Record labels sue XM over Inno recording
By Paul Miller 
posted May 16th 2006 10:50PM
posted May 16th 2006 10:50PM
We thought that maybe, just maybe, the recent S50 blessing from the record labels might mean that they were letting off a bit on this whole "satellite radio recording is killing the music industry" thing. Boy were we wrong. Turns out Sirius agreed to pay for one of those snazzy and expensive distribution licenses, similar to what iTunes and Napster have, to allow their users to continue to record songs off of the radio service. XM balked at the fee, since they're already paying a license to play the songs in a radio capacity. That's why they've just been hit with a massive lawsuit for the sale of their Inno player, seeking $150,000 in damages per song recorded by XM customers. XM says they play 160,000 different songs per month, but we're not sure how that translates to this "songs recorded" figure that the record labels want to penalize them for. What we do know is that the amount is pretty extreme, and that XM had better have a good case, or this emerging satellite radio market could lose a major player in a jiffy
this world is just plain evil
What's the verdict on the Inno so far? I was almost tempted to buy one at Circuit City today (I was there to pick up a copy of New Super Mario Bros.), and they had one Inno left tucked away in one of those XM radio kiosks. I was really tempted, especially after seeing that they give you a pretty nice little bundle (not just the radio, but also a home docking kit).
The record companies are just plain greedy. If XM customers are already paying for the songs to be broadcast, making them pay again is insane. Boycott record labels!
XM definitely has a case, you can't remove songs off the Inno, and they stop working if you cancel your sub. That is NOT iTunes!
And as for the Inno, it is A-MA-ZING. Get one!!
Are there even any human beings left at the RIAA anymore, or is it just a massive computer that issues proclamations and legal threats to anyone it can find?
At this point I don't think the major labels will be happy until we have to buy a CD that contains our music (or, alternately, buy a digital version that costs more than the equivalent value of the song as a percentage of the CD), pay for an additional license each time we burn a copy of the song (but digitally sign the copy so it only plays on approved players), pay for an extra license everytime we copy it to a portable device (alternate ending: digitally "check out" the song so it can be played on the computer or the portable device, but not both at the same time), pay a listening fee everytime we want to listen to it, then pay a penny for every second the track plays. Also be careful not to hum too loudly as you're walking down the street; after all you don't have a license for public performance of their song. Hell, maybe we should just pay them a dollar everytime a song from a major label gets stuck in our heads.
wow #5 that was classic!
Aside from the issue of this action being completely irrational, isn't this a pretty classic case for the Betamax defense? How is it dramatically different from plugging a digital recorder into the line-out from a standard XM receiver? Are they going to sue Cowon because my X5 can record FM broadcasts?
Don't give them ideas, Ben.
xzi, I definitely agree with you. This is clearly just a case for money. When the user is playing a flat-fee to access the music, does it really matter whether they listen to it COMMERCIAL FREE the moment it's broadcast or later on?
Even if you could take it off the player, my personal experience with satellite radio is that a good FM broadcast can sound better. Definitely not CD quality. As a service, however, it cannot be beat. I would hate for XM to die.
I wouldn't steal 128kbps itunes music (or pay for it) and I wouldn't "steal" 64-96kbps music files off my inno even if I could.
This is more like a tivo or a mp3 player with FM recording, and I don't think they have to pay that fee...?
It seems to me the RIAA, while they do have a certain responsibility to protect the property they have been charged with protecting, are stiffling inovation in a huge way. I wonder too: if the RIAA won, and XM paid them the 24 trillion dollars (150k x 160k) that one can assume that the artists themselves probably wouldn't see any retun on that? Do artists even see a return on online sales!?
Honestly with the way the current market is it seems to me that the RIAA is about 75% useless. You could whittle it down to a mid-sized company who helps artists with legal issues and let the artists sell their own music to iTunes or Real or Napster or "Urge". I think that would benefit just about everyone.
