New Law To Require DRM On Streaming Music

from the all-about-choice,-huh? dept

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

One of the other common themes at this morning's Cato event from the folks supporting stronger IP protections was that it was all about "choice." They kept saying that the point of having laws to protect DRM is to give people the "choice" of whether or not to protect their works. Those of us who were arguing on the other side wondered why this "choice" needed to be codified by law -- when they already have the "choice" to use DRM or not without needing a law making things more difficult. However, it's really hard to square the idea that this is all about giving the content creators a "choice" when new laws come out that do things likethe use of copy protection technologies. The latest is the so-called PERFORM Act , which Gary Shapiro (of the Consumer Electronics Association) pointed out was problematic in his discussion this morning. The bill tries to add new license fees to satellite radio -- even though these broadcasters already pay for the content they broadcast. The specific issue is that since the broadcast is also streamable and recordable on computers, the industry wants a second license beyond the broadcast one. The second one is to cover thefor someone to record the stream and keep a version of the content. It's basically a way to double dip from the satellite radio providers. That's not all the bill does, however. The EFF is pointing out that among the provisions of the bill there's one that would effectively require any streaming music provider to use copy protection . While some do so already, many others stream (legally) using MP3 streaming. These aren't downloads of MP3s, but streams. These streams are basically just as recordable as traditional terrestrial radio -- which hasn't been much of a problem in the past. However, this bill would require anyone who uses the standard SoundExchange licenses to pay for the rights to stream music would then be required to ditch MP3 streams and replace them with proprietary DRM-encrusted streams to make it more difficult to record the stream (which, last we checked was still perfectly legal fair use). In other words, the "choice" aspect goes away and the DRM is effectively required by law. Once again, it's looking like this is less about "choice" and much more about protecting one industry's increasingly obsolete business model.