worthless. Those MP3 files copied from computer to computer that people want to listen to, they are useful, since people want them. They are also worthless, because it is not possible to 'compete' with the price of 0$

The unnatural monopoly enforced by artifical laws you mean? - I meant artifficial actually, made a mistake here for sure.

Please, enough with the emotive, content free language. This is not an either-or situation. Just because something has no copyrights or patents doesn't make it worthless and just because it has copyrights or patents doesn't make it worthwhile.

Current copyright law is only one of an infinite number of copyright law possibilities. Discussing these possibilities is one of the things done on /. . The lazy, parasitic freeloaders at the RIAA will never consider alternatives - they're making too much money for minimal work using existing copyright law. - this is an either/or situation. It is good that we cannot copy items the same simple way we can copy electronicly recorded information. Who would want to spend 20K, 30K, 50K, 100K, 1000K for a car, that they can copy for free?

Certainly patents and copyrights do not make materials worthwile. What makes them worthwile is the willingness of people to use these materials. If people consider products useful, then it totally makes sense for the producer to make sure that noone else is infringing on his/her copyrights/patents, so that they don't dilute the worthiness of the products.

The lazy, parasitic freeloaders at the RIAA - you know that the exactly the same argument can be sent right back? The lazy, parasitic, illegal and immoral freeloaders in front of their computers who are downloading the illegaly distributed copyrighted materials.

Re:Fair use?

[dirty]

Maybe it's just where I live. FM is incredibly congested in Philadelphia, PA. I don't think I can find a single FM station where I can't hear something and there are a few where I can hear two distinct radio stations. The crap that is being played doesn't help the situation much either.

Re:Fair use?

[JesseMcDonald]

Simple: you examine the pattern (the design), and build a new one with your own raw materials. It's the same as for duplicating a book, or a CD, except for the complexity of the pattern.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

At $16 and up for a CD that basically costs pennies to produce, compared to the Movie Industry, where movies cost millions, and hit the shelves as DVD for around $20 dollars and then the price starts dropping as the movie gets older,,,,
Has anyone heard of the record companys dropping the price on new CD's as they age....
Heck you can get old movies in the bargan bin at Walmart for under $5
or you can even rent the DVD's from the video store...
All the RIAA wants is the maximum restrictions place on the public, hell if they had there way, everytime you played a CD that you purchased you would have to pay them. Or lets see, how about each time you sang or hummed a tune to yourself, yup, you better pay them, that is piracy!!!!!!
Don't get me wrong, i am all for the artist getting paid for the performances they do. and the songs that they write. Just how much of the $16 does the artist get, and how much lines the pockets of the RIAA PAC fund to supply the croocked and self important politians in washington? Thank you

Re:Fair use?

[tutori]

Well, one reason might be to keep people from killing you in order to release the copyright on your works. I would not want to be a person that just created a popular creative work, which other people wanted to get in on, since all they would have to do to be able to use it is kill me...

Re:Fair use?

[1u3hr]

If you're a bus driver who is, say, 85 years old, or have AIDs, or live in Iraq; who will employ you?

You're missing the point. You could be an 85-year-old AIDS-suffering Iraqi, and write a (potentially) best-selling novel (or Jazz composition, movie script, or software) just as likely, in fact probably more likely, than some hale and hearty 20-something young Turk (who might well be a better bus driver, though). If you drop dead the day after handing over the ms to your publisher, he can still make a fortune. But if the copyright expires with you, immediately anyone can copy and sell or give away their own edition. It becomes like Cheapbytes selling Linux distros at just over cost. The bus driver will create no value after he stops working, a writer only starts earning income for the publisher when he finishes creating and there is a product to sell.

To put it bluntly, what justification is there for people creating copyrightable products get such an incredibly sweeter ride - and be excused the pressure of market forces - than any other kind of worker?

A tiny percentage of writers and creative artists of all kinds earns any living at all from it. A writer is paid no salary for his work, most can only write in hours stolen from a job to pay the rent. If they get a publisher they will be paid perhaps 5, up to 10% of the cover price. They will be in the elite if they sell more than a few thousand copies -- earning them maybe a dollar an hour for their invested time. Most books' sales have declined to nothing within a year of publishing. The very few that are reprinted are the ones you're so envious of. Publishers depend on these to finance all the books that don't get so far. A publisher gets perhaps 40% of the retail cost, leaving 60% to the distributors and retailers. Out of that about 1/3 goes to the printer, a few thousand to editing, layout, art.

if copyright didn't extend past death the publisher would be in the best position imaginable - the only copy (at the time) of a given work and nobody to share the profits with. Shortly after first publishing, of course, duplicates start to show up - but then all the profit is going to the seller with the most efficient production, in which case your hypothetical publisher will live and die by the measure of how well he does his job, as he should.

Somewhat covered above, but the publisher only pays a small percentage to the author anyway. He still has paid the entire cost of editing and design of the book. If anyone can duplicate the book for the cost of paper, of course they will undercut him, having paid nothing to create the book. And who will publicise it? Send copies for review? Why bother, when someone else will profit as soon as demand starts to take off? He loses any ability to profit from a hardback, to sell movie rights, translation, etc.

There's as much incentive to create as there is to do any other sort of work.

Most creators don't get paid till long after their creation has been sold to the public. Your average job pays by the week or month. An author may not see anything for a year or more.

The computer systems I have setup will be saving money and/or generating revenue for their owners _long_ after I have ceased being paid by them.

You chose to sell your labour at an hourly rate rather than license a "product". I'm sure you were paid well on delivery if not before. Few artists get that choice. Before copyright they had to rely on patronage; which meant writing for the taste of rich benefactors rather than the public.

Anyway, this is getting messy. Boil it down: unlike, say, the music industry, publishing doesn't have fat margins going on coke and hookers. Most of the money you pay for a book goes to the retailer, distributor or printer. What will change this is not cutting out the lousy 5% going to the author (or his estate) but technology improving distribution, instant books on demand, &/or readable e-books. But, being in the trade, I'm dubious that, though the products will be cheaper, that they'll be better than the current system produces.

Re:Fair use?

[winwar]

And when was last time a federal court seriously entertained 9th Amendment issues? At best raising that issue is just covering all your legal bases. I doubt it would have a chance in hell to beat an interstate commerce clause argument.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

How is paying you money for an old work an incentive for new work? The only incentive for making the new work is that you will get paid for the new work.

Lets say you have a wife who has a disability and you have a terminal disease. All you are good at is art. You want her to be taken care of even when you are gone. There, that is an incentive for you to create a work now, and even though you won't be alive to receive the benefits of it for yourself, you still get a benefit out of it: you help your wife. So it isn't incompatible with providing an incentive to create things: the incentive is still there, and it is a lower incentive if the thing can't generate money after you are dead. Can't you see that?

I suppose you would like to do away with inheritance as well and let the Government get everything you would leave your children?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How the hell did you copy a lawnmower?"

Nanites?

Re:Fair use?

[kimvette]

Your neighbor designed the AMD K5 and K5? Wow, he was pretty resourceful and he's kicking your chip distributor's ass in performance! :D

Re:Fair use?

[kimvette]

That sounds reasonable, given MPAA and RIAA reasoning for extending copyright.

Re:Fair use?

[drsmithy]

You're missing the point. You could be an 85-year-old AIDS-suffering Iraqi, and write a (potentially) best-selling novel (or Jazz composition, movie script, or software) just as likely, in fact probably more likely, than some hale and hearty 20-something young Turk (who might well be a better bus driver, though). If you drop dead the day after handing over the ms to your publisher, he can still make a fortune. But if the copyright expires with you, immediately anyone can copy and sell or give away their own edition. It becomes like Cheapbytes selling Linux distros at just over cost. The bus driver will create no value after he stops working, a writer only starts earning income for the publisher when he finishes creating and there is a product to sell.

Well then, the publisher should come up with a model that allows him to recoup his investment in the artist and make a tidy profit that doesn't rely on buying market-distorting, special-case laws to make it viable.

It used to be that "publishers" were special because they were the only ones who could afford the infrastructure for reproduction and distribution. Then doing that became (relatively) cheap and easy, so someone dreamed up copyright as a way of artificially creating a similar level of scarcity on the supply side. More modern technology has since come along - most recently, the internet - and made reproduction and distribution _so_ cheap and easy that the shaky conceptual foundations of copyright are really starting to become obvious.

A tiny percentage of writers and creative artists of all kinds earns any living at all from it. A writer is paid no salary for his work, most can only write in hours stolen from a job to pay the rent. If they get a publisher they will be paid perhaps 5, up to 10% of the cover price. They will be in the elite if they sell more than a few thousand copies -- earning them maybe a dollar an hour for their invested time. Most books' sales have declined to nothing within a year of publishing. The very few that are reprinted are the ones you're so envious of. Publishers depend on these to finance all the books that don't get so far. A publisher gets perhaps 40% of the retail cost, leaving 60% to the distributors and retailers. Out of that about 1/3 goes to the printer, a few thousand to editing, layout, art.

Outdated business models do not justify legislation to keep them going. We don't cry for buggy whip manufacturers anymore, either.

Somewhat covered above, but the publisher only pays a small percentage to the author anyway. He still has paid the entire cost of editing and design of the book. If anyone can duplicate the book for the cost of paper, of course they will undercut him, having paid nothing to create the book. And who will publicise it? Send copies for review? Why bother, when someone else will profit as soon as demand starts to take off? He loses any ability to profit from a hardback, to sell movie rights, translation, etc.

_Someone_ will profit from it. Logically, the person who most deserves to.

Again, you are trying to say that an almost certainly obselete business model should be protected by legislation. This seems to me to be a fundamentally flawed argument.

Before copyright they had to rely on patronage; which meant writing for the taste of rich benefactors rather than the public.

Sounds like an identical system to todays, with "benefactors" instead of "publishers" (or "movie studios", "recording studios" - take your pick).

People creating art for art's sake have never - and will never - consider how much money it can make to be an important criteria. Copyright is, for them, effectively irrelevant. The only people copyright really matters to are the middle men who want to profit from the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works. Thus the people who "create" for them are compelled to create whatever it is those middle men deem worth of their funding. Practically speaking, it's no different to the "ben

Re:Fair use?

[zcat_NZ]

With what incentive?

It's only 'valuable' (in terms of being able to make a significant profit from publication) while you're still alive.

The only other reason you might be killed is that the information is more valuable than your life. In which case the would-be assassin only needs one copy (and they can duplicated it illegally if they must, which would be cheaper and less risky than having you killed). If you've priced an individual copy of your work above the cost of having you killed, you're simply hoarding information to the detriment of humanity and probably deserve to die.

Re:Fair use?

[1u3hr]

It used to be that "publishers" were special because they were the only ones who could afford the infrastructure for reproduction and distribution.

Few publishers own this "infrastructure". For the most part anyone can plug into it, and they do. It's far less monopolistic than the music industry. You're assuming that publishers simply and automatically reproduce a book delivered to them by the author.

Actually, my job, working for publishers, is to take the steaming piles of crap that authors produce and turn them into readable attractive priducts. Have you ever read a self-published book? Few seem to know how to use the spellcheck for a start. Would you like all books to be of that standard? If no one pays people like me, they will be.

_Someone_ will profit from it. Logically, the person who most deserves to.

"Logically"? I can shoplift and sell the goods, am I then then more "deserving" and efficient than the shopkeeper?

The volume of material will skyrocket, as "new" works that are simply minor modifcations of old ones will abound.

This is good?

I, personally, think the best path would be to scrap copyright altogether and simply let the free market have its head. "Publishers" who can best use technology to protect their profit margins (ie: their "creator's" content) will be in the best position to pay the best creators the best money for their work. Those who cannot will fall by the wayside.

What this means is DRM to the maximum extent. Products will be fucked up and made harder to use; books may be released in some proprietary digital format that can only be used on certain locked-down reading devices. This would create a corporate monopoly and barriers to entry much worse than now unless you just want to give away your work.

To get back to my main point, I see no reason why "content creators" - and particularly the copyright-dependent middle men that profit from their work - should have special legislation granted to protect their business models, effectively giving them a license to print money.

Why not? Everyone's "business model" is protected. E.g., your average working stiff has legislation to protect his "business model" of toiling and being paid at the end of the month; a farmer to protect him from people harvesting from his fields, etc.

As mentioned, I work in publishing, so I know how thin the margins are. I do believe that copyright is too long, but I know that removing it entirely would not give you better books to read, would not reward the creators and encourage them to do better.

Re:Fair use?

[drsmithy]

Few publishers own this "infrastructure". For the most part anyone can plug into it, and they do.

Well, in that particular comment I was thinking back to when things like the printing press were new and the reproduction of printed material was an expensive and uncommon operation.

Actually, my job, working for publishers, is to take the steaming piles of crap that authors produce and turn them into readable attractive priducts. Have you ever read a self-published book? Few seem to know how to use the spellcheck for a start. Would you like all books to be of that standard? If no one pays people like me, they will be.

If enough people want books that aren't "steaming piles of crap", you'll get paid.

"Logically"? I can shoplift and sell the goods, am I then then more "deserving" and efficient than the shopkeeper?

You take a serious credibility hit when you try and equate theft and copyright infringment. Find a better argument.

This is good?

Is it bad ? It's not like 90% of material today isn't already formulaic.

What this means is DRM to the maximum extent. Products will be fucked up and made harder to use; books may be released in some proprietary digital format that can only be used on certain locked-down reading devices. This would create a corporate monopoly and barriers to entry much worse than now unless you just want to give away your work.

On the other hand, companies that release products that are hard to use or too restrictive will go out of business because no-one will buy their products.

Why not? Everyone's "business model" is protected. E.g., your average working stiff has legislation to protect his "business model" of toiling and being paid at the end of the month; a farmer to protect him from people harvesting from his fields, etc.