1.5E5 X 1.6E5 = 2.4E10 = 24E9
which equal $24 billion dollars a month...
and $288 billion dollars per year....
Man XM radio has some serious back fees to collect!
this is ridiculous. I got XM becuase i didnt want to have to buy over priced cd's to start. As was stated before, I wouldnt record off of XM becuase the quality doesnt match that of FM.
I am really starting to hate these crooked fuckin bastards(RIAA).
really makes me want to learn the guitar.
Make my own noise
Leave the greedy brats outside.
Even at 128 kps MP3's only advertise the actual product.
Way back when I was a kid listening to music with friends was less than the whole experience. We all played with the album covers. read every note, The full "art" package. I haven't seen any online retailer equal that quality of package for anything they have sold.
From the consumer perspective less is NOT more, even though the music industry does expect more.
From the industry perspective digital and online is great. They can spend less and get more per piece sold, so from that end less IS more. Let's follow THAT money and see who really is hurt.
F*** This! I will seriously destroy the RIAA building! I will gather the masses and we will all destroy them and murder all of their lawyers!!!
Screw those major labels.. LISTEN TO PODCASTS!!! DOWNLOAD, LISTEN, BURN AND SHARE ALL YA LIKE!!!
Dustin, if the RIAA sees your comment, I wouldn't be surprised if they contact law enforcement. While you're probably joking, these days, who knows. Hope the joke was worth the grief.
That's why I decided to release my CD myself, selling it privately instead of going through the extortionist mainstream media. Those cretins are so wealthy that they could, if they wanted to, along with the oil companies:
1) Eliminate hunger in this country
2) Finance a real space program
3) Take much of the school tax burden off the shoulders of stretched homeowners
4) Anything else they darn well want to do
Which of course, is ridiculous. Their objective is to garner more wealth for themselves, not actually help improve the human condition. How dare we interfere with their master plan to suck the rest of us dry? Maybe we should have to pay a fee to the RIAA every time we play a song on our home system with anyone else around! Then again, I think folks who blast their music so loudly in the car that it makes our ears bleed should have to pay a fee to us to see an audiologist!
Sheesh, why didn't I buy stock in the record labels years ago? Think of all the dividends I could have gotten...
Seriously, I don't think I've heard ONE positive thing about the RIAA and its companies from ANYONE in the last two or three years. Does anyone think they're any good? Didn't think so. Wonder when they'll disband/go out of business/whenever. It can't be soon enough. Maybe we can get a huge class action suit against them for stress, pain, emotional distress, breach of contract, etc. and drive them out of business...
Of course there is no way of knowing how many songs have been recorded, so no way of calculating the damages.
This case is just posturing because the RIAA and XM are in negotiations on the royalties.
I have the Samsung Helix and it is truly amazing! The Inno is the same, only looks different. The reception is incredible and the ability to save songs to listen to ON THAT DEVICE ONLY is handy. The Belkin headphones with the antenna built into the head band is a great add-on feature. Makes reception flawless, although the built-in antenna does a great job, especially in areas with great repeater coverage.
Record labels are gay. In ten years, when the only thing you will need is an internet connection and a device to play it.. the last song you will need to pay for his welcome to the friggin jungle. because everything else would have been made on a macbook. hahahaha.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the RIAA have stated that they want to increase their satellite radio licensing fees by as much as 10x when their contracts are up for renewal.
Granted, both satellite radio companies continue to lose money, so they have a strong case against rate increases. At the same time, without the music, there is no satellite radio, so the RIAA may have them by the short-and-curlies.
I certainly won't pay more than $12.95/mo for satellite radio.
I wish artists would get smart and band together, using their money and influence to fight the RIAA. They could potentially break away and have complete control. Without artists, there is no RIAA.
Funny, I understand that the Inno was so late in getting to market because they were changing the product to placate the RIAA. Hmmmm change the product to make us happy and we'll sue you anyway. Real smooth RIAA.
