Webcasters Call Bunk on SoundExchange DRM Ploy

RadioFan writes "The settlement between webcasters and SoundExchange is starting to come apart at the seams, because everyone is realizing that SoundExchange wants to force DRM on Net Radio. DiMA, one of the largest Net Radio lobbyists, has fired back at Sound Exchange, calling them out for leveraging high royalty fees to push through DRM requirements that they failed to obtain in Congress via broadcast flag and anti-recording legislation. Was this whole thing a ruse to get DRM on net radio?"

Comments

Rippers

[Anonymous Coward]

Noticed this reaction from one ripping software company. Used the software before, works petty good... and I agree with a lot being said on this about the latest in this mess.

Already done for Clear Channel

[Southpaw018]

I listen to a local Clear Channel station online while at work. The week of July 4th, the stream suddenly stopped playing in Winamp. They had implemented a DRM scheme that requires you to play it through their web player (WMP10).

So...I'd say it's already here.

Re:Motives are simple

[Jeff DeMaagd]

That's why the terrestrial stations don't pay this "performance royalty." They're the "good guys."

You may not have noticed, but the performance royalty groups are trying to go after terrestrial radio stations now too. It's possible that they never liked radio's "free ride".

Link

Re:How Could You Implement This 'Solution'?

[Gordo_1]

I can't think of a way to stop 'streamripping.' I mean, even if you closed the loop all the way down to my soundcard, it would still have to come out as sound in some quality or another. Once it's in that analog form, I just pipe it into another input device on the same or different machine and begin recording. I've used TotalRecorder to just copy the buffer of my sound card to a file and have captured many NPR shows that I could not find otherwise to purchase.

How in the hell could DRM prevent this? Actually, it doesn't have to. The industry can enforce Draconian licenses to prevent streamripping. Check out Pandora Radio. Essentially, they are an Internet radio station that respresent the future of what Net radio is likely to become. They give you some freedom to hear the genre of music you like, but zero control over exactly what you will hear at any given time -- making streamripping to obtain certain songs extremely tedious and out of reach for all but the most dedicated pirates.

They accomplish this through these restrictions:
1. They stop you from specifically being able to play a particular song or artist. Instead they'll create a station that you can customize based on genre, that will from time to time randomly play a song from the artist you chose.
2. You can't programatically find out what's playing. The radio player itself is flash-based, no handy Shoutcast stream tags here.
3. Even if you and a friend listen to the same custom station at the same time, both will be randomly playing through a different part of that station's universe --> no predictability.
4. You have limited ability to skip songs (something like 7 per hour).
5. You can't go back and listen to a song that's already played (fully or partially).
6. You can't restart a song that's just started playing.
7. You can't tell what going to play next.

Aside from these restrictions, it's actually a pretty cool idea and I listen to Pandora from time to time, but the music license effectively makes it so that there's simply no viable way to record the songs you want unless you're willing to sit there for hours, manually chopping up and labeling audio.

Re:How Could You Implement This 'Solution'?

[fallungus]

Commercial over-the-air radio deserves to disappear, but there are still quite a few non-commercial stations on the left of the dial which haven't sold out to NPR, still serve the community, and feature diverse playlists which feature many new independent and local artists that you will never hear on commercial radio. These non-commercial stations are depending on net broadcasting to reach a wider audience, since their transmitters are generally low-powered.