Please don't tell me you're trying to equate anti-slavery and generic property laws with copyright. The former is just ludicrous and the latter doesn't even come *close* to the scope of copyright.

As mentioned, I work in publishing, so I know how thin the margins are. I do believe that copyright is too long, but I know that removing it entirely would not give you better books to read, would not reward the creators and encourage them to do better.

You haven't convinced me it would be any _worse_. I'm not a free market zealot (firm believe in publically-owned/funded utilities, education and healthcare, for example), but I really think the free market would do a better job of balancing content availability and protection than government can. Legislation is too easy to buy.

Re:Fair use?

[1u3hr]

If enough people want books that aren't "steaming piles of crap", you'll get paid.

Who by? If the work can be copied by anyone, why would they cut me a cheque if they're not paying the author?

You take a serious credibility hit when you try and equate theft and copyright infringment.

I wasn't doing that, I was demonstrating the consequences of the "efficiency" argument.

Please don't tell me you're trying to equate anti-slavery and generic property laws with copyright

Slavery? I was thinking of your boss telling you he isn't going to pay the salary he owes you. Which has happened to me and led to a long court case.

I really think the free market would do a better job of balancing content availability and protection than government can. Legislation is too easy to buy.

I don't follow that. There are very low barriers to content availability now. For a couple of hundred dollars I can publish a book using print on demand, distributing via Amazon. (Or press a CD for a few cents.) If there is no legal protection of content you could still do that, of course, but never have the chance of cashing on should you write a best seller, someone would just copy it and pay you nothing. Thus leading to a small number of large publishers protecting their content with hardcore DRM, and a large pool of free sludge.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

Actually, my job, working for publishers, is to take the steaming piles of crap that authors produce and turn them into readable attractive priducts.
 
  Few seem to know how to use the spellcheck for a start.
 
You should be fired.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

Because having the money come in from a current copyright even after you are dead is an incentive for you in the present to create work--i.e. you can sell publishing rights right now that will last past your death and experience the benefits now.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

Having the money come in from a current copyright even after you are dead is an incentive for you in the present to create work--i.e. you can sell publishing rights right now that will last past your death (and thus are more valuable than if they didn't) and experience the benefits right now, and this encourages you to create new work. I don't see what your point is. You just picked some arbitrary time to stop copyright and you say essentially "anything past this time is wrong because... it's wrong."

Re:Fair use?

[1u3hr]

You should be fired.

I don't get paid to post on Slashdot. I'm an editor not a typist.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

Well as an editor you should still realize that you expose yourself to such (valid) criticism when you use such inflamatory language about the competency of writers while simultaneously making the same mistakes you so effortlessly deride them for.

Re:Fair use?

[1u3hr]

Well as an editor you should still realize that you expose yourself to such (valid) criticism when you use such inflamatory language about the competency of writers while simultaneously making the same mistakes you so effortlessly deride them for.

I did not "make the same mistakes". I made a typo in a comment that hardly anyone will see. I wasn't preparing an article to be posted on the front page of a high-traffic website for which I'm responsible. "You should be fired" is not valid criticism. The comments I type in are not part of my professional work, and I can't spend the time on them to polish them as I do for my real work.

Re:Fair use?

[Breakfast Pants]

"You should be fired" wasn't to be taken literally, and as someone in the literature business you are the last person who should be miffed as to my meaning there. Perhaps when you read manuscripts you can't understand subtle language hints like exagerration and that makes you think everything is "steaming piles of crap." "In this sentence the author said the man had the brain of a 3 year old! The man was 30 years old! This is STEAMING CRAP!" You should be fired.

Re:Fair use?

[1u3hr]

"You should be fired" wasn't to be taken literally, and as someone in the literature business you are the last person who should be miffed as to my meaning there.

Your literary allusions are obviously far beyond my feeble comprehension.

Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[Beuno]

I think they should stop fighting technology and start using it as a buisness model...

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[name773]

well, you got half your wish. they're fighting to use this technology as a business model.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[Excen]

That would require business sense, entrepreneurship and intelligence. These people on the other hand, think that 50 Cent is the pinnacle of musical brilliance.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[kerrle]

The problem is that, aside from marketing an artist, technology has made them obsolete.

Recording equiptment and mixing software is cheap enough (some is completely free) that actually producing a good recording doesn't have to cost what used to, and an artist can sell music directly to their fans now, without even the need for a retail presence.

So basically the problem is that, if they did use the technology in the way that in inevitably will be used, it essentially makes their business cease to exist. It's going to happen anyway (or at least it will be significantly reduced) - they're just going to resist it to the bitter end.

What I don't understand is why they're able to. The music labels have money, true enough, but not nearly as much as many tech companies do. I guess they just have more connections, due to decades of practice.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[commodoresloat]

Given the number of lawsuits over the past few >years, and the blatant extortion from companies like Napster Inc., I'd say that fighting technology is their business model.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[abbtech]

Exactly, the tech isn't going to go away embracing it is the only viable option.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[Meagermanx]

Which is why my new motto is "If you buy CDs, you support the RIAA".

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[judabuddhist]

Or perhaps it would be better to say that fighting technology is their business model.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[bladernr]

These people on the other hand, think that 50 Cent is the pinnacle of musical brilliance.

No, they merely believe a lot of people would be willing to pay for sounds produced by 50 Cent. If no one wanted it, there wouldn't be a "it should be free" argument - no one would want it, free or not.

To me, since they can push the crap that 50 Cent records, it proves they are excellent business people - I would have no idea how to convince people to buy it.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[name773]

oh they want tech, just not in the same way that you do. they want technology that enables consumers but not pirates, and they probably don't care how it's implemented as long as it works.

i just hope that it doesn't hinder people who produce movies/music as a hobby.. that would be bad.

Re:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[Nogami_Saeko]

And if you don't buy CDs (or ITMS, or whatever), you're included in the "calculation of how much pirating is costing the music industry" the next time they decide to release one of their completely pulled-out-of-their-ass press releases on how much the music industry is hurting financially.

It goes something like this (in the mind of a record exec, and their beancounters):

#1. Assume everyone in the world is a potential customer
#2. Subtract those people who have actually bought an album in a store
#3. Assuming everyone else are thieves who are going to steal the music
#4. Release statistic on how much money you're losing due to #3

N.

Nothing new here.

[Pantero Blanco]

Internet broadcasts have been going on for a pretty long time now, and knowledgeable people have been using stream-capture programs to record them. The RIAA can bitch all they want, but there isn't a way to stop this without completely stopping the Internet broadcasts or implementing TC on an incredibly wide scale (to the extent it can block something like "redirect audio output to this location").

Re:Nothing new here.

[THESuperShawn]

But this is not about Internet broadcasts. This is about satellite broadcasts that the user has already purchased the right to listen to. Who is to say the he/she cannot timeshift that music to listen to it an a more appropriate time. I pay a monthly (yearly in my case) fee to listen to premium satellite content. I will NOT pay an additional fee to be "allowed" to listen to it again or record it.

Re:Nothing new here.

[arminw]

......But this is not about Internet broadcasts......

I subscribe to XM radio to be able to listen to commercial free music in my car and also now over our Direc TV system. Any XM subscriber can also listen via the Internet for nothing extra. Radio has been recordable for decades. So why should the recording companies suddenly worry now? When I hear a new song or exceptional performance over XM, I make a note of that and then look for a CD on Amazon that has that piece. If there are other selection on that CD by that artist, I often order it. If the CD has only that one song I really like, I buy it from iTunes if they have it. When FM radio and consumer tape recorders first came out, the same kinds of sentiment was expressed in fear that recording sales would suffer. Nobody can accurately predict the future, but the record companies ought to be able to look at the past and see that their earlier fears were groundless and radio is and always has been to their benefit.

Re:Nothing new here.

[THESuperShawn]

I listen to XM on the Internet as well. I just didn't admit it as it gave un-deserved credit to the parent post.

My work commute usually entails and Airbus or 747. I spend very little time in my car. If I didn't use the XM Internet service I would hardly get my monies worth.

Matter of time

[Hao Wu]

Someday, all music will be all-free, all-the-time.

That is the future- IF we make it so!

Re:Matter of time

[Sinryc]

And then no one will want to make music because if its free, they don't get paid.

Re:Matter of time

[John Nowak]

The only music that will be Free is the music that is already Free. Artists that will only release music commercially will die off. In a way, the future is already here. There is just a bunch of other crap to go with it.

Re:Matter of time

[Pantero Blanco]

...Or they'll get paid for actually performing, instead of benefitting for their entire lives from a dozen recordings, which would make sense. Assuming that's not covered under "all the time". If so, the GP's going a bit too far.

Re:Matter of time

[Hao Wu]

And then no one will want to make music because if its free, they don't get paid.

Then we will MAKE them sing for us!

Already, people do not pay for many songs. Never again will we be so oppressed.

Re:Matter of time

[EzInKy]

And then no one will want to make music because if its free, they don't get paid.


---pulls out a couple of spoons from the kitchen drawer and starts banging on the table

"RATATATTATRATATATTAT"

There you go, take it and do what you want with it.

Re:Matter of time

[TheRaven64]

That's great, and I'm glad you feel this way. Unfortunately, your post didn't include a link to where we can download the music made by you or your band/group/orchestra/choir.

Re:Matter of time

[ZeroExistenZ]

Your comment reminded me at Napster Bad!

Re:Matter of time

[bladernr]

Someday, all music will be all-free, all-the-time.

Already an option - anyone that wants to can refuse to purchase music and still be perfectly legal by any definition out there. If some artist or label demands payment, simply don't accept their terms and don't listen to their music.

If the market truly demands free music, then exactly what you are saying will happen: no revenue will drive those artists and labels out of business, leaving only the ones that don't charge for their music. Even if there is a market for paid music, you can choose to not be a part of it.

Re:Matter of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Humphh! Sounds like terrorist morse code. Better send some agents in.

Re:Matter of time

[ls -la]

I call bullshit

http://harveydanger.com/downloads/

I had no idea who they were before I downloaded their free album, and now I have developed a bit of a liking for some of their songs, so I would consider buying the other albums or seeing them in concert.

Re:Matter of time

[ichigo 2.0]

And then no one will want to make music because if its free, they don't get paid.

I thought artists already work essentially for free to the benefit of labels, so how would this be any different? The worst case scenario would be that being an artist would no longer be a viable full-time job, but there is always people willing to support talented artists financially. If you're worried about the labels, and their infrastructure, don't. Useful people (sound engineers and whatnot) will always find employment in other industries, and the economy as a whole will be better off when the money that was used on paying for immaterial things is again spent on real products.

Re:Matter of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Why they'll charge for support of course.

.....

Wait a minute, wrong argument.

Re:Matter of time

[bigpicture]

Yes artists need to be paid if they make music their occupation. If they cannot make this an occupation where they have a reasonable livelihood why would they do it?

What the looming issue is, that has not come right out and slapped everyone in the face yet, is that because of current and future technology they will not need recording companies to do this. (to make a living that is)

In the days before recording was possible, musicians had to make a living performing before live audiences. And that was their only way to make a living. Also being part of a live audience was the only way people could listen to the music. Then recording came along and the music could be listened to any place and any time, but the musicians and the recording companies wanted a way to make money out of this technology, because at that time they largely controlled this recording tech. But not so any more, the ability to record belongs to the public, which it should have always been. Recording companies should never have had the commercial monopoly, which they took from the inventors of these recording art forms.

Then there is the general upside down way that society and occupations are in general, organized. There are occupations / services that are critical, or key to the survival of culture and society. That would be the producers of food, the designers and builders of homes, the designers and makers of all the various forms of transportation, the designers and makers of all the various forms of information communications, the medical profession and infrastructure, the providers of energy and the raw resources to build homes, transportation and infrastructure.

Then we have entertainment?? Sports, Movies, TV, and Music. Now of the things in the previous paragraph, and of the things listed under entertainment, if society was forced to do without, which ones could we most easily do without? What about food, energy, housing, transportation, communications? Could we do without these and have no hardships??? What about sports, movies, TV, if we did not have these would there be hardships and social breakdown?

So in the end which of these are the most basic and therefore the most important to society??? Then which of these occupations get paid the most??? Is this not upside down compensation? Artists and recording companies want paid for not performing, but for copies of the performances. That would be like doctors wanting to get paid for recordings of operations, so that they did not have to do any more operations, and risk getting malpractice sued.

The value of this whole entertainment thing to society has to be rethought. And does someone (artists and recording companies) deserve payment for recordings of performances?? If the "invisible" technology that they use, and that made this all possible, did not exist, they would have to perform to get paid. So should the inventors of this recording technology, that belongs in the public domain, be able to extract the same kind of taxes from them, for using this recording technology for commercial purposes. Why should they be the commercial beneficiaries, enabled by recording technology, that is an art form that they did not create?

Just to put this all in another perspective, in 2005 the Rolling Stones made $162M from live performances, (actually earned their money) this is a group that is largely all of retirement age. Would this not be enough for their pensions, and if not then how much is enough?

Re:Matter of time

[Jesapoo]

For most bands, this is wholly impractical - I don't see how Open Source music will work :P

All the same, there is one way this could be possible - give away your CD or downloads (or sell them at cost) and treat it as publicity for touring - and make all your money from selling tickets to gigs.

Any idea how practical that is? i.e. how much a band gets for a tour as compared to an album?

Re:Matter of time

[Hao Wu]

President should make bands to produce some music by use of all necessary force.

Haven't you bought it already...

[linuxpng]

When you subscribe to XM or Sirius?

Re:Haven't you bought it already...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you've paid...but that's just one time. You need to pay the RIAA when you buy a song, each time you play it back, when buying blank CDs, the playback device, plus extra for any "unauthorized" listeners in the room with you, and each time you recall the tune in your head.

Plus, the general-purpose computer needs to be outlawed also..no telling *what* illegal acts might be possible with such a "terrorist" tool in the publics' hands.

