Audio Broadcast Flag Introduced in Congress 200
Declan McCullagh writes "We found out in mid-2004 that the RIAA was lobbying the FCC for an audio version of the broadcast flag. But because a federal appeals court slapped down the FCC's video version last year, the RIAA needs to seek formal authorization from Congress. That process finally began today when the audio flag bill was introduced. It would hand the FCC the power to set standards and regulate digital and satellite radio receivers, and RIAA Chairman Mitch Bainwol says it strikes "a balance that's good for the music, good for the fans, and good for business." The text of the bill is available online."
Good for the fans? How? (Score:3, Interesting)
How is content restriction ever good for the fans?
Are they thinking it'll make content owners happier and therefore produce more stuff, then making fans happier? I don't get it.
Re:Buy a radio now (if you think radio doesn't suc (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad for consumers and business (Score:2, Interesting)
That doesn't matter. All that matters is who's writing the checks, and who controls the media.
In both cases, the entities in question probably want this legislation. That means they'll get it.
This will be passed into law despite any opposition, even if it means adding it as a rider to some other all-important bill.
Re:Bad for consumers and business (Score:4, Interesting)
So after the implementation of such regulations they can be made obsolete?
You gotta love ambiguity in the language used to craft law.
Seriously, you are legally mandated to love the ambiguity. You don't want to know the penalties for not loving the ambiguity.
Seriously, the penalties are a matter of national security and you do not want to know them. The penalties for knowing them are worse than the aforementioned penalties themselves, so you really don't want to know any of them.
Any legal scholor out there? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:One word (Score:5, Interesting)
You reading this RIAA? Fuck you. We are not encouraged to pay for music by these actions. In trying to stop piracy, you are in fact encouraging it. Get your act together, because if you want to stay in business, you need to think "entertainment business" not "CD business". Stop gouging the bejesus out of us and we won't have to download it questionably. Piracy gets easier every day, but listening to legally purchased music gets harder by the day. Maybe if you can make it so it's not a pain in the ass to listen to our purchased music when it's so much easier (and cheaper) to download it and put it on any player we want, we'll start paying again. Why is iTunes hugely successful when CD sales are plummeting? It's easy and it's at a much more reasonable price. So cut your fucking losses and deal with it, not screw over your actual customers.
Re:Moronic (Score:3, Interesting)
RIAA license terms are hard to live with. (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope you'll not only share a link to where your music can be found but you'll keep your sensibilities about music and the RIAA when talking to radio stations. I work at a community radio station (WEFT 90.1 FM [weft.org]) which plays a great deal of music licensed by the RIAA. Hardly what I'd call alternative, but mine isn't the only opinion in the place.
Recently we had a light discussion about what it would take to do webstreaming. For those of you who don't know, the RIAA licenses tracks of their clients and the terms of the license [cpb.org] are rather vague and somewhat hard to shift to if one is used to being able to broadcast almost anything.
WORT recently announced a new and improved webcast [wort-fm.org]. Their announcement is interesting because it starts by lying claiming that they'll webcast "all of its programming!" (see page 13 of the PDF newsletter). When you read further you see that WORT plans to comply with RIAA licensing restrictions by not webcasting some of its programming (presumably either shows or tracks that can't be webcast at that moment). Like I said, it's not easy to webcast if you insist on doing what you can to avoid losing a copyright infringement lawsuit while playing RIAA-licensed stuff. If you've grown used to the over-the-air rules, which don't restrict you in the way RIAA's webcasting restrictions do, you've got a tough row to hoe. The RIAA's online restrictions say things such as you can't play the same featured artist more than 4 times in a 3-hour period, nor can you play more than 3 tracks from the same CD/tape/record in a 3-hour period.
I was curious how much adjustment WEFT would have to make to take on webcasting RIAA tracks. So I looked at some of WEFT's playlists and compared them to RIAA webcasting restrictions. Suffice to say, WEFTies don't yet realize how many shows they'll have to change. I forsee much unpleasant discussion about this topic as we wrestle with exchanging increased listenership for playlist freedom and the hassles that go along with assembling an RIAA-compliant playlist.
/.ers will read this and think that this is a natural application for a database. And if you're thinking this way, you're right but there's more to it than that. WEFT has roughly 40,000 CDs in its library and lots of CDs coming in every week. Finding the financing for the hardware to host the database on alone is a daunting task, finding the volunteer commitment needed to make the database workable for everyone (not just the techies) is another tall order. I'm up for it, but I know a lot more about writing software than I do about writing grant requests, and I estimate we'll need many thousands of dollars to do this in a way that won't fall over when the power dies or a couple of hard drives go bad.
Still other /.ers might think differently and conclude that we should just stop playing RIAA tracks, or WEFT should severly cut down on the RIAA tracks we play. Again, I'm up for that—I host a public-affairs program called "Digital Citizen" every other Wednesday from 8-10PM where I play only stuff my listeners can share. I focus on copyright law, patent law, and Free Software (as in the Free Software movement) issues. The only RIAA licensed tracks I play are fair-use snippets, so these webcasting rules don't apply to me. Other public-affairs shows (like News from Neptune [newsfromneptune.com]) don't play RIAA tracks at all. The majority of shows on WEFT are music shows and it remains to be seen how receptive they will be to giving up 90% or more of what's in WEFT's library.
So now you're slightly more familiar with the restrictions from the radio end of things, even on community radio which is ostensibly more accessible to the public and less likely to play the mainstream RIAA-licensed stuff you can hear everywhere else.