[BC] More news: Satellite vs Record Co's

[Harold Hallikainen]

Interesting article! I think some of the provisions the satellite
companies have made do a pretty good job at protecting copyright
holders. If you cannot transfer the songs out of the device, it appears
that a user is either "listening live" or listening to the recorded
music off the satellite. There is no increased exposure of the music
that would seem to merit increased copyright fees. In fact, the
requirement that people continue to pay their subscription fee to play
the recorded music indicates that the copyright holder IS being paid for
use of the recorded music on the assumption that the user is not
listening to both the recorded and live music at the same time. This
compares favorably to systems where the content can be transferred to
other users (such as VCR and DVD recorders) where, perhaps, someone
would tape a program off cable and watch it after unsubscribing from
cable, or give it to a friend to watch. In these cases, there's no
compensation for the increased exposure of the copyrighted work.

So... Interesting ideas to chew upon. It'll be interesting to see how
the music licensing negotiations go.

Harold