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Senate Bill Again Aims to Restrict Internet Radio

Posted by Zonk on from the congress-killed-the-internet-star dept.

JAFSlashdotter writes "If you enjoy MP3 or OGG streams of internet radio, it's time to pay attention. This week U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander, Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and Lindsey Graham decided to reintroduce the 'Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act'. An Ars Technica article explains that PERFORM would restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, and require satellite and internet broadcasters to use 'technology to prevent music theft'. That means goodbye to your favorite streaming audio formats, hello DRM. The EFF said pretty much the same when this bill last reared its ugly head in April of 2006. It's too soon to get the text of this year's version (S.256) online, but it likely to resemble last year's S.2644, which is available through Thomas."

3 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Bill text by micktaggart · · Score: 4, Informative

    The bill text is already available at pages S446 and S447 in Feinstein's remarks: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r110:FLD001: S00447

  2. Like DRM would help streams anyway... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Anything that your computer plays / outputs through speakers, can be recorded. And easily too. And in quality indistinguishable from the source, if you have the right equipment. Those facts will never change, no matter what DRM is used.

  3. It's easy.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    send it in a patent-protected format, provide windows-only players. This is pretty much how wma works. Then in vista you set the magic "cripple-the-outputs" flag and you can't even record from audio out.

    A giant step forward for american creativity and ingenuity.