RiseStar
June 9th, 2006, 05:40 AM
The RIAA has reared its ugly head again and its not just suing music pirates and swapping websites anymore. Now it is targeting manufacturers of consumer electronic devices capable of recording live content. Its latest victim: XM Satellite Radio.
The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed suit in New York over a new XM Radio device known as the Inno and the Helix. It is seeking a substantial sum of $150 000 per “violation”, or in RIAA terms, $150 000 for each song recorded to subscribers devices from the XM Radio service.
For those not familiar with the new XM Radio devices, they operate very much like a digital video recorder does, such as a Tivo, allowing people to record XM Radio content and songs and replay them at a later time. Cassette tape manufacturers also went through a similar round of lawsuits early on.
This battle is essentially a rehash of the early wars on VCR manufacturers, who were sued for producing devices capable of recording and replaying copyrighted material. This battle eventually sided in the courts with the VCR manufacturers in a ruling that declared that the VCR manufacturers were not liable for material recorded by consumers.
At the heart of the law suit is the Inno’s and Helix’s ability to “tag” songs recorded so they can be easily found and replayed on the unit. It is the RIAA’s position that this tagging and identification is outside of fair use. They content that a user could theoretically download the songs onto their PC into digital media formats like MP3’s and that it would be the same as if a user downloaded a song illegally form the Internet. The fly in the ointment for the RIAA lawsuit however seems to be that the XM Radio devices “tagging” features only operate on the unit itself and the units offer no reasonable way of transferring content from the unit to a PC, aside from plugging the headphone jack into the PC audio input, which would render a relatively poor recording of the original content. Making the case even more outlandish is that XM Radio took steps to allow people to purchase tagged tracks easily through the now 100% legal Napster service. If anything, this feature encourages people to purchase the tracks legally.
The Inno and Helix tags and categorizes recorded content like a Tivo, allowing it to be search and found and replayed easily. The RIAA contends that this categorization and search features violate the fair use of the copyrighted material. This seems to be a backdoor attempt at getting another court hearing regarding the fair use of such material, which has already been long decided.
If this is successful, it would have a crippling effect on the industry, affecting everything from XM Radios to IPods.
From the initial looks of it, the RIAA has a steep mountain to climb in order to show wrongdoing on the part of XM Radio or its subscribers. Even if it was successful, it would be virtually impossible to determine damages as they would be required to know what subscribers recorded what songs, which cannot be determined as the XM Radio service is a receive only service and does not keep an accounting of its subscribers useage.
The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed suit in New York over a new XM Radio device known as the Inno and the Helix. It is seeking a substantial sum of $150 000 per “violation”, or in RIAA terms, $150 000 for each song recorded to subscribers devices from the XM Radio service.
For those not familiar with the new XM Radio devices, they operate very much like a digital video recorder does, such as a Tivo, allowing people to record XM Radio content and songs and replay them at a later time. Cassette tape manufacturers also went through a similar round of lawsuits early on.
This battle is essentially a rehash of the early wars on VCR manufacturers, who were sued for producing devices capable of recording and replaying copyrighted material. This battle eventually sided in the courts with the VCR manufacturers in a ruling that declared that the VCR manufacturers were not liable for material recorded by consumers.
At the heart of the law suit is the Inno’s and Helix’s ability to “tag” songs recorded so they can be easily found and replayed on the unit. It is the RIAA’s position that this tagging and identification is outside of fair use. They content that a user could theoretically download the songs onto their PC into digital media formats like MP3’s and that it would be the same as if a user downloaded a song illegally form the Internet. The fly in the ointment for the RIAA lawsuit however seems to be that the XM Radio devices “tagging” features only operate on the unit itself and the units offer no reasonable way of transferring content from the unit to a PC, aside from plugging the headphone jack into the PC audio input, which would render a relatively poor recording of the original content. Making the case even more outlandish is that XM Radio took steps to allow people to purchase tagged tracks easily through the now 100% legal Napster service. If anything, this feature encourages people to purchase the tracks legally.
The Inno and Helix tags and categorizes recorded content like a Tivo, allowing it to be search and found and replayed easily. The RIAA contends that this categorization and search features violate the fair use of the copyrighted material. This seems to be a backdoor attempt at getting another court hearing regarding the fair use of such material, which has already been long decided.
If this is successful, it would have a crippling effect on the industry, affecting everything from XM Radios to IPods.
From the initial looks of it, the RIAA has a steep mountain to climb in order to show wrongdoing on the part of XM Radio or its subscribers. Even if it was successful, it would be virtually impossible to determine damages as they would be required to know what subscribers recorded what songs, which cannot be determined as the XM Radio service is a receive only service and does not keep an accounting of its subscribers useage.