The RIAA/MPAA should just be honest and have their paid-for lawmakers just go ahead and have your paycheck sent to the labels/studios, and then *they* can decide how much of it (if any) you'll get.

Re:Haven't you bought it already...

[J_Darnley]

I believe that you pay to cover the bandwidth you use.

Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs

I like that the way this is put. Paying the record lables and not the artists.

Re:Haven't you bought it already...

[ClamIAm]

I don't know why the RIAA doesn't just go to Sirius and XM and say "you have to include DRM, or you can't use our music". Then they'd be covered under the DMCA.

That's technology for ya

[method77]

No matter what the RIAA does, they can't stop the digital revolution. Instead of trying to pass laws -won't happen anyway-, how about they try to use the internet for their own good? If you can't beat them, join them... or you will die. Something that I predict will happen in a few years.

Re:That's technology for ya

[denissmith]

The RIAA does not want to stop the digital revolution, they want to own it. Law is the way to own it. If you survey the history of the Commons, and of the Government"s willingness to transfer the commons to a specific, well-financed, private interest ( thereby legally robbing the original owners of their rights and interests)you would be less sanguine about the matter. Microsoft and Google are happy to abet the Chinese government in censorship, and not consider it evil, either, so what makes you think that any of the ECONOMIC interests are going to resist DRM? Who is going to lobby Congress on our behalf? And the Supremes? - they haven't been the same since Diana Ross went solo. They could easily drop Betamax. You only need to lose a right once before it ceases to be a right.

Re:That's technology for ya

[ScrewMaster]

You only need to lose a right once before it ceases to be a right.

A right that can be lost or removed simply because it is inconvenient to some group or organization isn't really a right. The problem is that many of our long-established "rights" are in the process of, or have already been, redefined as privileges. And privileges can be revoked.

The fact that such redefinition is illegal under the Constitution doesn't seem to bother too many people in our various governments, which is troublesome. Doesn't seem to bother many of us ordinary citizens either, which I find even more disturbing.

Re:That's technology for ya

[denissmith]

Well, that is the crux of the issue isn't it? What rights are inalienable to you as a human, and what rights are yours because government GRANTS them to you. The American premise WAS that all rights were inherently yours, and that government was granted powers from the people. I guess somewhere we lost that understanding, and we are slowly succumbing to the idea that the people have only the rights that they have been granted. All of these rights exist only insofar as the constituted authority respects them. Next time you hear someone say "the Constitution doesn't protect a right to...", or "it's not a right, but a privledge...", you are listening to someone running rough-shod over your rights.

baby nursery meetings

[DigiShaman]

...because someone needs to contain the crying. Can someone please change the diapers. Fuck it, just call a Waaaaammbulance.

RIAA, you've lost control. Get over this fact of life.

Here We Go Again

[eldavojohn]

The entry of satellite and digital radio into the technological mainstream is increasing tension with the record industry, which wants new rules governing how consumers can make digital copies of songs from the airwaves.

Ok, I'm no expert on this but I think internet radio has been around for a while. A long while. This isn't some new thing that's suddenly hitting the nation. Satellite radio has also been around for years but, yes, not until now has it become mainstream.

Color me a flamer but I think this is just the next thing that music executives want to complain about. So I think the only thing that would make them happy would be if we all had devices that covered our ears. Every time we started to hear a song, it would ask us to verify that we want such and such money charged to our credit card account, otherwise it would cancel the music out. After reading the article, I'm guessing that that's what it's coming down to.

I, myself, listen to NPR streams and a lot of the RadioIO Streams. What do other slashdot readers listen to out there?

Re:Here We Go Again

[Gibsnag]

The fact that it took them this long to realise about this 'internet radio' thingy shows exactly why they're fighting a losing battle at the moment. They're still about 5 years behind everyone else technology wise... maybe one day they'll catch up and get some fucking sense then they might be able to turn technology into a business model that doesn't assfuck consumer rights.

Re:Here We Go Again

[Excen]

I listen to porno soundtracks. Easy listening and funk (in more ways than one) all the way baby!

Re:Here We Go Again

[gEvil (beta)]

PublicRadioFan.com is a great site to help find some good NPR/PRI/CBC/BBC/etc stations broadcasting whatever show you wanna happen to listen to...

solution in search of a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

i test-drove XM radio in a shiny new rental car. the compression artifacting hurts my head, and makes most of the content unlistenable. imho, there's no issue here: if i want quality audio, i'll purchase a cd, or download some FLAC, or even record an FM station.

Re:solution in search of a problem

[Guppy06]

Surely an audiophile such as yourself would demand nothing less than vinyl!

Re:solution in search of a problem

[agraupe]

Did you make sure that the settings (bass and treble and so forth) were reasonable? I was test driving a new truck recently, and the radio sounded like absolute shit until I turned the bass down.

Also, are you sure that the weakness is in XM and not the sound system itself?

Re:solution in search of a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a new car with XM built-in to the head unit. The compression artifacts were horrible and sometimes downright bizarre sounding.
I wired a Sirius Sportster to the aux input, and the only time I notice any comprssion strangeness is on some of the less popular talk channels that are heavily compressed.
Sirius is definately winning in both content and sound quality.

Re:solution in search of a problem

[Brett Buck]

I haven't listened to XM much, but I can confirm the general problem. Sirius has quite low sound quality, just barely on the edge of acceptable. I did a pretty extensive test of Sirius via FM modulator in the car, via direct input in the car, direct input at home, and the Internet streaming audio. While there were obvious differences in the different methods, none of them approach even iTunes quality, much less CD. There's a sort of hollow metallic reverb in *all* delivery methods. After going round and round with Sirius, I came to the conclusion that it's inherent in thier system. And it is quite grating on some of the lower-bandwidth channels. Talk channels make AM radio sound like nirvana.

      But they were never selling quality, they are selling convenience. And it is amazingly convenient. Unless, as I have, you get receivers that don't work for more than about 1/2 an hour, in which case it's a pain in the ass.

        I still have the service, and when everything works it is just worth the $13 a month. I actually make use of the Internet stream more than I use the satelllite downlink.

        You point is pretty much right on the nose- recording satellite radio is not going to make most people stop buying CDs because the quality is too low. BUT, the RIAA really only cares about trying to suck money out of the system in every possible way. Even if the basis for concern is obviously wrong, that won't stop them from trying.

          Brett

Re:solution in search of a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! These lying sacks of shit know damn well Sat Radio's max audio quality in its current incarnation is well below that of FM's technical limits. They're using the 'anything digital's perfect' bullshit witch-call to extract yet more protectionist concessions from a pay-me-bend-me government. Free market capitalism icons my ass.

Re:solution in search of a problem

[horatio]

Like others, I got a free trial of XM with my 2005 car. The "digital quality" adverts that XM makes are a joke. I don't know about Sirius, but the compression seems extremely lossy. It often sounds like a badly encoded MP3 - regardless of equalizer settings, location, or vehicle speed (stopped). You don't notice it as much with the talk channels, but most of the music channels I've listened to are quite poor. The local FM stations have, imho, far superior sound quality. Hell, I'd even argue that the AM stations can rival the sound quality of XM.

I'm not an engineer by any means, but it seems like they compress the signal in order to cram as many "stations" as possible into the bandwidth. Instead of actually having less channels and better quality sound, they've gone for quantity. (Do we really need channels that play only one particular radio show or one particular artist all the time?) Thank the cable companies for that model. A couple of hundred totally useless channels you'll never watch, but you still get to pay for them.

Why on earth would I want to record something that sounded that lousy? Or is that the point?

Can anyone point to another industry that is so anti-consumer that survived? My impression is that the RIAA/MPAA fight every advance, every technical innovation that would benefit consumers as a threat to their bottom line. Instead of embracing new technologies and finding new ways to make money from it, they waste time and energy trying to quash it. They're not just wasting "their" money, either - they are wasting OUR tax dollars tying up the courts or trying to get draconian legislation passed when Congress might have something a little less useless to be working on, etc.

Again

[hebertrich]

We been recording off the air for decades ..
bothered noone.
We been recording streams off the new for years ..
The only thing that never changes is them trying to suck
everything good and legal into the realm of the illegal
to allow them to make even more money.

It's time to change the tune here..
Let the artists distribute their stuff direct to consumers
Declare all record labels pirate and criminal groups
Jail all their executives and us to enjoy a year without this
incessant whining of " We're so poor .... bullshit "

really :)
throw them all in jail.

Re:Again

[JeffSh]

your writing style makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon and poor salt in the wounds.

Re:Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Your overreaction makes me wish you would.

Say what?

[Guppy06]

"But over the long term, the music industry says, Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs, as is the case with iTunes."

So they want to be paid by both the broadcasters and the listeners? Paid twice for the same product? If that's the case, will the RIAA be charging broadcasters less money for broadcasting songs with the metaphorical broadcast flag set, or will the prices continue to remain as high as they are even though they'll also be seeing money from recorders?

The US has the best legislature money can buy!

Re:Say what?

[E8086]

"So they want to be paid by both the broadcasters and the listeners? Paid twice for the same product?"

Not just twice, they want to be paid by the broadcasters and then the listeners for the "privlage" of recording their content and then paid for every time the listener replays it. And paid by the maunfacturer of the recorder and have a "listening tax"/blank media tax just like the one our friends up in America Jr have to deal with added to the purchase price of the recorder and 99% of the digital and/or satellite radio subscription. They want to get paid at least half a dozen times for the same product.

Re:Say what?

[icebike]

So they want to be paid by both the broadcasters and the listeners?

Why does that supprise you? You are already paying a tax on blank tapes and blank CDroms to compensate the music industry for any songs you MIGHT decide to record there, even when they were compensated for those songs when the radio station played them.

Therefore, you have paid for the right to record these on CDrom already, and the music industry got their fair share. Its enshrined in law, and a Canadian court already accepted this defense. I don't understand why its not used in the US.

The don't allow satellite radio to broadcast it

[vijayiyer]

The recording industry chooses to allow satellite radio broadcasts. They can choose not to, if they feel it helps their business. But there is no need for federal regulation just because the recording industry can't figure out how to run their business effectively.

Re:The don't allow satellite radio to broadcast it

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they? Do you need the RIAA members' permission to broadcast music? I could be totally wrong, but I was under the impression that all broadcasters have to do is pay performance fees to ASCAP and they can air whatever they want.

Re:The don't allow satellite radio to broadcast it

[evilviper]

The recording industry chooses to allow satellite radio broadcasts.

No they don't.

They can choose not to, if they feel it helps their business.

No they can't.

Uh...

[doormat]

Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs, as is the case with iTunes.

Last I checked it was legal to record off the radio. The AHRA covers this...

The act failed to define "noncommercial use by a consumer" however " In short, the reported legislation [Section 1008] would clearly establish that consumers cannot be sued for making analog or digital audio copies for private noncommercial use." (House Report No. 102-780(I), August 4, 1992) .

Although now that I think about it, technically the music industry is getting around this part of the legislation by not going after consumers recording digital media off the radio, but in fact threating to pull out of agreements with digital radio broadcasters if they don't implement this system. This is the kind of shit that gets them investigated by Elliot Spitzer.

Re:Uh...

[westlake]

Last I checked it was legal to record off the radio. The AHRA covers this...

XM isn't broadcast radio. It is a private subscription service. The AHRA is irrelevant. You have the rights and only the rights defined in your contract. Don't like it, don't sign it.

its not just radio..

[dotpavan]

.. I tried saving the RIAA webpage, but its disabled, even the screenshot!

Re:its not just radio..

[speculatrix]

I tried to respond to your post, but when I tried copying and pasting the text of your post to quote it, a copyright notice popped up, and an RIAA man knocked on my door and confiscated my computer and threatened to sue me for sharing your post with 65000 downloaders at US$10 per shot!

The answer isn't going to change

[Logic Bomb]

I guess it's important for Slashdot to keep posting these stories. Someone needs to keep an eye on the RIAA And Friends. But whenever yet another initiative like this comes up, the answer is always the same. If you can't handle people being able to record and archive your "content", get out of the content business. There's really nothing else to be said.

I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry. The RIAA = Hizballah

They must be destroyed at all costs!

If you can't even record your tv to VCR...

[js_sebastian]

If US congress is in such bad state that it decides people in america aren't even allowed to record tv onto a VCR (or technological equivalent) you guys in the states just have to either move to canada, or download stuff from us lucky guys in europe (or elsewhere) who can. Encrypted so that nothing short of man in the middle will allow it to be intercepted by the bad guys..

Re:If you can't even record your tv to VCR...

[wiredlogic]

Ah yes, Canada. Where you can't buy any recordable CD media without paying a surcharge to the Canadian media conglomerates. In the states this is only done for "Audio" CD-Rs and (unfortunately) audio DATs.

Re:If you can't even record your tv to VCR...

[Anonymous Coward]

"If US congress is in such bad state"

Well, as a matter of fact, yes it is.

That's not all

[Trip Ericson]

Up and coming is "HD Radio" which is the next big disaster coming. It uses the so-called "IBOC" (In-Band On-Channel) technology to jam digital carriers on either side of the AM or FM audio signal. It's known to decrease station coverage and cause background noise on the station itself.

It doesn't actually accomplish anything, seeing as there's hardly enough of a bit rate for one subchannel besides the main one (as far as music), let alone more than that.

But the reason I bring it up is that people say, "well I can just record it off my FM radio," without realizing that this is coming. The RIAA has already been talking about controls on digital radio to prevent people from doing that stuff there too.

Don't take your FM for granted, the government wants to take that too.

Re:That's not all

[evilviper]

But the reason I bring it up is that people say, "well I can just record it off my FM radio," without realizing that this is coming. The RIAA has already been talking about controls on digital radio to prevent people from doing that stuff there too.

