State of Mind of The Arts

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The Recording Industry is at it again. This time they are suing XM Satellite Radio and Sirius over new time/place-shifting devices that act like TiVO for Radio. I’ve long wanted this for even normal FM, since I got my DVR. Most times it for the pause feature, or for rewinding back to a part I missed. The RIAA claims that users are now being able to download tracks they here on their receivers, and keep them forever. The thing is, none of the devices allow you to off load the music to any other format or player, much like almost all of the DVRs on the market (and the ones that can are home built and run software designed for this purpose).
Sirius rolled over, which is a bit strange to me, considering XM is owned by Clear Channel. They agreed to pay $15 per device sold, on top of the usual 2% Fair Use “tax” that has been applied to devices that store media broadcasts since the days of home-taping and beta-max.
In the case of XM, they refused, and the RIAA slapped them with a federal lawsuit. And just so you know that the RIAA is still in the same frame of mind as they typically are, one device, the XM Inno, even has the feature to push a button and purchase the track they saved on Napster. Basically they want XM to pay up, or pull these devices from the market.
The madness continues.
originally published on dr.xnlb.com