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RIAA Sues XM Satellite Radio
skayell writes "The RIAA is suing XM Satellite radio contending that the ability to store songs in memory makes it similar to an iPod, but with no income involved for the RIAA." From the article: "XM said it will vigorously defend this lawsuit on behalf of consumers and also called the lawsuit a bargaining tactic. [...] The labels are currently in talks with XM and its rival Sirius Satellite Radio, to renegotiate digital royalty contracts for broadcasts."
So why aren't they suing every radio station in the country, and why haven't they been doing this for decades?
Digital = terrorist?
i am a soviet space shuttle
I think the one broken leg that RIAA has is songs are recorded in the memory, so it's not a traditional radio broadcast.
I wonder if RIAA won this case, would it affect MP3 players which allow recording of radio?
Please stop entering code 2,2,7,6,6,4
"XM subscribers will have little need ever again to buy legitimate copies of plaintiffs' sound recordings" - I don't think the music industry needs any help persuading people never again to buy their music - they're already doing such a fine job of that by themselves.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Variations on wavelengths, amplified and broadcast, take approximately 3 seconds from source audio to the listener. This cumilatively creates a 'storage medium' where anyone with a reciever can illegally intercept music. This of course can be resolved by renegotiated royalty payments.
Infinity is overrated, Infinity+1, now that's cool!
It used to be RIAA members giving Ratio station producers and DJ's gifts, holidays and other fancy toys to promote and play their music.
Now everythings on digital it seems the RIAA is doing all it can to prevent anyone getting access to their artist products.
Its a strange world we live in.
This is plain silly. First off, they aren't upset at XM Service. They are upset at hardware that works like a radio-Tivo. However, TV companies aren't suing Tivo. They're adapting advertising to Tivo.
The RIAA is barking up the wrong tree, and pretty soon everyone and I mean everyone will turn on the RIAA. Many artists in the industry hate their tactics. Having a portion of the radio recorded Tivo like is not the same as illegally downloading music from the internet.
And last time I checked, people were doing recordings from radio for ages.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Everyone burn your cassette recorders and cd writers!!! No radio in teh country should be allowed to do this illegal timeshifting nonsense!!! Recordings of our recordings are piracy, theft, and treason!!! /end sarcasm
/me out
The reaction of the RIAA and MPAA to technology should be in the mode of adaptation. The business model of these industries was founded on the difficulty of end users to effectively make use of their fair rights provided for by copyright law. No one treats books like the RIAA and MPAA treat music and movies, yet the publishing industry still does well. We are even seeing online publishing become more and more profitable (as the industry is adapting to the times).
The RIAA and MPAA only exisit because it used to be difficult to create the media used to distribute copyrighted works of music or film. They dumped money into media creation and distribution and rightfully got a good chunk of the pie when consumers purchased their products. But creation and distribution of any type of copyrighted work is no longer a factor. The RIAA and MPAA serve no real purpose anymore.
They are afraid and are kicking and screaming their way to bank. Why? because they have so much money for lobbyists and lawyers.
Bastards.
I've got to stop or there will be pages and pages of text about how screwed up the recording industry is.
"...XM subscribers will have little need ever again to buy legitimate copies of plaintiffs' sound recordings,"
With the quality of the Plaintiff's music, I think that's a given.
The ______ Agenda
I'd like to see how this holds up. From my understanding the RIAA has only been suing people it knows can't afford to go to court offering them "settlements" of large fines, though reduced from what they'd have to pay if they lost. Every time someone has stood up to them they've just tried to get the case dismissed.
If they're finally suing someone with an equal amount of lawyers and money, it should be an interesting legal precedent.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Unless someone invented some sort of new way of compressing and storing broadcasts, by my quick math, figuring an average of 4 minutes per song, a user would need 214 Inno's to record the "vast catalog" and never have to buy music again. And this doesn't include any new music that comes out from this day forward.
Only in RIAA-world do the suits think the average consumer has $77,000+ (for 214 Inno's at $360 each) to plunk down right now, plus 63+ weeks to spend 24/7, recording entire catalogs of music.
It's a limited storage device with even more restrictions on moving content than cassette/CD have now, and they're already proven legal in piles of court cases. You almost have to wonder if RIAA has any income stream, given how hard they're trying to make money through the legal system.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Can you back that up?
There's this little case called the "Betamax Case" that affirmed the rights of the public to record broadcasts for later listening. Perhaps you have heard of it? It gets discussed a lot on Slashdot.
i am a soviet space shuttle
So why aren't they suing every radio station in the country, and why haven't they been doing this for decades?
The last thing the RIAA wants is a level playing field, because if one existed, their leverage would disappear. With radio, they can still engage in payola practices. With XM and Sirius, they're dealing with entities that would rather control their own destinies, rather than suck on the RIAA's teat. It's not that XM and Sirius are digital, but that they are nation-wide and multi-channel. The RIAA can bully individual stations with impunity, and even the big guys like Clear Channel play along because they've essentially bought into the cartel. But XM and Sirius aren't part of the cartel, so the RIAA is giving them a shot across the bow. The message is: "Join the club, or we'll take you down."
