Webcasters Call Bunk on SoundExchange DRM Ploy 109
RadioFan writes "The settlement between webcasters and SoundExchange is starting to come apart at the seams, because everyone is realizing that SoundExchange wants to force DRM on Net Radio. DiMA, one of the largest Net Radio lobbyists, has fired back at Sound Exchange, calling them out for leveraging high royalty fees to push through DRM requirements that they failed to obtain in Congress via broadcast flag and anti-recording legislation. Was this whole thing a ruse to get DRM on net radio?"
Rippers (Score:5, Informative)
Already done for Clear Channel (Score:5, Informative)
So...I'd say it's already here.
Re:Motives are simple (Score:3, Informative)
You may not have noticed, but the performance royalty groups are trying to go after terrestrial radio stations now too. It's possible that they never liked radio's "free ride".
Link [hollywoodreporter.com]
Re:How Could You Implement This 'Solution'? (Score:4, Informative)
How in the hell could DRM prevent this?
They accomplish this through these restrictions:
1. They stop you from specifically being able to play a particular song or artist. Instead they'll create a station that you can customize based on genre, that will from time to time randomly play a song from the artist you chose.
2. You can't programatically find out what's playing. The radio player itself is flash-based, no handy Shoutcast stream tags here.
3. Even if you and a friend listen to the same custom station at the same time, both will be randomly playing through a different part of that station's universe --> no predictability.
4. You have limited ability to skip songs (something like 7 per hour).
5. You can't go back and listen to a song that's already played (fully or partially).
6. You can't restart a song that's just started playing.
7. You can't tell what going to play next.
Aside from these restrictions, it's actually a pretty cool idea and I listen to Pandora from time to time, but the music license effectively makes it so that there's simply no viable way to record the songs you want unless you're willing to sit there for hours, manually chopping up and labeling audio.
Re:How Could You Implement This 'Solution'? (Score:2, Informative)