A TiVo for radio earns RIAA's ire

Reuters:

Catching Blondie's reunion tour broadcast at 4 in the morning wasn't an option for XM Satellite Radio subscriber and single father Scott MacLean.

"I was missing concerts that were being broadcasted when I was asleep or out," he said.

So the 35-year-old computer programmer from Ottawa, Ontario, wrote a piece of software that let him record the show directly onto his PC hard drive while he snoozed.

The software, TimeTrax, also neatly arranged the individual songs from the concert, complete with artist name and song title information, into MP3 files

Then MacLean started selling the software, putting him in the thick of a potential legal battle pitting technically savvy fans against a company protecting its alliance--and licensing agreements--with the music industry.

MacLean says he is simply seeking to make XM Radio--the largest U.S. satellite radio service with over 2.1 million members paying $10 a month for about 120 channels--a little more user-friendly.

"The larger issue here is they came out with one lock and another creative person goes out to create a key," said Michael McGuire, an analyst at technology research firm Gartner. "It's very hard for policy and copyright law to keep up with the pace of technological change."

A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America said his organization had not reviewed the software, but said that in principle it was disturbed by the idea. "We remain concerned about any devices or software that permit listeners to transform a broadcast into a music library," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said. ...

Music labels fear that the convenience of MacLean's software will lead millions more to copy and distribute songs over file-sharing networks such as Kazaa, a music industry source said.

Well, no. The RIAA is worried not about people placing these songs on P2P networks. They're worried that people will be less inclined to buy CDs if they can record songs in a digital format off satellite radio.

Here's p2pnet's take: XM XM satellite app raises ire.

This is what Jim Griffin and I and others have been talking about for some time: a TiVo for radio. (And it's why the RIAA is pressing the FCC to adopt an audio broadcast flag.) Here's the XM Radio PC receiver, which costs $49 and works with TimeTrax.