Last week the Librarian of Congress was petitioned by Media Rights Technologies (MRT) to revoke all statutory Internet broadcasting licenses granted under Section 114 of U.S. Copyright law for webcasters who are in violation of that section by "willfully distributing their content as an interactive service." These webcasters, including Yahoo, Clear Channel, iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, MSN Music, Pandora, and Live 365, all enable the public to receive program transmissions that can be "unlawfully recorded and deaggregated for purposes of redistribution."
Says MRT CEO Hank Risan: "Every broadcast delivered from these services can easily be stream-ripped by the public, downloaded to a user's hard drive on a song by song basis and uploaded onto iPhones and P2P networks. This type of piracy is in clear violation of the performance rights granted to these distributors of copyrighted material under Section 114. MRT believes that the Librarian of Congress will exercise his fiduciary duty and put a stop to this rampant form of digital piracy by immediately revoking their licenses."
Media Rights Technologies, www.mediarightstech.com, creates and licenses content management and enablement solutions for the commercial success of digital media distribution.
SmartMedia observation: Remember the cassette recorder? Same thing. No content provider has any issue with consumers saving that content for personal use. Because most anyone can access the content for free anyway, no real commerce can be made from it. If any is, it is to a very small degree at 99 cents per song. Besides, pulling their internet broadcasting licenses will put them out of business-and that's already being accomplished by the new CRB Royalty rates set to kick in 7/15. Seems Risan is just trying to create some free publicity for his company-and did!