They can talk about it all they want. Digital radio has been a SPECTACULAR failure everywhere it has been tried. The public doesn't want it, and broadcasters don't want it. Nobody wants to pay for it, nobody wants to risk losing any stations or any listeners, etc.

Analog radio is quite safe for at least the next decade.

Re:That's not all

[Trip Ericson]

Broadcasters want it enough that it's showing up all over the place. Clear Channel, which owns 1100 radio stations in the US is pushing it, as is CBS and some noncommercial stations, and that's just for starters.

Re:That's not all

[evilviper]

There are very few broadcasters testing out digital radio in the US, and those that are have many complaints. The IBOC system causes interference, and broadcasters are deathly afraid of interfering with their current listener base. Either interference or forcing people to upgrade to a digital reciever could cut down on their already limited audiences, which practically none are willing to do.

Re:That's not all

[Trip Ericson]

Oh, I agree, it's a disaster, but that doesn't keep corporate from pushing it. Already in New York 1/4 of the full-market FM signals are doing IBOC, and many stations are doing it elsewhere. The NPR station in my area expects to be doing IBOC by May to broadcast their secondary "Radio IQ" NPR/BBC talk service, which is currently available via IBOC on two of their simulcast stations in addition to a translator in town, and both an AM and FM station that do not reach the target city.

I hope this turns out like AM Stereo, but with the amount of push behind it from companies like Clear Channel, I don't know if it'll be held off.

A rather simple solution

[grasshoppa]

Stop using music from RIAA members. For the smaller stations, that may be suicide, but can you imagine if Clearwire instituted this policy? Or XM radio?

Re:A rather simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Clear Channel.

Re:A rather simple solution

[Brett Buck]

>but can you imagine if Clearwire instituted this policy? Or XM radio?

I can imagine it. It would mean that XM would, effectively, default on their user contracts. And within a month, be on the inexorable slide to bankruptcy when all the backers (who have been keeping it alive so far) back out. That's not to disrespect indepent labels and artists, but it's still far from clear that satellite radio is financially viable even with everything. The RIAA is a virtual monopoly, and if satellite radio couldn't play pop pablum for the masses they would certainly not be able to make a go of it. Sirius would have a chance only because of the Howard Stern show, but, I would point out, they haven't made any money yet, either.

      Brett

Their chunk

[rbrugman]

The recording industry wants a piece of everyone's pie. It won't be long before they send in lawyers for singing their music in the shower.

Re:Their chunk

[lifejunkie]

As a matter of fact: 'Musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognizable riff before they buy, thereby making a "public performance".'

Re:Their chunk

[Yartrebo]

Damn. I thought you were trolling, but I looked it up (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4566526.stm) and you're right.

Already paid by stations

[^Z]

Radio stations pay to RIAA and suchlike for broadcasing rights already. This is where the music is sold. If RIAA thinks it is underpaid, it could try to raise the price for the stations.
Why add another piece of legislature?

Re:Already paid by stations

[qzulla]

They actually pay Harry Fox Agency.

qz

Re:Already paid by stations

[wkitchen]

Why add another piece of legislature?

Control.

Re:Already paid by stations

[shark72]

"Radio stations pay to RIAA and suchlike for broadcasing rights already. This is where the music is sold. If RIAA thinks it is underpaid, it could try to raise the price for the stations."

It's pretty common knowledge that if you want to operate a broadcast station in the US, you get a license from ASCAP and BMI. Somebody else mentioned Harry Fox but I don't believe they handle radio licensing. And the RIAA definitely doesn't get a piece of that pie.

ASCAP, BMI, and Harry Fox are representatives of the artists. The RIAA is the representative of the record labels. See the difference? If one is of the mindset that anybody who wants to be paid for providing music is evil, then I suppose there isn't much difference at all, but this is a vital distinction to understand for those who kneel at the shrine of "artists good, record companies bad."

Legal Inconsistencies

[putko]

It looks like Congress has made some legal distinction based on how you get the information. E.g. the information in a terrestrial radio broadcast is in a different legal category than satellite radio or an internet download.

This is ridiculous -- e.g. if I ran IP over a radio frequency, then what? What category am I in?

FTFA:

"Congress has historically come down on the side of the broadcasters in this debate, saying that radio stations can play whatever music they want while paying only a relatively small amount of money to songwriters and publishers for the right to "perform" the song on-air--and not paying record companies at all.

"Similarly, the right of consumers to tape songs off the radio has generally been held to be fair use.

"However, when Congress set the rules for Internet and other digital broadcasts in 1998, it gave record companies the right to royalties from Internet and satellite radio broadcasts. That's set up a patchwork of different rules for different new media companies, even as technology has brought the way consumers use their services more closely together."

Re:Legal Inconsistencies

[TubeSteak]

Digital is usually all or nothing, with anything in between resulting in ugly audio/visual artifacting.

Analog radio degrades relatively gracefully

I think it's fair to say that digital streams are qualitatively different from analog.

If you ran IP over a radio frequency, you'd probably have to have use up a lot of bandwidth for error correction if you want people with less than perfect reception to get anything.

Also, these rules were setup in 1998, since then, technology has progressed a lot and I thihnk we might have a different set of rules if the same issue was being debated today.

Whether or not the law would be any more permissive... well, that's a different question entirely.

Re:Legal Inconsistencies

[ClamIAm]

Um, IANAL, but is there a way to somehow get these laws declared invalid as they basically contradict one another?

How about some common sense here?

[Tsar]

Let's establish a rule of conduct: If you make it a point to attack and publicly castigate developers who don't follow the GNU license, you should NOT attack RIAA for protecting their own IP rights, or for publicly discussing options for doing so. If in doing so they use some tactic that you think is wrong (Sony's rootkit disaster for example), go after that behavior, don't deny their right to defend their own intellectual property.

So you don't think RIAA should have a stranglehold on music distribution? Don't give it to them then! Support local artists, independent songwriters, open-source music! Stop taking the easy way out and expecting others to pay for it.

If all the hype about Ashlee Simpson makes you want her music, you should expect to pay more for it, because hype costs money. If you're sick of the hype, well, don't patronize it. Don't steal RIAA's stuff and fool yourself into thinking that you're taking a moral stand by doing so.

Does this really seem like rocket science to anyone?

Re:How about some common sense here?

[Travelsonic]

Let's establish a rule of conduct: If you make it a point to attack and publicly castigate developers who don't follow the GNU license, you should NOT attack RIAA for protecting their own IP rights, or for publicly discussing options for doing so

Well, If by " protecting their own IP rights, or for publicly discussing options for doing so" you mean distorting the truth, outright lying, or other deceptful methods, then this is why it is not outright hypocritical to attack one and nott the other, since it is all about the method, and so far I have not seen GNU/GPL licenced software developers stoop down to the tactics the **AAs have, making it easier (and more correct, IMO) to be lot more sympathetic to them than the **AAs.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[Detritus]

Your train went off the rails when you started with the assumption that the record labels have absolute IP rights to the music that they sell. Copyright is a time-limited privilege, granted to further the public interest, not to enrich the "owners" of IP.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[DrJimbo]

You have got to be kidding. You are kidding, right?

The first sign that you post is flamebait is that you use the term "intellectual property" instead of the more correct and specific term "copyright". The copyright laws keep getting changed every time Mickey Mouse is about to become public domain. IMO, indefinitely extending the expiration of copyright violates the constitution.

Nonetheless, I agree with you in advising people to not violate the law, although when you call it stealing the RIAA's stuff, I imagine someone backing up a truck to the RIAA offices and carrying stuff away. Copyright violation is not stealing, nor is it the moral equivalent of stealing. It is certainly has nothing to do with robbing and plundering at sea.

I can't speak for everyone, but the problem I have with the RIAA and MPAA is that they are trying to cripple our technology in order to buttress their old fashioned business models. The reason that file sharing (or whatever technology the RIAA is currently fighting against) is a problem for the RIAA is not because people are inherently evil and will always steal things when they get a chance. It is a problem because the RIAA has steadfastly refused to provide a legal way for people to use the new technologies for consuming the RIAA's products.

A long time ago, the RIAA actually provided useful services to society. For example they standardized the RIAA compensation curve for phonograph preamps which meant that people only needed one preamp to play all of their records. The RIAA was actually helpful in distributing information.

But well before the introduction of consumer digital audio, the concentration of power in the RIAA caused them to become corrupt. One manifestation of this corruption was that their business model changed from encouraging the distribution of information to controlling and restricting distribution which is a typical monopolistic tactic.

I recently saw a round table discussion by a bunch of silicon valley big wigs including the president of Stanford and Jonathan Schwartz from Sun. One of them said that companies whose business model is based on restricting information flow are doomed.

This is the problem facing the RIAA and I think this is why so many people hate them with a passion (even if some of those people are not able to articulate this reason). From what I've seen, ALL of the tactics taken by the RIAA have been to further restrict information flow instead of enhance it.

IMO the people running the RIAA are truly evil, and I don't use that word lightly. They are trying to make money by restricting information flow. They are harming the musicians and harming the consumers and they are charging money for this disservice.

As they say, opposition to novel ideas eventually dies away. I don't know for sure but I have a feeling that the RIAA is controlled by old, rich, fat, white guys who are set in their ways and are fearful of any new technology.

Unfortunately for them, they have good reason to be fearful of the new technologies because these technologies make the RIAA totally redundant. We don't need the big expensive record presses anymore. The RIAA will soon no longer serve any useful purpose. Once that fact is revealed for all to see then the last fig leaf hiding their corporate corruption will be there for all to see. The RIAA will disappear. Consumers will get a lot more music at a much more reasonable price (less than $1 per track) and musicians will make a lot more money.

If the RIAA got back to their original mandate of helping distribute information, they could once again serve a useful purpose. They wouldn't be in almost total control, like they are now, and they wouldn't be getting the biggest slice of the pie, like they are now, but they could provide useful services and receive reasonable compensation for the value they add.

But as long as the RIAA bases their business model on subtracting value instead of adding it, they will be reviled by lots of good people and they will be correctly described as evil.

</rocket science>

Re:How about some common sense here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, copyright is merely a tool. The restrictions the RIAA seeks to impose aren't comparable ethically to the rights and abilities GPL proponents seek to guarantee.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[cpt kangarooski]

Let's establish a rule of conduct: If you make it a point to attack and publicly castigate developers who don't follow the GNU license, you should NOT attack RIAA for protecting their own IP rights, or for publicly discussing options for doing so.

Why? You seem to be overlooking the possibility that a /. poster might support copyrights if the rights were limited in such a way that effectively mirrored the GPL, but opposes broader copyrights, such as the system we are presently burdened with.

Thus one could have a consistant position that people who violate the GPL are in the wrong and that P2P sharing of RIAA music is perfectly fine.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[cyclop]

And I am that /. poster.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point. It's not about the RIAA protecting the rights they legally have it's about them over stepping them by buying new legislation requiring copy protection to prevent recording and give them a level of control over the end-user's use they've never had before. As other have pointed out, making a recording for personal use has long been held as a fair use. The act of recording alone does not rise to the level of copyright infringement or theft. It's not as though people aren't paying to listen to XM or Sirius. Rather than trying to cut the consumer off in function they get some utility out of and have enjoyed on traditional radio, why not just charge more for the broadcast rights and/or for the devices capable of recording. There is a tarif on DAT tapes and CD-R media marked for audio, why stick a tarif on XM and Sirius recievers capable of recording.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really annoyed when you use the word steal in relation to information . sharing information can make my (and everyones life) better that is why these company's exist in the first place .copyright is a concession that we made to facilitate delivery and production of information. the thing is information does not disappear when it is copied .like PROPERTY it is valuable yes but not in the same sense if you take someones property they don't have it anymore not so with someones information. even in the us constitution they do not refer to information as property. copying information without permission has consequences yes and there is a word you can use to describe it copyright infringement . i think that calling it stealing encourages people to think of information as property it changes the view about information . using this word is a presupposition and i also believe what is presupposed (information is property) is debatable to say the least .this hurts people in that by encouraging them not to think about the whole issue they may become confused and have beliefs detrimental to themselves and others .

  1800 my opinion

Re:How about some common sense here?

[Tsar]

"Ladies and gentlemen, uh, I've just lost my Internet connection, but what we've seen speaks for itself. My previous post has apparently been taken over -- 'conquered' if you will -- by a master race of giant RIAA apologists. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive music market or merely enslave it. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; DARM (digital/analog rights management) will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new copyright overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a Slashdot poster with Excellent karma, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their third-world CD factories."

You've made some excellent points. Please accept my apologies for my previous demonstration of highhorsemanship, and my promise never again to post after mixing Jolt and WD-40.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[bit01]

Why? You seem to be overlooking the possibility that a /. poster might support copyrights if the rights were limited in such a way that effectively mirrored the GPL, but opposes broader copyrights, such as the system we are presently burdened with.

Thus one could have a consistant position that people who violate the GPL are in the wrong and that P2P sharing of RIAA music is perfectly fine.

And your example is only one of an infinite number of possibilities. Copyright is a creation of the mind. What is currently defined in law is only one of many options. e.g. Vary the copyright term. Non-profit copying okay. Copying by minors okay. Copying by non-profits okay. Copying for any personal use okay. Copying by people who weren't going to buy okay (ie. onus on copyright owner to prove copier would've bought if they couldn't copy) Every copy stopped must be paid for by the originator. Copyright lapses after n copies limited. Copyright laps on defacto standards. My sig. etc.

People who talk about copyright as it currently stands in the law being the only possibility have blinkers on.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

Re:How about some common sense here?

[winwar]

"Copyright is a time-limited privilege, granted to further the public interest, not to enrich the "owners" of IP."

It used to be. I don't think a reasonable person would consider current copyright periods limited (what that says about the SCOTUS I'll leave to your imagination). As a result, in practice copyright exists to enrich the owners of IP (some would say this is in the public interest).

Enough

[futurekill]

What Congress should do is find a way to get the MPAA and RIAA to STFU...

