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Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Streamline Digital Music Licensing

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 8, 2006 - 7:06am.
Washington - Lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill that would create a streamlined blanket licensing system for digital music services. The Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 (SIRA), introduced by Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Howard Berman (D-CA), has the support of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and Digital Music Association (DiMA) -- which represents big webcasters like AOL, RealNetworks, Live365 and Yahoo. "Our member companies -- digital music providers, music publishers and recording companies -- stand much to gain from legislation that will bring music licensing into the digital era," the trade groups said in a joint statement. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group, strongly criticized the bill as potentially eliminating consumers' traditional "fair use" rights of music, in part because it treats as license-able "incidental reproductions…including cached, network, and RAM buffer reproductions." The EFF also warned that the bill would change classifications of digital transmissions to potentially outlaw some devices that can make copies of songs, such as the XM Radio receivers under fire from the RIAA.
http://www.digmedia.org/content/release.cfm?id=28&content=news
http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat051606.html
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004721.php
http://ipaction.org/blog/2006/06/worst-bill-youve-never-heard-of.html
tags: Music | Bill | Digital Music | Lawmakers |



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