A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would overturn the recent ruling against MP3.Com by establishing that it is legal to stream music to consumers provided the consumer can prove he has already bought a copy of the CD. This is A Very Bad Idea(TM).
The bill’s language reads like this,
it is not an infringement of copyright for a transmitting organization that transmits a personal interactive performance to make or cause to be made phonorecords or copies of a sound recording and any nondramatic musical works embodied therein if such phonorecords and copies are used by the transmitting organization soley in connection with the transmission of personal interactive performances.
A lot of folks at Slashdot and elsewhere are really pushing this sort of bill, but I wonder if they’ve really thought it through. One of the effects this bill has is to make it impossible for performers or record companies to decide who to associate with, even when the association might damage the reputation of the performer.
Suppose, for example, Penthouse or some other porn site decided to start marketing a “listen to your top 40 CDs while you view porn” service using an MP3.Com-style system (and don’t think it won’t happen — we’ve already seen “get your stock quotes with your porn” businesses, so I doubt it would take someone very long to combine music and porn). Under this bill, a performer or record company who objects to being associated with a pornographer would have absolutely no recourse under U.S. law.
In fact the irony here is that a lot of musicians who like to work outside of the record label system could easily be co-opted by large labels who could build MP3.Com style systems incorporating the music of bands who definitely do not want to be associated with them.