High quality audio?? have they listened to it?

[Lumpy]

Sorry but XM is far from CD quality. It's more like a low quality 128kbps mp3.
Yes it sounds better than FM because of greater dynamic range and no compression (ok many channels have compression now so that is no longer a good point) but it certianly does not sound as good as a CD.

Anyone choosing to record their music from XM or sirius instead of buying the CD to rip or getting a torrent of the whole album recorded as 256kbps VBR mp3's is a nutjob with lots of time to waste as it has to go in realtime.

Now, recording the upcoming howard stern into an mp3 so they can listen to it later, yeah. I can see that and other shows you want to time shift.

But their reasoning as described in the article? that is purely retarted concerns from executives that dont even have the foggiest idea as to what they are talking about.

unimportant

[nurb432]

It's not that important for *slashdot* to post this stuff. its like preaching to a really small choir.

What needs to be done is the mainstream media to post..

Whtat if the DJ talks while your music run?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, so suppose you hit the record button, and a creditcard transaction is completed. Will I get my money back if the DJ starts talking while the music is still running?

Congress SHOULD pass a law

[clambake]

Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs

While they are at it, how about passing a law so that MUSCIANS can get paid when then labels sell their music?

Re:Congress SHOULD pass a law

[bladernr]

While they are at it, how about passing a law so that MUSCIANS can get paid when then labels sell their music?

No law needed. All this is covered in the contract between the label and the artist. Both sides agreed to the terms. If the artists should negotiate the best terms the market allows, and be prepared to shop for bids among different labeles.

Re:Congress SHOULD pass a law

[cpt kangarooski]

I agree absolutely. If a musician is willing to agree to a lawful contract, who are we to prevent him from doing so because we think it's a bad deal. The only people we normally protect from their own mistakes in this manner are children, and I object to treating musicians or other artists like children.

Wrong title again :)

[Pecisk]

It should be something like that "Mafi...errrr, record cartel feels left out in the cold, threats collect their IP and go home". Ok, that was childish atempt of joke.

From my point of view, it feels so terribly wrong that I even start to doubt claim that greed is that force which moves civilization forward. I would say it is totally oposite - money gives you power and if you use it to do things - that moves us forward. Greed without any borders and reasoning (hint: Microsoft (not Bill personally), **AA, drug lords, arm resellers, etc.) just for a sake of personality is pervert form of understanding of power.

And what drives me insane that they use their pervert understanding of power to abuse laws, it's system. Creating numerous infinitive laws to protect their "Intelectual property" simply poisons all legal system (hint: patents) and in the end, it will be total anarchy.

And my pick is that it is what these guys want. They will have weapons, they will have money, they will have power. And no one will stand in their way, because goverment will be legally...gone.

Uhh....something reminds me that. Feodalism anyone?

To say something more to point - I don't understand RIAA. In fact, radio gives them free ad of the song, record, artist, whatever - and they fight against it? I don't get it, they are just plain stupid or they are overcalculated something? Of course some people will record song from a digital radio, will listen couple times or more and will forget it. But most people will listen, check it out what it was and will propably end it in their iPods.

Why they just don't get economics class...

Fuck it

[HalAtWork]

Fuck it. With the huge steaming crock of garbage being the radio as-is, I don't even want to listen to it. Commercials everywhere, songs fading into each other or DJs talking over the song, or even just the song being cut off early. I don't want to listen to partial songs, I don't want to listen to annoying nagging people in between songs or overlapping songs. I don't want to listen to the shitty selection most stations play, especially considering that they only play singles and never any of the other tracks on an album. There are some great tracks that have never even been aired, probably, or at least 1% of the time when they're not recycling singles. But that's AM/FM radio.

So now, I have to pay for radio so I can hear it the way it's meant to be. But I can't even record some songs I like so I can hear them again? What about fair play?

See, it's just not even worth it. You might as well just be buying CDs because you actually get to control some of what you pay for. Control is key because then you can enjoy it when the mood strikes you and not have to work around something just to get your way. I don't care about the difference between buying something and licensing it. If I pay money, I expect SOMEthing to go my way. Anytime the distributors get involved with anything, they want to control it and get me to pay more than I would have for what I thought was fair and enjoy it on my terms. But somehow the distributors get uptight whenever things aren't on their terms. Is that what the artists want? Do they even care?

In the future, will there be such a thing as a commercial format with wide distribution that doesn't restrict the user in some way, preventing them from enjoying it on their terms? It seems to me that there won't, because if a user enjoys something on their terms, distributors can't start charging you when you want to do something else with it that you hadn't intended on at the point of purchase. Say you bought CDs, and after that you bought a portable digital audio jukebox. Naturally you want to put your fucking music on there and carry it around with you, but that won't be possible. This is garbage.

Just preview tracks online, through P2P or whatever, and then buy what you like. Am I really insane for doing this? Fuck the distributors. They're insane.

Re:Fuck it

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read the summary before you copy paste a shitty troll.

Re:Fuck it

[Cadallin]

I view the answer as more like: Fuck it. I'll just use P2P, and when I get the opportunity to go see a band I like in concert, I'll go see them and pay them directly, but otherwise it's not worth the trouble, unless I can buy CDs directly from them. The alternative being to help support a massive cartel that helps pervert governments and legal systems across the world, so I just won't.

Re:Fuck it

[tetsuo13]

Fuck it. With the huge steaming crock of garbage being the radio as-is, I don't even want to listen to it. Commercials everywhere, songs fading into each other or DJs talking over the song, or even just the song being cut off early. I don't want to listen to partial songs, I don't want to listen to annoying nagging people in between songs or overlapping songs. I don't want to listen to the shitty selection most stations play, especially considering that they only play singles and never any of the other tracks on an album. There are some great tracks that have never even been aired, probably, or at least 1% of the time when they're not recycling singles. But that's AM/FM radio.

You're not alone. For some years now many people have been abandoning FM radio for internet radio because of at least a few of your feelings. The RIAA making a stink about internet radio is nothing new; back in 2002 they were attacking internet radio directly (setting their sights on SHOUTcast), now they're looking at satellite radio.

There's nothing new to see here: same old RIAA -- albeit under new leadership from 2002 -- trying to stifle yet another medium that proposes even the slightest threat to their monopolistic practices. Be sure to voice your opinion to your congressman.

Re:Fuck it

[16777216]

Yea man! Fuck those fucken fuckers the fuckety-fucked-fuck-fuckers.

Re:Fuck it

[Anonymous Coward]

Something for the slashdot crowd to consider: music's suckiness has grown exponentally with the advent of easy music copying techniques. So the only ones left to produce music suck and are unoriginal.

Re:Fuck it

[bhamm]

You're not alone. For some years now many people have been abandoning FM radio for internet radio because of at least a few of your feelings.

Yup.. i haven't listened to the radio for YEARS now. Once the iTMS came out and finally answered the challenge of '$0.99 tracks made easy', i've been buying in spades. At this point, i have 7500 tracks (all legal). They're on my laptop.. i can find anything instantly in iTunes. Most days i leave it on 'shuffle my 3+ rated songs', and go about my business.. or 'play anything i haven't heard in the last 90 days'.. etc. When i'm in the office i play it through my desk speakers.. living room, i shoot it to the AirPort Express. Everywhere else.. my music is on the iPod, which also connects beautifully to my car. I love listening to my music, my way. I gave up on radio a long time ago. I couldn't tell you squat about what might be going on there.. and by the discussion here, it doesn't sound like i'm missing much.

Re:Fuck it

[trawg]

Try TripleJ. 128 kbit mp3 stream, non-commercial, massive variety. Lots of Australian stuff, obviously, but it is basically the only thing I listen to these days to find new music!

Re:Fuck it

[evilviper]

I don't want to listen to the shitty selection most stations play, especially considering that they only play singles and never any of the other tracks on an album.

You've been listening to Clear Channel stations far too much... Find an independant radio station on the dial, and you'll find they don't have some automated list of the lowest-common-denominator songs, repeated 15 times every single day.

Re:Fuck it

[winwar]

"Find an independant radio station on the dial, and you'll find they don't have some automated list of the lowest-common-denominator songs, repeated 15 times every single day."

No, they'll just have a different set of songs repeated 15 times every day.... Every now and then you will encounter stations that won't repeat songs for a day-they have more variety. The inherent problem is that you only have 24 hours in a day and you will only play about 15 songs an hour. That works out to about 360 slots per day. You cannot have much variety on a single radio station.

Re:Fuck it

[evilviper]

No, they'll just have a different set of songs repeated 15 times every day....

Where exactly are you? I listen to dozens of radio stations in the area, and even if a song is terribly popular, you won't hear it more than maybe 3 times all day. Most stations are not on a standard playlist at all, and it's not the same 300 songs repeated day after day.

Wherever you are, I'll make sure never to move there...

No, no, no

[commodoresloat]

Vinyl is too noisy also. I demand the REAL THING at all times. Whenever I go for a drive, I hire a string quartet to play live in my car.

Re:No, no, no

[Craig Maloney]

Better not leave the top down, or you might loose the bass (literally).

Re:No, no, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Better not leave the top down, or you might loose the bass (literally).

"lose"

...Keep the lawsuits rolling

[plbland]

Don't you guys think it's funny that all seven of the 'latest news' section from http://riaa.com/ relates to Lawsuits and Music Piracy. Funny, but not surprising.

Re:High quality audio?? have they listened to it?

[jd_esguerra]

Anyone choosing to record their music from XM or sirius instead of buying the CD to rip or getting a torrent of the whole album recorded as 256kbps VBR mp3's is a nutjob with lots of time to waste as it has to go in realtime.

I don't have internet access at home, so I can't download music conveniently. But I do have a mini-disc player that I rarely had use for. It was a gift. Now I have XM radio--also a gift. So now, before I leave for work, I hit record on the mini-disc player to record a disc worth of XM programming. Then, when I hit the treadmill later, I have commercial-free music. And it is different every day! No, it is not CD quality, but it doesn't matter at the gym. Yeah, I also have am MP3 player, but I find it inconvenient to swap the music frequently, and I don't have many CDs.

Mod parent funny!

[Spy der Mann]

How about some common sense here?

ROFL! The RIAA... common sense... hahahahahah.... *pant* oh boy, that was a good one. Mod parent up! :)

Quality isn't as good

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a sirius s50 and I record songs, but you know what? I record them only so I know what songs it is I need to buy on itunes. I think these people have their head up their ass. The quality isn't even as good with jocks talking in the beginning or end of the song on a recorded satelite radio anyway.

Re:Quality isn't as good

[TrentTheThief]

Whether or not you have an idiot talking over the track depends entirely upon which channel you listen too, not to all satellite radio. If you don't like the channel format, email them and bitch about it. You're paying for it. If you don't like what they're doing, bitch them out.

I've noticed that on XM, some of the channels have obnoxious perky dj's (who should be flailed and keelhauled) and others have dj's who tell you what played or maybe about playdates. I mainly listen to XM 74 "Bluesville." The DJ's there don't talk over the tracks.

As for sound quality, well, that very subjective and every person needs to evaluate that on their own. I find the "artifact" issue to be moot. I'm not an audiophile. I want decent, commercial-free music while I'm working. XM provides that for me. As well as CNN, BBC, old radio shows, etc. Some of the tunes I hear on XM, I can't buy because they're broadcast copies of 78's. The 78's are rare and priceless.

Satellite is the death knell for broadcast. This year, satellite radio is available in almost every new care. Die, Clearcast! Die!

so labels can get paid?

[Anonymous Coward]

"But over the long term, the music industry says, Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs, as is the case with iTunes."

you know your business is doomed when your only option for revenue comes from legislation.

hey, music industry, how bout you put out SOME GOOD MUSIC!!!!!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/5174 /002-4786530-9680825

scroll down to "cool music on the horizon"

what the fuck is that?

toto?!!!?! hall and oates!!! barry manilow!!!!! ELVIS!!!!
that's what i have to look forward to? light rock of the 1980s and a guy who's been dead like 30 years!!!

hey everybody, the music industry ABSOLUTELY SUCKS!!!!

Re:so labels can get paid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off, Elvis has more talent in the little pieces of fingernail left over after clipping your nails, than you do.

Canada? With a weaker constitution

[renehollan]

Lesse:

U.S.: You can buy all the healthcare you can afford. If you're poor, you're SOL.

Canada: It is illegal for you to buy healthcare that the government says it provides "for free" even though the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. Whether rich (unless you leave the country) or poor, you'll wait forever and this are also SOL.

Some might argue that Canada is less oppressive than the U.S. However, this is a detail of timing only. The reason that the Supreme Court can be effectively rendered impotent is the "Notwithstanding Clause" of the Canadian constitution that lets federal and provincial governments pass law overriding the decisions of the court.

Re:Canada? With a weaker constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

What this means is that there is no legal defence against any laws the federal or provincial governments enact.

In practice, when the Supreme Court has rendered a decision, and governments overrule it, people tend to break the law anyway, secure in the knowledge that the government does not have the means to arrest large numbers of them (have you looked at the state and size of the Canadian military?)

That works when the law is widely unpopular, but not when the court has upheld the rights of a minority, for example, the right to post commercial signs in English in Quebec, so long as French is more prominent. Of course retailers that do this find their stores vandalized, and the police doing nothing.

Me, I prefer the U.S. At it has a real constitution.

Re:Canada? With a weaker constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

come to the uk then, we also have good public healthcare, free at the point of use, as well as private healthcare for those that want it & can afford it.

Re:Canada? With a weaker constitution

[renehollan]

Indeed, most socialist countries with nationalized health care do not go so far as to make private health care illegal.

Canada joins such wonderful nations like Cuba and North Korea in this regard.

No more recording radio

[malsdavis]

Well they missed their chance with fm radio. But I guess its alot easier to buy politicians (legally) these day and so looks certain that yet more of our rights are being 'tuned out'.

