Feinstein, RIAA, & WB Want to Take Away Your Right to Record Satellite Radio
By Alexander Grundner |
May 2nd, 2006
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Unbelievable! It’s OK to record audio off of broadcast radio for personal use, but it’s NOT OK to use a secure hard drive based satellite radio receiver/recorder from XM (example) or Sirius to essentially do the same thing. Argument in a nutshell from the trio during a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Music Industry on April 26, 2006 (via C-SPAN):
1. Even though you can only listen to live AND recorded audio while you’re a paying subscriber, the problem lies in the ability to record pristine digital copies of songs from a long recording session and then being able to delete songs you don’t like to create a custom library and/or playlist.
2. Some studios, artists, and song writers believe that the ability for subscribers to create a large collection of music on a multi-gigabyte player is unsanctioned and does not compensate artists fairly.
3. A performance license is different than a distribution license, which XM does not have. Edgar Bronfman, Chairman & CEO of the Warner Music Group and Senator Feinstein agree that satellite subscribers having the ability to record and store audio (Bronfman’s uses misleading terms “keep a copy” and “library them for future and permanent use” and Feinstein’s “something you keep forever”) for later listening falls under distribution like Apple iTunes.
In my opinion, the two rational people on the panel were the XM Satellite Radio Chairman, Gary Parsons, and the token music artist, Todd Rundgren. XM argues that they have worked with the music labels since the service started to compensate artists fairly and it’s now, after 5 years of coming to an agreement and working together, they’re back saying they want more. XM’s Parsons argues that the company fairly and willing pays for performance rights and the manufactures of its hard drive based receivers/recorders pay an additional fee under the Audio Home Recording Act to be able to legally provide recording functionality. In other words, they’ve covered their end and are following all copyright laws. (Ask yourself: If this wasn’t true, don’t you think XM would be getting sued at this point instead of being invited to sit on Senate hearing panel?)
The real question, in reference to the distribution claim, should be: Does storing music on a hard drive based device from a service you subscribe to constitute ownership if 1. there’s no way to transfer the recorded music to other devices/computers and 2. under the terms of service and DRM, users are not able to access stored content once they’ve stopped paying for satellite service? Of course, the logical answer would be “Hell No!,” but logic these days seems to get lost on government officials.
I highly encourage everyone to watch the C-SPAN video coverage of the hearing so you can make informed judgments on your own. And I also recommend that you read over Senator Feinstein’s “Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act of 2006” statements that paints a convincing picture but falls apart when under argument (you’ll get an earful toward the end of the video — fast forward to 1:12:00).
Video Link: rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/e042606_music.rm (you might have to copy and paste the URL into RealPlayer to get it to work)
AntiMonopoly – 4 hours 2 minutes ago