#16, we shouldn't sue people who blast their music too loud. Its not their fault they can play the music so loud. We should sue the record labels for producing music that we can play so loud that it hurts our hearing.
.
Satellite radio is useless for music. At 64kbps, it sounds like ass.
.
.
What happened to the whole safe harbor thing where we could record off of radio stations for PRIVATE use only?
Am I missing anything? What is the difference between this and the Sirius S50? I know the S50 requires you to be in a dock to receive live programming, but, it still can record 50 hours of programming, and save it it by artist and title. Additionally, when you are playing back recorded "channels" and you choose to save a song, it clips it out of the channel and saves it seperately.
If RIAA is ok with the S50, but, not these, they are making a distinction between the ability to record without a docking station? That is freakin stupid.
Or, as I said before, am I missing something?
HJ
HJ, the difference is Sirius is paying the RIAA for the privledge of letting you record your music. XM refused to pay this extra fee that the RIAA demanded, so they are suing XM to pressure them to pay the fee.
That's not the only difference ^^^ #25. The S50 allows you to fill the 50 hours, cancel your subscription and keep your music. This was determined to be a violation, so they esentially got "fined" and halted production. The XM products require 8-hours of live use a month to verify your subscrition, else your music "expired". SIRIUS learned from their mistakes, and this is why they say "that agreement doesn't apply to future portables from SIRIUS" (sic).
Just to clarify, the S50 is not a receiver, simply an mp3 player that can record Sirius streams. The Inno is a live XM receiver that also has mp3 functionality.
Now, I am amazed that NOT ONE comment on this board addressed the real issue here. No one cares if you record a radio feed to listen to later. You have that right by law. The problem is that the Inno enables users to then "cherry pick" individual tracks from the stream and rearrange them into an mp3 playlist. Yes, you can do the same thing on your tape deck with FM, but it takes a lot of work. This is basically Yahoo to Go, Napster to Go, Rhapsody to Go. A download subscription service. The satellite guys only pay for the ability to broadcast a non-interactive "plays once" stream. And reportedly only $20 million for the first 5 years of the deal. So the RIAA may indeed be greedy and unethical, but XM and Sirius don't have the rights to do what they are enabling. Period.
Are Pioneer and XM the same company or owned by the same company or something?
Do the artists get some of that $150,000 per song damages fees?
Maybe the record industries should stop making 9-15 track singles that they falsely call albums? The recording industry has been sticking it to their fans and their contracted artists for years.
Why are people still buying from these jerks? Start listening and supporting indie.
If you're paying over $3.00 a gallon at the pump, sports leagues are raking in billions, and sports celebrities and film stars are earning hundreds of millions (for what exactly?) it should come as no surprise that the music labels will continue to find ways to vacuum money out of your pockets as well.
I don't think that boycotting will help. What will help is massive file sharing among consumers on a scale larger than we have seen so far, and unfortunately, lame lawsuits against corporate scapegoats like XM.
The music industry is going to have to find a new model than the last century industrial bullshit they still have congress and the supreme court pandering to.
#28. I mentioned that the S50 can only record when it is in the dock. To make a distinction of portability is silly.
Additionally, what you say the Inno is doing that is so bad, I do all day long with my S50. I let it record all night a channel and have 10 hours of some station. Then, while walking around, on the train, etc, I listen to that 10 hours...skipping through songs I don't like, or am sick of, and hitting the "Love" button every time i find something i want to keep. It then clips that song from the 10 hour stream and puts it into "my songs". I can then rearrange all those "my songs" via USB port and create play lists to my heart's content. It is awesome.
Not having the ability of "live" stream on music is not an issue, as with 10 hours of a stream recorded it is like the same thing. But, i DO sometimes miss not having the ability for Live news, like the Inno can do. But, last November, the Inno didn't exist, so, I went with the S50.
I can also confirm the S50 allows you to keep the music when you don't have a subscription. I cancelled my Sirius for a while when they had dumped FoxNews temporarily, and all the music I saved I still listened to for those six weeks. When I re-activated, the music still stayed there and is still on it.
