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XM+MP3 Going to Trial
fistfullast33l writes "A federal judge has ruled that Music Companies can take XM Radio to trial over the XM+MP3 device that allows users to record songs off the Satellite Radio Company's network for playback later. The lawsuit, which was filed last year, asserts that XM is violating the Music publishers' sole distribution rights. From the article: 'XM has argued it is protected from infringement lawsuits by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which permits individuals to record music off the radio for private use. The judge said she did not believe the company was protected in this instance by the act.'"
If it goes to the Supreme Court it might be a good thing. At least we might see some clarification of what is/is not permissible. There some to be some gray areas in copyright law.
Actually this would not effect TiVo or other home recording devices.
The reason the Judge said this case is different is because XM not only acts as a braodcaster of music, but also as a distributor. TiVo is different because a TiVo just records content, it does not determine what is broadcasted.
Will this make a difference in court? I don't know, I hope the case is thrown out though.
Where do you get that from? The cassette recorder on my home stereo has no such feature neither does the VCR in the attic.
I think the assumption was that cassette recorders were inherently such a lossy, low-quality recording, that their "copy protection" was in the generation loss that would naturally occur if a person made a copy of a recorded tape. Within a few generations, it would become unlistenable, or at least severely degraded.
Now, that's not exactly a "second generation" block, but it seemed to suit the courts and the music industry fine.
As far as video, there they were more stringent. Depending on how old that VCR is, it probably has Macrovision, which is essentially a mandatory "analog DRM" (ARM?) system that causes the recorder's tracking to go haywire if it detects a copyrighted signal. It's admittedly not present on early VCRs, but most of them don't produce a particularly good recording (don't have HiFi sound, etc.) unless they're professional models, so it's not a big risk.
Not sure either of those cases are really good ones to be bringing up.
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