RIAA attacks digital audio
p2pnet.net News:- “Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) represents a fundamental change for the radio industry. It is not just a means of offering higher quality broadcast sound. DAB could transform radio into a vehicle for the distribution of huge amounts of information in digital form, including recorded music.”
This isn’t a quote from an article in praise of digital audio. Rather, it’s part of a panicky RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) tirade attacking it.
The “distribution of huge amounts of information in digital form, including recorded music”?
Jeeez. Wouldn’t want that, would we?! Things are bad enough already, what with people sharing not just music but also information and acting for themselves instead of doing what they’re told by the likes of record label action-men Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman.
‘Has to be stopped,’ say the suits, shaking their old, grey heads worriedly.
Thus, not content with with trying to pillory another 482 people in their furious attempts to dominate what people do online, the Big Five record labels have also instructed their RIAA to browbeat the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a bid to control digital radio.
And one of the ways to stop it would be by the creation of an Audio Flag similar to the Broadcast Flag Hollywood is desperately trying to have made into law.
In an 81-page tome aimed at the FCC, Big Music calls for “content protection rules” before DAB listeners commit the shocking crime of copying of near-CD quality recordings from the airwaves. Because be sure people who do this will immediately be labelled criminal by the Big Five labels.
“Stations operating digitally will include in their transmission ‘metadata’ which will include the name of the song, the album, the artist, and other identifying information,” says the RIAA.
Metadata would, of course, also be a wonderful way of spreading news as it happens, news such as RIAA – and soon to be MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) – attacks on the people who spend billions of dollars every year on ‘product’ from the corporate entertainment industry.
“The potential upside of digital radio for fans, artist and labels, broadcasters and others in the music chain is tantalizing,” says Bainwol.
For example, listeners could build free libraries of thousands of CD-like quality songs by ‘cherry-picking’ (the RIAA’s phrase) the music they wanted through an automated search function. They could then share the results online and BANG! – there goes Hollywood’s control of the airwaves.
Even worse, “The RIAA?s brief argues that unprotected high-definition radio could become a popular substitute for the unauthorized peer-to-peer networks, as consumers could acquire all the music they want from free over-the-air broadcasts with CD-like quality without having to download any software, expose their computers to viruses and spyware or themselves to a copyright infringement lawsuit.
“Acquire all the music they want from free over-the-air broadcasts”. What a chilling thought.
Therefore, “we need the help of the FCC to approve some common-sense safeguards,” says the RIAA.
One of these, says the RIAA, could be via encryption which in a beautifully phrased description, would be used to “trigger the usage rules resident in the DAB receivers”.
Does that mean that every time a user tried to do something not approved by the RIAA’s masters, the Big Five record labels, the radio wouldn’t work?
Online streamed tv as a standard info medium instead of a neat trick can’t be far away.
What’s an RIAA going to do? Try to regulate that too?
Count on it.
June 24th, 2004 at 7:10 am
Interesting. didn’t they go through this in the early 40’s with regular radio too?
June 24th, 2004 at 8:15 am
You know what?
I can’t stand all this ranting about ‘RIIA wanting to control your life’. You have absolutely no respect for the people who make music.
You treat people that have spent many hours every day for decades practicing, so that they could make you feel better, cheer up, and enjoy music.
You are the people that make making and doing music as a career an unviable option. Why? Because musicians get paid for their jobs less than fucken cleaners. They have spent more time educating themselves for their profession than a fucken professor in a university!
Oh come on, now you are beginning to rant about how all musicians have ‘enough money’ and that you’re so poor that you can’t afford to buy CD’s. Well let me tell you something. The money paid for every record supports small artists. Now progress is making small artists rely on their day-time jobs instead of making music and making people happy because record companies don’t have the funds to invest in little bands and artists.
And being a musician isn’t that cheap. Have you ever heard of a proper grand piano costing less than $10 000? Have you ever thought that single effect racks in a studio, just to make a single reverb that you can’t hear and only feel and sence it’s absence when it’s gone, could cost 20 000? Have you ever even thought that setting up a small semi-pro studio couldn’t be done with less than a million?!
As for the financial problems, you don’t go and justify a robbery of a jewelry shop by ‘Well because I can’t afford it, I decided that I desperately needed it and that’s why I stole it’. Well you know what? Fuck you. You’r just sad little wanking pussies sitting in front of your computers not caring about anybody but youselves.
June 24th, 2004 at 3:19 pm
You can’t be serious!!!
Here’s a question I would like for you to answer. Does the RIAA and the 5 big record labels have a stranglehold on mainstream music?
September 6th, 2004 at 7:36 pm
I sure am glad I am Canadian and dont live in the fascist states of America. Is there anything that is not illegal over there? I bet not. Now I am going to light myself a big almost legal and soon to be penalty fee joint and download a film legally. Then if I feel like it I will check out the escort column in the newspaper. In the rest of the paper I can read about our politicians who are not invading other countries to get a hold of thier oil. Oh – I forgot we have oil in Canada too. I guess that makes us terrorists….Chuck in Canada and fed up will pushy neighbours