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Despite frequent anti-lawyer postings on Slashdot (I confess, I do it too) lawyers are better than guns; they destroy greenbacks and leave people standing. Paradoxically, the RIAA is an example of why we actually need lawyers. Or would you prefer Apple HQ to be taken out by the RIAA's Somali IP department? Or downloaders to be taken out in drive-by shootings.
The business of lawyers is to be cheap enough that "businessmen" go to them rather than to hit-men, and expensive enough that "businessmen" have to be at least partly selective about who they sue.
Pining for the fjords
Coming from an XM Subscriber, I wouldn't WANT to record the content from the service, as it is far from CD Quality. In fact, FM sounds better in a lot of scenerios... and I've been able to tape from FM for as long as I can remember.
Despite its quality issues, I like the XM service and am sorry to hear about this. XM is in enough financial trouble, so I've read in recent articles, and I don't think they need this. I doubt the RIAA will make them go under, but this certainly can't be good for the service.
As far as the RIAA, I'm wondering what's next. I'm thinking they're going to sue Amazon for those 30-second 32kbps sample clips they have from CDs. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if some smart-ass exec at RIAA is reading this right now, and just yelped "BRILLIANT!" at the top of his lungs.
If it's going to cost them 10 million to "tear em a new one" in court, or 0.5 million in re-negotiated royalty fees, the choice is pretty clear.
I suspect the re-negotiation fees are meant to be a more permanent income stream for the RIAA meaning they want something recurring per song or per month.
In the long run, this fee will be more expensive than any court fee.
So, the RIAA is angry at people producing hardware to record XM radio, right? Isn't it impossible to get rid of this hardware? I mean, the radio has to have a speaker of some kind, right? So can't you always just cut the wires going to the speaker, wire them to an audio jack, and plug that into your sound card? Theres always a way.
It's real simple. They're not the only ones caught in this bind. There are too many people on this planet, and not enough useful to do. It's hard to tell thousands of people to go practice the frenchfry question. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody. So we leave niches open for them. They can play War on Some Drugs, or be Direct Marketers. "Deficits are meaningless. Reagan proved that." That's one of the guys running our sock puppet. Translation: at the level of national policy, money has long since been utterly decoupled from value. The name of the game has become musical rice-bowls, and most politicians are rice-bowl manufacturers. The RIAA are hoping they can get another before the music stops.
There's no question that recording a copyrighted broadcast is legal. It's legal. Distributing that recording isn't; performing that recording in public isn't. That attempt to categorize the mere possibility of recording off a broadcast as "disseminating" is another reframing attempt, exactly like you're trying to do with "legitimate".
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Just sue each and every person they can see. I know they can sue me. I have one of these tunes in my head that I can't get rid off it and I know I have not payed for it.
As I apparently am able to store music, I must be sueable under the same rules.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
How many times...
Downloading copyrighted material without the copyright owners permission might, might, be copyright infringement. Copyright is a legal concoction which only exists because it is supposed to enhance the public domain. It is not a right that is comparable to the right to own property. Why? Because the right to own property has a moral basis. We agree collectively that people can own property, things, stuff. Objects you can touch with you hand.
You cant own general relativity. You cant own the designs to you new death ray. You cant own that song you wrote. You can keep them secret if you want. But if you go public with them, then you cant complain when people copy them. You might be granted a limited monopoly in some way to encourage you to produce and release this information, but that is not a moral right you are entitled to, it is just an economic device.
Downloading is not stealing, and copyright legislation needs to take into account again that fact.
The epithet 'communist' doesn't exactly work here. The RIAA is arch-capitalist, they are using their money to maintain strategic manipulation of the market. The position that what the RIAA is doing is wrong is actually a pretty far-left position relying on the assumption that copyright rightfully belongs to everyone.
I'd say you were more of a communist than the RIAA.
All this lawsuit-circus is about forcing people to buy CDs. People want no more CDs.
If I'm going to pay for music, I'm sure as hell NOT going to buy it in a lossy format. Let me know when XM, iTunes, or any other major music service allows me to pay for and download FLACs from their catalog (a few independent musicians already do). Until then, I'll buy CDs.the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Because the 0.5 million would be just the down payment on a total sum that's much more than any legal expenses would be. The reasoning goes both ways, would the RIAA be willing to spend 10 million in court if all they could get in the end were 0.5 million in re-negotiated royalty fees?
... communist bastards...
You misspelled "capitalist". Either that or you still believe all that 50s McCarthyist crap about reds under the bed. Wake up, communism is nothing to fear, nor ever was.
Absolutely: see them in court. There's a lot of financial value to be had in demonstrating that you won't voluntarily submit to extortion.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In that case, declare it a cartel and sue it under the RICO laws. Seriously, collusion and price fixing are the LEAST of their crimes, and even those are enough to get the "association" disbanded.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
"communism is nothing to fear, nor ever was."
Yep. Stalin was just a big, misunderstood teddy bear. And the Cultural Revolution was really about getting more people to watch ballet.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
While I suspect you're right for a large number, or even a majority, of cases, there are companies that will pay extra to prove they won't bow to extortion. Hopefully XM is one of those.
/.-relevant example: IBM probably could have bought out SCO a long time ago for less than they're going to end up paying in legal fees, time & materials, etc.
Prime