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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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:Stop fighting technology and USE IT

[name773]

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

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!

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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

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.

So that the "labels" get paid?

[Rogerborg]

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

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.

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*