[rumori] re: pho: Radio stations = pirates? (was NYT: How Digital Tech Is Transforming Radio Production)


From: Don Joyce (djATwebbnet.com)
Date: Wed Jan 31 2001 - 18:17:38 PST


Fred,
They "get away" with it because most everyone involved WANTS them to get
away with it. Without radio, music sales diminish, simple as that. Radio's
music, no matter how they get it or what they do with it, is the pilot fish
for the sharks, a symbiotic relationship nature approves of because it
works out well for both. See how tenuous the "belief" in the mechanisms of
copyright actually is when it gets in the way of something even better?

Copyright has always been selectively applied and this is another case
where being consistent would not benefit ANYONE. Too bad copyright, (an
over-reaching law so extremely capable of misguided activity) does not yet
see the Internet in the same light of practical objectivity and for exactly
the same reasons.

(Your first post is just as good as anyone else's and better than many.)

DJ
Negativland

>Did anyone notice all the unauthorized reproduction going on in this NYT
>article describing the shift by radio stations to digital formats? First, the
>radio station rips all the CD tracks they want to use. From this "master
>database," they presumably make a second copy when they assemble each
>transmission program. Then the article says the station keeps a (low-quality)
>30-day rolling archive of what's been played. That's at least three
>copies, not
>including all the copies made in RAM as the DJs edit and assemble this stuff.
>
>OK, OK, so I'm a copyright lawyer, and thus hypersensitive to this sort of
>thing, but hey, does this make any of you webcasters a little crazy? How do
>radio stations get away with this? (And for you copyright lawyers out there,
>don't tell me 17 USC 112 -- that's only one copy, and only a copy of the
>entire
>tranmission program, not to create a song-by-song master database).
>
>I advise several webcasters, and the reality is that you can get a license for
>the performances (BMI/ASCAP/RIAA), but in my experience you CAN'T easily get
>*reproduction* licenses from music publishers. That's what you need to make
>"server-side" copies from which you will do your webcasting. And, as the
>lawsuit b/w Harry Fox and Farmclub illustrates, those server-side copies
>can get you sued...
>
>So why is it that traditional radio gets away with making all these copies?
>
>PS: This is my first post, so forgive (and educate) me if I've screwed up any
>pho conventions...
>
>Thanks for listening,
>
>Fred von Lohmann
>fredATvonLohmann.com
>Visiting Researcher
>Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
>
>---------------------------
>On Jan. 25, Kevin Doran wrote:
>
>Excellent overview, tho it does make me pine for the days when you got your
>hands dirty cutting tape, winding carts, slapping the springs on the rtr to
>get that killer echo... odd feeling to realize that such an 'electrical'
>craft - once the epitome of modernism itself - is about to go the way of
>bookbinding and coopering. i know, i know, the products become the tools -
>but still, i had some extraordinarily creative moments with those old tools
>that the new ones will never quite be able to replicate. <sigh> art may
>be process, but how your hands engage the world changes how you think of
>it...
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/technology/25RADI.html
>January 25, 2001
>New Format for Radio: All Digital
>By ERIC A. TAUB
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