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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."
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.
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?
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.
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..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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?
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
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.
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
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?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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.
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.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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).
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.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
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!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
What in the first amendment would trump copywrite law or vice versa??
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.
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.
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).