In a legal fight that is bound to take years until it’s resolved, the record industry filed suit today against XM Satellite radio over its new portable device that allows customers to record up to 50 hours of music. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. Federal Court in New York, alleges that the $400 portable device, called “Inno,” facilitates “massive, wholesale infringement.”
The suit seeks $150,000 in damages for every song copied by XM customers using the device. The record companies maintain that the Inno is nothing more than an iPod-like device, and of course Apple and other online music distributors pay royalties when songs are downloaded to user devices.
“Yahoo!, Rhapsody, iTunes and Napster all have licenses,” said Mitch Bainwol, chief executive for the Recording Industry Association of America. “There’s no reason XM shouldn’t as well.”
But, and it’s a major caveat to the RIAA’s position, courts have long upheld a listener’s right to record for personal use music aired on radio or other traditional distribution methods. Now, this lawsuit is likely to trigger a massive effort to categorize this long-standing personal recording right based on the type of technology. Which is why this will become a battle royale with far-reaching implications. Either Congress (which tends to favor copyright holders in these matters, at least lately) or the Supreme Court will probably be the ultimate arbiters of this dispute, and all kinds of technologies might be swept up in new laws.
Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, voiced similar sentiments in a statement regarding this lawsuit.
“Consumers for years have had the legal right to record music for their own use. This lawsuit threatens that right on the grounds that consumers now have advanced technology at their disposal in recording songs. The shame of the legal action, however, is that this is really a dispute between XM and the recording industry over licensing fees. The companies should be left to figure out a solution without interference from the courts or from Congress.”
Update: Brian Ward at The Deal’s TechEffect Blog (one of my favorite new resources) has this interesting take on the XM lawsuit. He basically says that XM stuck its chin out, should have expected this and should settle.
The smartest move is probably to settle. While it never sits well when you succumb to bully tactics, you’d think they might have seen the writing on the wall when Sirius cut its deal. The fact of the matter is that the RIAA holds the upper hand, it won’t hurt the studios at all if XM doesn’t have music to playPosted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:37 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of Steve Rubel, Nielsen BuzzMetrics and the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam (had no idea either of these entities existed) have conducted a study that shows blog comments get very little respect in cyberspace. The two research groups conducted an analysis of 500 randomly selected blog posts and found, among other things, that 80% of blog postings accept comments but only 28% had them.
Moreover, only 2% of blog comments are syndicated in feeds. Rubel, with his PR hat on, says that blog comments are “undiscovered country.” I can attest to that: a lot of traffic is driven to this site when an IP Democracy posting is listed in the comments section of selected blogs. People do read the comments.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:11 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Traditional television programmers are, by now, routinely pushing content onto the Internet, so much so that big announcements are commonplace. The latest example: NBC unveiled a string of “new media” opportunities at its upfront presentation yesterday. (The network unveiled 100 or so of these efforts, a list so long that the audience got “restive.”)
“No longer is content just for the television screen,” said Jeff Zucker, chief executive at the NBC Universal Television Group, part of the NBC Universal unit of General Electric. “We have put a ton of thought and a ton of effort into the digital world,” Mr. Zucker told a theater filled with marketers and advertising agency employees and executives. “We want to be your digital partner.”
Among the primarily web-based activities are: a new comedy channel (dotcomedy.com) that offers classic TV shows, a broadband preview channel (nbcfirstlook.com), thirty “webisodes” of the sitcom “The Office,” and an animated digital comic book based on the TV show “Heroes.”
NBC’s unveiling of these efforts comes on the heels of Fox’s announcement yesterday that it will start making downloads of hit show “24” available on MySpace for $1.99/download. (Both Fox and MySpace are owned by News Corp.) Moreover, users will be able to download two episodes at no charge due to commercial backing of big-ticket advertiser Burger King.
The goal, of course, is to monetize the vast, young user base of MySpace by leveraging existing News Corp. content. Some folks think that this is a bad move by Fox, one that could drive away the fickle youth who frequent MySpace. But, I don’t think so — “24” is a cool show and Fox is building social networking features into the download site. If anything, this move might make MySpace stickier.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:33 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
