Draft legislation reportedly authored by the MPAA would place recording limitations on portable satellite radio players, handicapping their functionality.Draft legislation reportedly authored by the MPAA would place recording limitations on portable satellite radio players, handicapping their functionality.
A trio of proposed bills began circulating this week on Capitol Hill, all designed to place limits on content broadcast over the airwaves: the "Analog Content Security Preservation Act of 2005"; the "Broadcast Flag Authorization Act of 2005," which would re-enable the broadcast flag in 2009; and the "HD Radio Content Protection Act of 2005". According to industry sources, all were either authored or co-authored by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) or the Recording Industry of American Artists (RIAA).
Like the ACSPA act that would plug the "analog hole," the HD Radio Content Protection Act seeks to prevent devices like the Delphi MyFi XM2Go or Sirius S50 which act as a portable radio cache of music and programs recorded from a satellite radio network. Users can record a song or block of songs by pressing a button, and organize a playlist based upon metadata describing the song or genre.
Both of those capabilities would be outlawed if the bill goes into effect. The proposed bill would amend the law to ensure that devices like the MyFi would be designed to prevent transferring music or other content from the device to the outside world, and would also limit their ability to store content to a few "permitted recording" features.
Representatives from XM Radio declined to comment on Thursday until they had reviewed the legislation. Representatives from Sirius Satellite Radio were unable to be contacted.
"Permitted recording" would force the following restrictions: permit recording only of specific programs, channels, or time periods, as selected by the user, of no less than 30 minutes duration; limit total recording to 50 hours; and force the recorder to act as a buffer, deleting content as new content is recorded. The bill would also restrict players from recording or playing back content based on metadata, such as searching for a specific song, artist, genres, or "user preferences".
The first restriction would essentially prevent recording on a song-by-song basis. Moreover, the bill would not permit the "automated disaggregation of the copyrighted material," such as separating a music stream into component songs.
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