Seriously, I don't see why media companies should be allowed to stop me recording radio transmissions. Sure they have to make money (and my god they make a lot) but I often record radio shows so I can listen to them later. Whats wrong with that?

Half Arguments

[yintercept]

While pointing out half arguments, I think the article has this conflict wrong. I would think that the digital broadcasters would be united with the recording artists in their desire not to have their broadcasts recorded and remixed by music enthusiasts. The broadcast model depends on a regular audience that tunes in and gets the current commercials along with the tunes.

People recording the broadcasts undermine the broadcasters as well as the recording artists. There really is not a conflict between recording artists and broadcasters. Piracy of broadcasts undermine both business models.

The real conflict here, is with people who want to take digital broadcasts and republish cuts from the digital broadcasts in whatever form.

Likewise, I think the fair use issue falls gets into the question of if the recorder is just making a recording to listen to later, or if the person recording the broadcast is planning on publishing the music (ie give copies to friends).

1984.. err 2084

[tilde_e]

"So I think the only thing that would make them happy would be if we all had devices that covered our ears. Every time we started to hear a song, it would ask us to verify that we want such and such money charged to our credit card account, otherwise it would cancel the music out."

It will be much easier for the Ministry of Truth to revise history when we can no longer record it.

But maybe the EU will launch a DRM-free satellite radio project...

Re:1984.. err 2084

[Anonymous Coward]

we already have drm free satellite radio, have had it for years, as well as DAB digital radio & one thats broadcast over digital terrestrial tv frequencies.

all giving 128kbit - 192kbit mpeg2 audio, unencrypted streams that can be saved directly to hard drive with cheap equipment.

and theres no subscription charge for that.

unfortunately, these signals dont reach the us, but many stations also broadcast for free on the internet.

"Should"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks"

Industry implies that it's Congress's job to help industry make money. Is it not more appropriate that industry help itself and do the work itself ("So what? Your problem, figure it out yourself" kind of thing, especially considering the power and clout of these large corporations)? Governmental intervention isn't always the best solution. You guys (industry) have brains, work it out.

My 2 cents.

This has happened before.

[DocOmega]

The music industry feared radio when it first started broadcasting. They did not like cassette tapes. In a similar vein, the movie industry did not like the VCR. They've all claimed these things would put them out of business. Last I checked, the entertainment industry is alive and well. These people should lighten up.

Re:This has happened before.

[bladernr]

Last I checked, the entertainment industry is alive and well.

That is the "Boy That Cried Wolf!" argument. But I take another view of that story: the third time, there really was a wolf, and the boy was killed and the sheep were eaten, hurting the townspeople.

I don't know whether or not new technology will destroy the recording industry, but it isn't logical to say "because they were wrong before about being killed," they are wrong now.

The first commercial transatlantic passenger route was inaugurated on June 28, 1939 by America's Pam Am airline using the Boeing's B-314 double-decker flying boat. The passenger shipping industry hardly noticed, saying people would prefer the luxury of ships compared with the cramped and noisy plane. Within 18 months, passenger traffic on ships fell by 80%, and the passenger ship industry was destroyed within a decade. If you are in business, it is foolish to ignore technological change.

If I were a recording industry executive, I would be handling these new technologies differently, but I would still see it as a threat. I would try to turn it into a business advantage, not outlaw it. But I would certainly not ignore it because "we were wrong before."

Re:This has happened before.

[DocOmega]

That is the "Boy That Cried Wolf!" argument. But I take another view of that story: the third time, there really was a wolf, and the boy was killed and the sheep were eaten, hurting the townspeople.

Would the townspeople really suffer if this boy were eaten by a wolf? I'd be interested to see what new paradidm we could come up with for media distribution and profit. Taking that you are calling the RIAA/MPAA/etc the boy in this analogy, I think the boy might just deserve to be eaten by a wolf after having cried it so many times falsly before. Or maybe a grue...

Re:This has happened before.

[nastyphil]

The first commercial transatlantic passenger route was inaugurated on June 28, 1939 ....Within 18 months, passenger traffic on ships fell by 80%.

1939

I'm pretty sure those U-Boats might have had something to do with it...

Re:This has happened before.

[Anonymous Coward]

The 80% fall in transatlantic passenger numbers in 1939-40 was due to factors other than competition from flying boats, I think.

Re:This has happened before.

[bladernr]

Would the townspeople really suffer if this boy were eaten by a wolf?

I was referring to the loss of the sheep, not the boy. The sheep the boy was guarding belonged to the townspeople in the story. I was pointing out that the townspeople were hurt by the loss of their sheep because they ignored the warnings of the boy. Perhaps the boy deserved what he got - and perhaps the townspeople did as well for ignoring his warnings and saying "he's said that before!"

Re:This has happened before.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Competition from U-boats, LOL.

Papa Heinlein said it best ... in 1939.

[Dr. Zowie]

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
--RAH, Life Line, 1939

I wish I had some mod points...

[Hamster Lover]

This my thinking exactly. What are radio stations paying for if the end consumer has to pay again for the same material?

Moreover, I don't think a 64 Kb/s stream from Sirius or XM qualifies as a "high quality recording". From what I've heard it's better than AM radio but worse than FM when it comes to audio quality.

Re:I wish I had some mod points...

[wytcld]

Sirius, unlike XM, is VRB - variable bit rate. They have an algorithm to trade off between their different channels, according to which have the more complex content at the moment. It works pretty well, mostly. I don't like mp3s at 128, and certainly not at 64, but I find Sirius quite listenable at least for a few hours. On longer car trips, say five hours into things, it's not so psychoacoustically satisfying, but there's little of the "oh that's just too thin" response I have to standard mp3 recordings.

is it just me

[crashelite]

only if the court system would say fuck off to the RIAA and MPAA life would be so much easier... last time i checked if you pay for XM radio... so what the hell are they trying to double charge us for it... it is kinda like buying a CD but to play it in ur CD player at home u have to pay a monthly fee of 9.99 that isnt how this world works.... i say just shoot the basterds now and get it over with... most of them dont deserve to live... stealing money from the poor to fill their bank accounts... they say it is to go back to the artists but no artist has seen any money back from the legal suits the RIAA has won...

Should they focus their energies on...

[Anonymous Coward]

putting out some decent music. Maybe if they stopped pumping out all this crap, they would make money again. I'd be willing to bet that the most listened to channels on XM and Sirius are NOT the ones that play today's so-called "hits."

Re:Should they focus their energies on...

[catahoula10]

Comment to:
"Maybe if they stopped pumping out all this crap, they would make money again."

I could not agree more. The people that will pay for radio are generally sick of the bombardment of commercials we hear on radio and see on television. For the most part, they are an older crowd that listens to a broader range of music and are willing to pay to skip the commericals.

In addition to that, the music executives made the same argument in the 1970's when the cassette player/recorder became popular; and they made it again in the 80's when the "Reel to Reel" recorder for the home became affordable. Their claim then,(and seems to be now) that their sales would be impacted in a negative way. But, Guess what? Their industry grew despite the popularity of the home cassette recording devices (as well as reel to reel recording devices). In fact, I am sure many of the people that recorded their favorite songs on the radio latter went on to make a purchase. That would surly explain why they grew despite the claims of impacted profits.

IMHO the music industry makes a moot argument; except, in the case of those that want to record an entire CD to make bootleg copies for profit. But even then, the crooks can buy a CD and make copies and don't need to record off the airwaves. So preventing the home user from recording a few of their favorite songs, or, for that matter, preventing the the kid down the street from downloading his favorite rap-crap amounts to nothing more then greed.

The real reason record companies are loosing profit these days is because the artist has become smart, and they will no longer sign contracts where the labels get the majority of the profits.

Re:Should they focus their energies on...

[rdmehd]

That is one reason that I signed up for Sirius I got tired of all the commericals and them playing the same old crap over and over. Now I can listen to just about any type of music that I want, and not a single commerical. I do have to agree the RIAA is just out to make as much money from use comsumers as possible. I know that I have had enough of their tatics. I buy my music only online from the artist themselves, if they have a way of selling it or from independent labels that market online. I have found that the quality of music is much better than the over played crap that the RIAA pushes on us.

Suck Them.

[Anonymous Coward]

And by them, I mean my balls.

Partially correct

[abulafia]

Fair Use has a historic common law component. It was formerly known as "fair abridgment", and grew over time from court cases after the Statute of Anne, which created something like the modern notion of copyright in England in the early 1700's, which in turn replaced the Company of Stationers, a printing monopoly.

In modern, U.S. law, it didn't actually grow out of Betamax (you're thinking of the time-shifting finding) - it gained a statutory definition in the Copyright Act of 1976, and was recognized common law (interpreted varyingly, to be sure) before that.

Sucks to be a Musician, Then

[RobotRunAmok]

Because their work can be digitized and distributed by anyone, they have to keep performing. Sculpture can't be digitized, happily, so sculptors get paid numerous times off of the single creative work (which is cast and replicated and distributed the old fashioned way -- in trucks). Presumably you don't intend to pay novelists for "performing" their works, so you'll continue to let them print many copies of the same book and be paid for each. Television shows go away as an art form, sadly, because they are just too darn expensive to produce if compensation is only to be had through "live" performances.

Of course, not all people making music *want* to perform, but I guess their out of luck in your consumer utopia as well. Not to mention all the people whose music is of such an electronic/experimental nature that they cannot really perform "live" per se. And let's pay no attention to the orchestras and other large ensembles who actually lose money when they tour, but do so as a means to promote their recordings. And let's hope that all these bands raking in the big bucks are writing their own material, cuz if they're not you know the songriter's getting screwed.

Super. Sounds great. What's not to love?

I'm making a note here to discourage my children from pursuing any creative endeavors professionally.

Re:Sucks to be a Musician, Then

[hb253]

You're making sense. What are you doing here?

Ummm, wha?

[NeuroManson]

Unless digital radio plays an entire album (which seems unlikely, since every station on FM plays maybe 2-3 tracks from any given album), I doubt we're going to see pirates selling 3 song CDs on the black market. Unless someone is willing to sell a 3 track CD for the same price the recording industry cabal charges for 3 good tracks + 9 asslike quality track CDs.

I seriously doubt the music industry is losing penny one on this, since their bulk profits per CD amount to the crap nobody wants to play on the radio.

What's the difference

[caldaean]

So, what they are saying are that they want to get paid for music already paid for (by the radio station), because someone records it and listens to it later? How is that different from getting paid for music already paid for (by buying an album) and listening to it later? Of course, that would be the next logical step for them to take. Have everybody insert an implant which will register every time you hear a song, and charge you for it. The way the music industry is acting nowadays, it's not strange that people don't like them.

Re:What's the difference

[pe1chl]

Of course what the RIAA wants to see is a DRM system where you don't buy music media in the store, but you buy the rights to listen to them a certain amount of times, either from the media delivered with the sale of any copies made from it.

So, when you want to copy it to your MP3 player that is fine, but you still need the rights to listen to it, and your player will subtract one for every time you listen to it.

Their ideal situation would be that similar rights are required to listen to the radio or to recordings made from it.

Hello? AHRA?

[Dachannien]

The content industry is already getting its pound of flesh, courtesy of the Audio Home Recording Act. I guess now they want to have their flesh and eat it too.

OUR Airwaves

[SoulMaster]

The law that I really wish would be passed is one recognizing that the airwaves/spectrum running over the United States belongs to the people and that the FCC is merely there for *ahem* "fair" regulation of them.

The instant trickle-down effect of that realization would be that anything broadcast on our airwaves has immediately been placed in the public domain, and is free for public use and reproduction.

Further thought, if the artists would band together and oust RIAA, then their music could be free anyway and they could make a mint on their concerts. This would also eliminate crappy artists (Ashlee Simpson) from sticking around so damn long because they wouldn't be making any money.

They're not all bad...

[lengau]

They're not all bad. For example, Magnatune is a record label, but they give the artists half of the money from the recording (instead of approx. 1-2%). They charge for the distribution.

XM 2 GO

[Lullabye_Muse]

My parents recently bought me a tao xm 2 go player, and though its a really great piece of equipment there are some limiting factors, main issue is the fact its a pretty hefty device and yet it can only store 5 hours of music which the riaa mandated i believe last year. But there's nothing really to prevent me from copying audio over to my computer which I do under my fair use privleges and with the av cable that came lovingly packed into the box. The audio quality is really good even on the wireless fm, but a major con on the recorded audio factor (my xm) is that you can't skip within a track so if I accidently skip on a 2 hour session I can't go back and then fast forward to where I was. Very annoying. But what I don't really comprehend is why the RIAA is involved to begin with, as isn't radio controlled by the royalties organizations bmi/emi/ascap?

But Uncle Harlan Said it Most Memorably... in 2001

[RobotRunAmok]

"Individuals seem to think that they can allow the dissemination of writers' work on the internet without authorization, and without payment, under the banner of "fair use" or the idiot slogan "information must be free." A writer's work is not information: it is our creative property, our livelihood and our families' annuity. Why should any artist, of any kind, continue creating new work, eking out an existence in pursuit of a career, following the muse, when little internet thieves, rodents without ethic or understanding, steal and steal and steal, conveniencing themselves and "screw the author"? What we're looking at is the death of the professional writer!"

More flame-throwing corkers here.

Re:High quality audio?? have they listened to it?

[F1_Fan]

Exactly. I own a Sirius unit and it produces something that's very far from high quality audio. Suitable for listening to in the car for sure but that's about it.

So that the "labels" get paid?

[Rogerborg]

Wait - I thought it was all about the poor starving artists. Now I'm all CONFUDDLED.

Record Companies are Obsolete

[jamarcus]

"They're worried that users will prefer to record the high-quality audio (for free) to buying a download or CD."

