Many in industry are already making a big stink about the potential copying of digital music played on either over-the-air or satellite radio stations. They fear the unrestricted play will result in unrestricted copying, and then massive redistribution of that music via P2P systems. As this AP story notes, there are already devices on the market to faciliate this.
The story also notes that the RIAA has told the FCC that “Digital audio broadcasting without content protection is the perfect storm facing the music industry,” and asked for new regulatory mandates to help them address this concern. Specifically, the RIAA would like the FCC to build on the “broadcast flag” regulatory model they imposed recently at the request of the television and movie industries. Thus, the RIAA wants “an audio protection flag” mandate that would require all consumer electronic devices to read a special string of code embedded in every digital audio transmission that signalled to the device that the music was copyrighted and could not be copied.
As I wrote in a newsletter last fall, I’m concenred about all this mandatory “flag” nonsense:
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