Mandatory DRM for Podcasts Proposed 432
Knytefall writes "Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and two GOP senators are sponsoring a bill called the PERFORM Act that would require podcasts with music and satellite radio to be locked-up with music industry-approved DRM software. From the article: 'All audio services — Webcasters included — would be obligated to implement "reasonably available and economically reasonable" copy-protection technology aimed at preventing "music theft" and restricting automatic recording.'"
Why call out only the Democrats? (Score:4, Informative)
The "two GOP senators" are Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).
Re:underground (Score:5, Informative)
Re:underground (Score:5, Informative)
Feinstein PERFORM/DRM/DMCA form letters (Score:4, Informative)
Feinstein responds with a form letter about the PERFORM DRM act:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193819&cid=15
And the same response to someone else:
http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/congressman-res
Feinstein response with a form letter about the DMCA:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21099&cid
"....
If you have other questions or comments, please do not
hesitate to write to me again, or contact my Washington, D.C. staff
at (202) 224-3841."
"Reasonably Available Technology" Full Quote (Score:3, Informative)
The full paragraph containing summary's quoted section is:
So, on the face of it, this particular "feature" of the Act shouldn't affect the use of music that is licensed freely (e.g., many Creative Commons licenses). In that case, the step of "negotiate a licensing agreement through the market" is done up front in the form of the music license.
What would probably cause problems for free music is the terms that restrict what players can do (e.g., "What a listener cannot do is set a recording device to find all the Frank Sinatra songs being played on the radio-service and only record those songs."). Hopefully, we can figure out a way to create players that support restricted features but only use them against music with appropriate licensing metadata, versus those features simply not being implemented.
Re:the ironic part is... (Score:2, Informative)
GOP actually stands for "Grand Old Party", though I agree with your sentiment. Copyright seems to be one of those odd issues that rarely follows party lines.
Re:Why call out only the Democrats? (Score:2, Informative)
"Joe Biden": 997,000 results
"Dianne Feinstein": 849,000 results
"Lindsey Graham": 676,000 results
"Lamar Alexander": 502,000 results
So if Google is any measure of their recognition, Biden and Feinstein are clearly more "well-known", but Graham and Alexander are hardly nobodies. Either way, I think that if anyone was named they all should have been named.
On a separate note, don't you just love bipartisan politics?
Technically no, practically maybe. (Score:3, Informative)
They are not affected. If you own the copyright, or get explicit permission from the copyright holder, you can do whatever you want, or they allow. However, working out licencing deals with potentially thousands of copyright holders is impractical, and therefore in order to to make radio feasible congress created an exception to normal copyright law called a statutory license, which basically says that can broadcast any song you want without negotiating a license, if you pay a broadcast fee to a regulatory group, who then "fairly" distributes the money - see section 114(d) [copyright.gov] of the copyright law.
But see that is the whole point - with statutory licensing the RIAA doesn't have a choice - the license is required by the law, hence the word statutory. They cannot block radio stations from playing their music as long as the stations are paying the appropriate fees, and following other applicable laws.
Ever since the internet came into existance, the major labels have been doing everything they can to keep internet radio impractical including convincing congress to make the statutory licenses fees for online broadcast fairly hefty and apply per-listener, which makes them financially infeasable. Because of this, all of the major successfull online radio stations have forgone statutory licensing, opting instead to make deals with the major 3, thus giving the RIAA far greater influence in how the station is run (including what codec are allowed).
There is one other caveat I should mention. Even if you are playing only free music you need to keep good records of all the songs played, and documentation of the licenses of those songs in case you ever get sued. Remember - civil court cases have a weaker burden of proof, and in the past online radio stations playing only free music have been shutdown because they could not provide reasonably supported argument that they did not play the plantiff's music.
pavon - at work and forgot my password.
Re:Completely ludicrous (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they've been trying to implement an uncrackable watermarking system which would flag restricted music, then they wanted to mandate all recording devices and computers everywere detect these watermarks (at an increased expense in terms of cost for hardware and/or processing time--scanning all audio data is not free). It was called SMDI [stanford.edu]. Didn't really fly: first off, Professor Ed Felton [internetnews.com] showed he could easily crack the watermarking. Second, the bills which would've enforced things like the mandatory watermark detection (such as the SSSCA [cryptome.org] --info at EFF [eff.org]) caused a huge uproar. I think the MPAA also wanted it for video too.
I mean those systems could cause major problems. Just imagine if you are filming your best friend's wedding, some joker walks by with his jukebox--maybe not even audiable enough for you to notice, but loud enough for the system to detect it, and the watermarking causes your camera to stop recording. Let's say you lose the "I do" part. That could really happen.
From what I understand, banks and national treasuries have convinced some software and hardware developers to detect watermarking for photographic things. Such as Photoshop [slashdot.org] and printer drivers and such. Some printers also create a fingerprint so supposedly the secret service (or whatever agency controls currency fraud in your country) can trace the printed paper back to who printed it.