RIAA eyes satellite broadcasters

By Steve Malone

Posted on 7 Oct 2005 at 10:10

The US industry music pressure group the RIAA is sizing up a new target in its bid to prevent people listening to copyright material for free. It is now said to be in discussions with the US satellite radio broadcasters.

At issue, according to the RIAA, the satellite broadcasters are providing music for free by allowing their subscribers to listen, record and play back ad-free radio stations. Which, of course, cannot be allowed.

The biggest of the satellite broadcasters is XM Satellite Radio which offers digital-quality broadcasts to its five million plus subscribers with more than 150 channels of music, news, talk, radio, sports, comedy and children's programming.

The RIAA is now threatening to sue XM Satellite for a billion dollars alleging that, as with Grokster, the station is encouraging people to copy and distribute copyrighted content. The RIAA is concerned about a new device from XM that will offer MP3-enabled portable satellite radios developed by Korea's Samsung Electronics.

However, the legal advice is that a 'fair use' defence that in the past has protected music and video cassette manufacturers from prosecution would prevail here. More likely is that the RIAA is using the threat as a bargaining tool to gain larger royalties from the stations.