Of course they will, and why shouldn't they? If a cheaper, better version of your product or service becomes available, you need to improve your own or find something else to do. Record companies market and distribute music. The internet does it better, for free. It is not our responsibility to change our practices, it is the record labels' responsibility to change theirs.

Re:High quality audio?? have they listened to it?

[geekd]

Exactly what I was going to say. Talk sounds fine on Sirius, but music sounds like crap. Not even 128K, It sounds more like 64K mp3s. Lots of high end warble and other compression artifacts.

In fact, now that "Hair Nation" has stopped playing the same songs every hour, the sound quality is my biggest complaint for Sirius, followed by reception drop outs.

If it wasn't for Howard and the NFL, I would not have Sat. radio.

Idea: Why don't Record Labels pay listeners?

[Beerden]

Here's a novel concept: Record Companies make a lot of money on listeners, but what if listeners belonged to a Listeners Organisation that demanded to be paid, instead, to listen to the music? I know this sounds stupid, but Record Companies are always whining about making MORE money when they're making shitloads already. More power to the consumer, I say. If this Listeners Organisation was a billion people strong, for example, then the Record Companies would have to ease off a little.

What nonsense. Utter nonsense

[tkrotchko]

First of all, and this is important:

    Neither Sirius nor XM broadcast in anything approaching CD quality. At best, some of the stations are broadcast in what is equal to 128kb/s mp3 or aac. Most channels are roughly FM quality.

    Second, the fact that this is broadcast digitally is irrelevant; there is no access to the digital stream, so by the time you can record the music, it's already analog. Therefore, this is really nothing more than recording radio.

    Can you make digital copies of this analog stream (re-read my last paragraph)? Yes. But then, you can do that with FM radio as well.

Let's be clear about this. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANALOG AND SATELLITE RADIO EXCEPT THAT FOR NOW THE MUSIC CHANNELS DON'T HAVE COMMERCIALS.

The RIAA appears to be using the words "digital" in a way to evoke fear of piracy. It's so transparent that you'd have to be really naive to believe anything about the RIAA's position.

Re:But Uncle Harlan Said it Most Memorably... in 2

[Dr. Zowie]

Authors and musicians were willing to work pretty hard to generate works when copyright expired in 14+14 years. Imagine if architects got the same deal that authors get today. "Design this building and you and your heirs will get a percentage of the rent for your lifetime plus 90 years, unless you manage to grow fat enough to buy some new laws and make it your lifetime plus 120 years...".

Sure, it's wrong to steal an author's work by putting it on the 'net. But on the other hand, that doesn't make it right to lock up entire technologies, economies, and sectors of the public consciousness for centuries. Heinlein's quote is apropos because the music rightsholders are trying to turn back the clock and once again make it practically impossible to copy stuff off the air (as well as simply illegal to do so for redistribution).

Seriously duder

[Emot]

What is up with
the way you're
formatting your paragraphs
three or four words
then a break. It's
like you're talking in
haiku but failing miserably
. Seriously duder. You can
type to the end of the
text box. Interesting thing about
computers is that you
don't have to insert
carriage returns, as through the magic
of computational wizardishishness
and other such stuff that none of us
have any comprehension of
your carriage returns will be
placed automatically at the
end of every line
. I really have no idea where
I was going with this
. Why the hell do you
format your posts this way
?Can I get an answer?

"...so labels can get paid..." ?

[X-rated Ouroboros]

"But over the long term, the music industry says, Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs,"
Congress should find a way that the artists get paid. There will always be people that produce music and there will always be people that listen to music... there will not always be people that sit in the middle and skim off whatever they can.

Sadly...

[MacDork]

This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law.

Sadly, that is no longer the case. Individuals have and continue to come into court and consistently get their way at the expense of the public. They do so routinely. The Supreme Court of the United States even upheld Congresses right to apply copyright retroactively with the Sonny Bono CTEA. Personally, I like this quote better, it seems much more relevant:

Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay

Radio regulations

[Jugalator]

Well, if they make radio more "regulated" either by quality, consumer exposure, or fees, their music will also likely get less widely spread. Sounds strange to me, but OTOH, these are the guys that want nothing more than make legal music far harder to listen to than the pirated counterparts.

Jurisdiction

[rossdee]

This is presumably a matter between the record labels (and artists) an the (satellite) broadcaster. Presumably the briadcaster enters some aggreement with the record companies and pays royalties for this priviledge.

However what if the satellite radio company was NOT based in the US? The transmitter(s) sure aren't in the US, they are up in space 40000 Km above the equator. Therefore the Tecord Industry Association of America would have no say in the matter.

Anyway I think satellite radio is rather pointless. Who wants to PAY $10 per month to have someone else pick what you are going to listen to. Satellite receivers are no smaller that MP3 players and with them you get to pick exactly what you want to listen to.

And as far as the 'content' and 'paying for it' go, many of us gave already paid for a libray of music by buying vinyl, or CD's, or have purchased downloads from online music services. Why should we have to pay a subscription to listen to music we have already paid once for.

And those who download music illegally do so because they don't want to pay for it so they are not going to be interested in paying a subscription.

-1 troll

[ClamIAm]

Just because there are people on Slashdot who approve of harassing and suing those who don't comply with the GPL/Free Software licenses, and there are also those who dislike the RIAA and think they should have less legal protection/rights, it does not follow that these are the same people. If there are people such as this, then call them out by replying to their comments. Don't try and take a holier-than-thou stance in which you assume the role of great protector of all discourse.

Only one solution...

[rob_levine]

This whole copy issue with digital broadcast and media is gonna be a lot easier if we are all just banned from listening to music at all.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who wants to PAY $10 per month to have someone else pick what you are going to listen to."

I do, along with at least 10 million other people.

I'll tell you why:

1) I don't like listening to the same music over and over. If I've heard the album 5 or 6 times I'm done with it with a few exceptions.

2) If you don't hear new music, how will you know if you like it?

3) Howard Stern

4) NFL

5) Music anywhere in the country

6) Interviews with Jazz Legends

7) NFL Talk Channel

8) NPR

9) Traffic reports.

There are dozens of reasons.

Re:What nonsense. Utter nonsense

[Mancat]

My cousin got XM for Christmas. I was riding with him last week, and on a number of music stations, there were commercials for "Xantrax 3 Diet Pill" or whatever the hell it's called. The commercial title even showed up on the player screen.

It won't be long until satellite radio is equally infested with commercials. They don't care that you're already paying for it. The more money they can rake in, the better. Cable and satellite TV subcribers have already forgotten that the biggest selling point of cable and sat were, you guessed it, no commercials. Now look how things are.

Bad distributor. No donut!

[scoove]

I guess the RIAA bigwigs fear anything that makes it "convenient" to record a broadcast.

You know, we need to take a step back. The parties the RIAA represents are distributors. Many industries have distributors - people that help match buyers with sellers and add expense to the process. Distribution as a viable business often emerges when it is difficult to put the buyer and seller directly together. It dies when new technologies develop that make this easy.

Consider Geico. They sell insurance directly to consumers, bypassing agents. Their model is to cut out the middleman and save the 15-20% overhead associated with distribution, keeping much of that and giving enough of that savings to the consumer to have a competitive advantage.

Should an angry army of insurance agents band, form a trade association, restrain trade, intimidate consumers and fight progress? That'd be absurd. A good friend of mine owns an insurance agency and he's found the way to compete is not suing his customers, but rather proving higher levels of service. He actually saved me 15% off of Geico which I was previously with, and provides me with a lot of expertise and attention in my insurance policies I never got with the direct model. Insurance is actually a market where knowledge is valuable and many consumers will pay a bit more to benefit from it.

Dell has cut out the middleman too. Do you see Best Buy suing all of us for going direct? Of course not. Compete or die. Countless other industries have gone between the flux of direct and distribution. The science comes down to this: When you add value to the consumer that exceeds the additional cost through the distribution process, the consumer will naturally buy through distribution. If you don't add more value than cost, they will bypass you.

The recording industry is cranking out tired artists, relying on a model of selecting a limited set of musicians and "putting lipstick on the pig" through aggressive marketing to sell the stuff. Worse yet, their distribution adds exceptional cost - more than double the original cost that goes to the artist (most of the cost to the consumer is to the distributor - this is a hint that the process is out of control), yet their product is less convenient to the consumer than the direct option. They're adding cost and inconvenience, not any added service. Unfortunately the distribution/direct paradigm has shifted due to technology and they're adding cost with no value. Excluding anticompetitive practices, litigation and legislation based on gifts to corrupt politicians, they will die... unless they can provide value once again that exceeds the cost they add to the product.

*scoove*

Re:Bad distributor. No donut!

[Anonymous Coward]

Music distributors are providing a service not mentioned here. They're providing the service of selection, helping customers avoid wasting their time by pre-screening the artists for them. Their model was to find artists that were professionally worthy early on, sign them and help get their music out to consumers while rejecting thousands of not-so-good artists.

The model works well when you don't have a good way for consumers to discover new artists on their own or just don't have the time and interest in doing it themselves. While a mainstream news journalist will argue, they're essentially doing the same thing. They are locating the news, selecting only what they think is of value to the consumers, and distributing it. Except in both cases of mainstream news and music distribution, they let the editorial process of filtering content get out of control. Both have decided to let other things besides the consumer drive their business. Newsrooms have developed an extreme editorial slant and facts are no longer necessary, such as today's New York Times lie of the day. Both will keep cranking out crap because they are no longer in it to help their consumer. It's all about them and their power now.

Fortunately there's no reason to fret. Both industries are struggling. People that are power hungry are rarely operationally efficient. They require all the perks and refuse to work hard to make a decent product. That combination takes a few years but almost always kills the company.

Re:High quality audio?? have they listened to it?

[Unknown_monkey]

My pioneer XM unit has 5 hours of recording capacity. But I promise I only record the static channels.

Subject

[Legion303]

Time for my monthly "Fuck the RIAA."

"'We've got to find a way to harmonize this so it's rational,' said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA's chief executive officer. 'There are going to be new technologies that are great for fans, and great for the entire music world, but they're all operating on different platforms, and all operating on different rule sets'."

It's already rational. Listeners are not prohibited from taping music they hear on the airwaves for personal use. Different platforms don't automatically suspend fair use rights as the RIAA hopes. Presumably digital radio stations already pay standard RIAA fees and operate under similar restrictions (no playing an entire album, etc.), so the only "problem" here is that the RIAA wants even more money for something that's already allowed. Fuck you, RIAA, and your boot-licking douchebag employees like Bainwol here.

Uncle Harlan didn't get it either

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets be real here.

Harlan had a moment or two in the sun; mostly with a star trek script.

"Uncle" Harlan saw his works being passed around on Usenet. And you know what, it wasn't right. But lets be honest. His stuff isn't worth anything. Or at best, its worth the $.25 you can buy his stuff for in the used book store.

If "Uncle" harlan had a brain (and he doesn't when it comes to computers and the internet), he would have made copies available himself on a web page for $1 each in .PDF format. But "Uncle" harlan doesn't understand how the economics of publishing changed when there was no cost to send information to consumers. So instead of paying $7 for a paperback (of which he would've gotten ten cents if he was lucky) he could have sold it to his fans for $1. But in his mind, he would be out $6. He doesn't get it.

I'll bet libraries piss off "Uncle" Harlan too, mostly because he is a knee-jerk windbag egotist who thinks because he wrote a star trek script that his opinion *matters*. Cripes.

But its *not* an annuity

[tkrotchko]

"our livelihood and our families' annuity. "

But it's not.

I don't have a problem with authors and musicians making a living on their works, but I don't see where copyright was meant to be an annuity down through the generations.

At best, copyright was meant to give a person enough to encourage them to be more creative because it allows them the means to live and work as a creative person. We all benefit.

But what benefit is there to society that Elvis's daughter makes money from his songs? I don't mean that in the socialist sense, I simply mean that copyright is not a natural law. Its a device of law that people decided society was better off giving authors a limited monopoly to prevent unauthorized copying. Therefore, you can't make the argument that there is somehow a natural law that establishes ownership of a creative work for all time.

The compression they use

[tkrotchko]

"Lots of high end warble and other compression artifacts."

Listen to anything with a solo saxophone on Sirius. Whatever they do to it makes it sound like an old cassette deck with tons of wow and flutter. Something about the alto sax that is just the bane of the compression they use.

The only thing that makes it worth it is that between the FCC and corporate radio, they've almost completely killed any semblance of interesting radio out there. Satellite radio for all its bad sound at least has something worth listening to.

What if

[zobier]

What if I buy this crap and get sick of it a week later?

If they enforce this then I propose a pro-rata content payment system:

$x = $days_owned * $avg_cd_price / $avg_cd_num_tracks / $avg_days_to_live
~= 0.0078c / day

Where:

$avg_cd_price = $13
$avg_cd_num_tracks = 13
$avg_days_to_live = ( $avg_life_span - $avg_consumer_age ) * 365.242199
$avg_life_span = 75
$avg_consumer_age = 40

So If I delete the crap a week later I pay 0.05c!

Of course...

[ddelrio]

I think the government should make people give me money, too.

Congress interference good or bad?

[ElectroBot]

Why is that every time someone (person, corporation or an entity) does something that a corporation doesn't like, they instantly need laws protecting them and their business?

But when we, the consumers, want some laws changed/created corporations always object and usually win?


One of these days (hopefully soon) they'll realize that you can't always have your cake and eat it too.

Re:High quality audio?? have they listened to it?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is called timeshifting AND is one of the legitimate uses that Lumpy quoted.

Got another reason that falls outside the parent argument?

What really scares the RIAA

[Animats]

There's this little box in your car. It starts out empty. It listens to satellite radio. All the channels. It keeps a copy of each new song, discarding duplicates. Soon, you have a big music library.

Soon, there's this little box on your belt....

This is completely legal under the Audio Home Recording Act. The RIAA gets nothing for it. They can't even stop radio stations from broadcasting the music. Not even with DRM; broadcast radio stations have the right to crack DRM. (That's actually in the DMCA.)