I am all for protecting the rights of artists - I don't share copies of music. But this lawsuit is ridiculous.
The S50 is no different than a combo fm radio/cassette recorder in that it allows you to record broadcast music directly to a semi-permanent storage device (a cassette) during transmission. #28 says it's different because you can choose the playboack order of the songs. But there's nothing inherently illegal about playing back songs from your cassette in a different order. If this suit is awarded to the RIAA, the courts would have to require additional licensing for all radio/cassette devices too. So why isn't the RIAA suing every electronics manufacturer? Because that would be shooting themselves in foot - these companies provide the technology that gives people a reason to purchase music (which pays the royalties) in the first place. This suit just sounds like extortion to me. XM should countersue for legal fees and damages.
hmm, what even says the out of the 160,000 songs that xm pays for the usage of was downloaded to an inno. it says in the releases ive seen 150k per song DOWNLOADED. so wouldnt they have to prove that each song was downloaded before they could get any money in the event that they won the case. becasue i guarentee you that a majority of the songs that xm is allowed to play are not played and definately not recorded. where as of that 160 thousand songs there is a % of them that has never even been aired. so they could not in any way shape or form have to pay the full 24 trillion dollars even if they did lose the case.
I've made this my topic for a report for my Copyright Law class, so I'm doing some serious research on it.
First off, just so that everybody knows, RIAA is non-profit. The recording companies themselves may not be, but the acting power behind this is. I do, however, agree that the recording companies themselves make too much money. That money should be going more towards not only the artists, but the musicians, songwriters, producers, and the other behind-the-scenes guys as well.
As far as the actual suit goes, it's not that different from the suit against Sony Digital Audio Recording Tape, in the early 90s. In 1992, the Audio Home Recording Act states that the companies manufacturing recording devices must pay royalties. (full text of the act can be found at http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap10.html)
Also, there is an act which we discussed in class but I don't remember the name (unfortunately, I didn't write down anything other that that it was in 1989 because my professor was talking too fast) that states that one copy of a recording may be made for personal, private use. (I apologize for my lack of a name for this act).
So, by law, XM does indeed have to pay royalties. However, exceptions could (and should, in my opinion) possibly be made because XM is already paying for public performance of the song.
Just a random fact I'd like to throw in - the music recording industry is the only one that publicly and harshly goes after violations. Violations of copyright in literature, art, software, etc, seem to be settled privately, if pursued at all. In terms of sheet music, music is copied left and right. In band settings, a director will go to pull out a part for somebody, and they'll find that there aren't enough parts. Legally, they should have to order just that part when it's available, but often they just photocopy it. When I asked my high school band director about this sophmore year, he told me that the reason why the publishing companies never sue is because the market is small and the community of band directors is close-knit, making great grounds for an effiecient boycott.
That makes me think that, perhaps we just need to revamp the market so we can boycott individual record companies.
Record companies need to stop uniting behind the big, scary mask of RIAA, and step out and embrace what's going on. Money isn't everything, and they need to learn that.
Opps, I apologize. RIAA is a for-profit organization, not non-profit. But I still stand behind the fact that the recording companies need to stop hiding behind them.
And you wonder why people put new music on LimeWire the day it is released! I do think it's fair that artists and labels get paid their fair pay, both to reward them for the work they put in making the music and to incite new artists to do the same. But to make people pay for the same recording twice is downright greedy. After all, XM already pays a licensing fee to play the songs. Any additional double-charging is only going to reduce consumer exposure to legal sources for music, and encourage illegal P2P services like LimeWire, KaZaa, and others for new music. As a paying customer, I don't mind paying a subscription fee (I pay for Napster a subscription fee and for per-tune downloads). But too many fees will merely drive them out of business. Then the P2P sources and other illegal sites will pop up to fill in the gaps. Then how will the labels get anything at all? Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, or there won't be any music at all!