That's what scares the RIAA.

In the long term, Congress should also...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the long term, Congress should also find a way to ensure that I only pay once for a song. If the RIAA puts one new song on a band's greatest hits CD, and I have already purchased the "greatest hits" on the band's other albums, then I should only have to pay for the one song.

Just let 'em keep going..........

[pottymouth]

Everyone here is talking about XM and Sirus without even considering the tidelwave that's coming this year. HD radio, that's terrestrial broadcast, with multicast capability has been growing now for three years and is now getting ready for prime time. This is the year that the HD consortium (mostly Clear Channel, Infinity and a few other radio biggies) really push this thing into the world.

Start buying digital recievers and do your recording now. There's no DRM yet (trust me, I know) and the way development (and sales) is going it will be some time before there is. The RIAA may own the legislature and lots of congressmen but this country is still made of a hell of lot more non-lawyers than lawyers. Let 'em sue 'till they're blue. Once the politians (you know, poly for many, and tics for blood sucking parasites) learn that they loose votes when they back DRM, they'll worm their way back to opposing it. The scum have always played both sides, why would they change now?

If you really want a solution, get in there and vote. Send the bastards home that don't do as their told by their bosses (you know, US!).

Re:What nonsense. Utter nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not quite analog... You get the artist album and song title with the song. With a simple perl script you can save and tag the music file automagically.

Most of these radios have a serial interface you can use to grab the info for the song.

I think a better title for this article would be .

[ScrewMaster]

"Still More Tension Between The RIAA And Everyone Else"

These guys won't be satisfied until they are back to being the sole distributor of content, bar none. Now, that doesn't mean that they would like to actually own and operation satellite radio and music download sites, and all the other latest technology-driven distribution methods. That would still be arrogantly monopolistic but at least it would show some progressive thinking. Nope, they aren't that smart: the only solution that is valid in their limited worldview is to eliminate such channels entirely and send us back to the days of shiny plastic discs.

Blah-blah-blah...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Congress should find a way to regulate these new digital radio networks so labels can get paid when consumers keep copies of songs, as is the case with iTunes."

Translation : Blah-Blah-Blah...greed.. Blah-Blah-Blah..billions of dollars not enough.. more moneh!!!..Blah-Blah-Blah.

There aren't enough critics of capitalism left around, it's a shame.

Nirvana?

[tepples]

Talk channels make AM radio sound like nirvana.

I was going to make a joke about a grunge band from Seattle, but nevermind.

Unfounded fear

[Hershmire]

They're afraid because the quality of the recording doesn't degrade even if you copy it a million times and share it with a million friends. Traditional recording off of the radio means degradation in quality over time and over number of copies made.

But digital radio isn't currently that much better quality than FM, so one could technically make decent recordings off of FM with a digital recording device (a computer, for example). The fact that it's a digital broadcast doesn't mean that much except perhaps the plug one uses in the back of the machine.

The solution? Just do what they do on normal broadcast radio: have different radio versions or just get the DJ to talk over the first or last few seconds. These dumb bastards want to regulate everything to death. That only pisses of the consumer and wastes tons of money.

Idiots.

Continuous Time Shift not in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Between my DVR and hard disk based over the air radio recordings, I do not listen or watch any content while it is being broadcasted.
My thoughts:

Radio:
- Over the air FM radio is too repetitious during the day, the only time anything new is played is in the middle of the night.
- Secondly, daytime radio, especially commute time has no music in the morning, and entirely too much non-music talk, station id, and other channel switch causing filler material. Maybe it's been years since I've heard two songs back to back without any interruption (including station ID) between them.
- Time shifting allows me to entirely skip lame songs, lame DJs acting like 13 year olds, 'news' from the tabloid/gossip pages, etc.
- Stop the 'radio should be free' commercials and provide terrestial, earth based digital radio transmission now that digital radio receivers are less than $100.

TV:
- May TV programs, news especially, disrespect and borderline insult their audience. The evening news and news reporting was never meant to be like a newspaper, with sections on local news, national news, sports, gossip/hollywood, "ain't it cute" vignettes, etc.
- The viewer's time is worth something and broadcasters like to pretend that wasting a viewer's time will cause more people to view the program. 15+ minutes of commercials per hour + station ID + promotions of other programs, etc.
- Lowest common cost programming will provide the big push towards view on demand media since lowest common cost programming consists of 1 camera following unpaid non-actors either, searching someone's room, confronting a cheating spouse, or redecorating a room.

Movies:
- The recent trend making the 'blockbuster' movies 2.5 or more hours long will drive audiences away. I skip all but a few movies that long as they are either: repetitious special effects in leiu of dialog/plot, extensive filler material such as landscape pans, cigarette chain smoking (instead of dialog or real character acting), cliche dialog instead of using adjectives since the cliche is a poor substitute for conveying the idea behind the cliche.
- Sequels and TV show based movies rarely spark any orignal content.
- Award winning actors performing their roles worse than Elvis did in the 1960s movies and getting credited with 'Academy' level performances

News, Magazines, Papers:
- The disintegration of common journalistic/publishing standards (e.g., having an advertisement for a product on the left hand page, and a favorable review of that same product on the right hand page). (e.g., Inteviewing a book author about a 'groundbreaking' new book on a news program that is owned by the company that own's the book publisher). This drift towards ignoring a conflict of interest is troubling in the longer term.

Re:Continuous Time Shift not in TFA

[I_M_Noman]

daytime radio, especially commute time has no music in the morning, and entirely too much non-music talk, station id, and other channel switch causing filler material. Maybe it's been years since I've heard two songs back to back without any interruption (including station ID) between them.

Where do you live? I listen to the radio every day, and I hear songs back-to-back without interruption all the time.

Besides, what's wrong with non-music radio?

Re:Continuous Time Shift not in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

>what's wrong with non-music radio?

Quality news radio (BBC is the best example) and issue oriented talk are fine.

The rock music stations seem to think that playing no music from 6am-9am and talking about celebrity gossip, sex talk, promoting their station, and generally catering to 13 year old males is worth listening to.

After 9am, the rock music stations switch to about 8-11 minutes of commercials an hour + 5 minutes of station promos, station contests, etc + 5 minutes of DJ talk, leaving about 40 minutes for music of which there is some sort of break after each song.

About the only real solution for over the air music is to record overnight music on a rock station, offload to mp3 player for time shifting. It's amazing that the overnight programming has about 1/2 the talk, interruptions, and commercials as the daytime programming.

A special side category is two directly competing same format stations one of which plays significantly less music per hour but claims that it has less commercials per hour (by conviently excluding all of those 'we play less commercials' as being non-music).

Hey, RIAA!

[Hosiah]

Can I still hum quietly to myself in a closed room!?!

Re:Hey, RIAA!

[EmagGeek]

I imagine doing so would constitute unlawful reproduction of a copyrighted work. It doesn't matter whether there is anyone around to hear it. If you reproduce it, it's unlawful.

WHAT ABOUT JOHN?!?

[mr_zonules]

I find it MORE interesting that the RIAA recently sued almost 650 "John Doe"s.
RIAA Brings New Round Of Lawsuits Against 751 Online Music Thieves"
And I quote: "In addition to the "John Doe" litigations, the major music companies filed lawsuits against 105 named defendants."

Re:What nonsense. Utter nonsense

[ad0gg]

Umm no.. Music stations on XM or Sirius do not have commercials. XM used to be they removed them about 2 years ago to better compete with Sirius The talk radio stations have commercials on XM because they are syndicated and live, gotta fill something in there.

KCSU

[BlurredWeasel]

My trick is to listen to college radio. Sure the DJ's are a little dumber (not by much....) than other DJs, but they aren't obnoxious like the other ones. They play all sorts of interesting music you've never heard before.

I listen to KCSU which has a streaming online feed. Give it a go, you'll like it. They alternate between Emo/Alt-Rock and HipHop styles of music.

Hello?

[timothykaine]

Last time I checked, satellite radio wasn't free. If I pay for it, I damn well better be able to listen to it when I want to. I don't pay to do what you want when you want, I pay to do it my way. If you want users to do it your way, you better be footing the bill.

Eliminate the RIAA

[MortyFly]

Please, do not support RIAA music and musicians. Don't be a victim of corporate brainwashing and let someone else decide your music for you. The best music is out there worldwide on Independent labels. Support the MUSICIANS and forward thinking labels/sites like magnatune, etc. Support record label's that don't trick, cheat, and "en-slave" people. Music is the language of emotion....enjoy:^ )http://www.djkennymac.com/

Who cares

[aliquis]

(don't know there to answer)

I would like to say "just copy the hell out of them and let them die", but I guess that's illegal ;)

These stories are boring, and who cares, I wouldn't pay anyway, laws or not. I'll buy products I want, not that THEY want to sell.

Re:What nonsense. Utter nonsense

[Mancat]

I guess I must have been imagining this commercial that had it's own description line on the display on multiple stations?

In other news

[welshie]

In 1979, I had a Hitachi radio cassette tape recorder. It could record radio programmes onto a local storage media so I could listen to them later.

How, precisely, is this any different? Both are not lossless. Digital radio gets encoded with a lossy algorithm before transmission. FM radio transmission is lossy because of the radio noise and bandwidth limits. Cassette tape recording is lossy because of bandwidth limits and tape distortion.

The issue is that the people who really enjoy listening to music will want a copy that some DJ hasn't talked over the first and last 30 seconds of the track, or faded into another song. These days, if I record from any form of broadcast radio audio, I still get this on most stations. It must be a method the radio stations agree with the rights owners, and I don't see why they can't keep to that. The real geeks who aren't going to spend money will probably record multiple copies and try to mix them to remove the DJ chatter, but they are going to be a tiny minority, and they aren't going to spend money anyway, so they are a lost cause.

required listening: "C30 C60 C90" by Bow Wow Wow.

So stop watching American Idol!

[Anyd]

Seriously! The fact is that the record companies are still making enough money to pay off our government. Lets face it; 10000 ./ers and the EFF don't really stand a chance against a huge conglomerate armed with millions of dollars which they are still earning off of crappy cookie-cutter band-of-the-week groups.
How about we all find a non tech-literate friend with one of the tainted Sony CDs, and point out to them that it will f*** up their computer.
Or my favorite (I've said it before on /.) Pick a band from Etree. Download some decent free live music. Buy a concert ticket. Don't buy CDs.

This is why....

[EmagGeek]

I will never pay for radio, nor will I ever pay for TV. I listen and watch only what is freely available via over-the-air broadcast. When analog TV gets shut down and you have to pay licensing just to watch a digital broadcast, the TV will go dark. Same for radio. I have a piano and play guitar, so I'll just make my own goddamn music.

It's the RIAA's job to squeeze everything they can out of you. It is YOUR job not to give it to them. Every time you buy a CD, pay for satellite radio, subscribe to Live365, purchase products that are advertised on the radio, or shop at retail stores that play music, you are supporting the RIAA and their crap. The only way they will ever change is if they stop making money doing what they're doing.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people, including the vast majority of anti-RIAA slashdot zealots, don't have the cojones to actually vote with their wallet. As a person who is capable of entertaining myself, I simply refuse to pay money to be entertained.

Re:What nonsense. Utter nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting. In europe we have 48khz satellite streams...
well I'd better shut up!

The Ideal Model

[Inside_Joke]

The ideal model would be that the record companies actually stop selling records.

Stop laughing, I'm going somewhere with this.

See, their entire goal is to exploit as many people as possible. So they hire the bands for minimum wage. Then they charge them for the privliege of using their recording studios (which they have to use by contract). Then instaed of selling CDs you'll either be charged a fee to RENT the CDs, or you'll be charged for radio (XM and Sirius have already begun charging for radio). Anything with a "Record" button would be outlawed, from a handheld microcassette to a PVR. YOU don't own the music, THEY do, and you should be GRATEFUL for the privliege to listen to it.

No, you have it right

[tkrotchko]

On both XM and Sirius, the commericals are on the talk stations only and they do show on the radio display.

But both XM and Sirius could change their advertising policy today and there's nothing a subscriber could do about it. Mind you, I think they'd be shooting themselves in the foot, but look at movie theaters... they charge you $8-10 to see a movie then show you commercials for Coke (or whatever else). Then they wonder why people won't go to the theater. But that's a different topic.

Dear Congress,

[StikyPad]

We at the RIAA have long been concerned about the ability of consumers to obtain our product for free. While we value radio for its ability to publicize our artists' music, even to the extent that we're more than willing to pay broadcasters to play specific songs, we loathe the idea that consumers might be able to listen to those songs at a time of their choosing without our companies directly profiting. We should be able to bring our product to the homes (and vehicles and workplaces) of our market without risking the possibility that they may somehow obtain a copy of our music by using something referred to as a "recording device." Such devices circumvent our ability to profit from the exposure of the music that we license for broadcast.

When consumers purchase our music, they are not paying for that specific copy; they are paying for the rights to listen to the music when and where they choose. (Except when they want to make a copy of that media to listen to it on another device, in which case we maintain that they actually bought the CD; not the rights to listen to the music in a manner of their choosing. Also we maintain that when music is purchased without physical media, the copy stored on the consumer's device is the only authorized copy, and it may only be played on the device which retrieved the content from our licensed servers. Also we would like to discuss further changes to the laws of space and time once the current licensing issues have been resolved to our satisfaction).

In short, we believe our industry should have its cake and eat it too, and we're prepared to donate generously* to achieve this previously impossible goal.

Yours Always**,
The RIAA

* In the form of travel expenses and accomodations, until you ban that in your attempt to make it look like you're cleaning up corruption, at which time we'll make other arrangements. (Do you prefer blondes, or brunettes?)

** Or until you stop pandering to our interests above those of the people whom elected you. Remember, they probably wouldn't have even known about you without our significant campaign contributions.