Part of deal in which it would the support effort by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) to get Congress to require all portable electronic devices include an FM tuner in exchange for radio paying a reported $100 million in royalties to artists and record labels. NAB says FM tuners in cell phones is an “unparalleled lifeline service” to have during times of crisis or emergency.
The RIAA always seems to have a monopoly on partnerships of which consumers have great reason to fear, for in the end you know the consumer is the last person it has mind. Enter the latest and greatest effort by the RIAA in which it’s partnered with the National Association of Broadcasters to, get this, have Congress require that all portable electronic devices include an FM radio tuner.
“The backroom scheme of the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to have Congress mandate broadcast radios in portable devices, including mobile phones, is the height of absurdity,” exhorted CEA president Gary Shapiro.
He complained that forcing manufacturers to include an additional antenna would “compromise features that consumers truly desire, such as long battery life and light weight,” would reduce the performance of products by requiring manufacturers to include features consumers don’t want.
Instead of “innovation by companies like Amazon, Apple, Motorola and HP-Palm,” he said, we’ll be replacing it with government design requirements that are not in our “national interest.”
Shapiro referred to it as adaptation by “buggy-whipping” in which the NAB and RIAA have refused to “innovate” and adapt to the digital marketplace and have decided to try and “impose penalties on those that do.”
The pact between the NAB and RIAA stems from radio’s longstanding exemption from having to pay performance fees under US copyright law. Unlike webcasters and satellite radio which have to pay royalties to songwriters, artists and record labels, radio has only had to pay royalties to songwriters. It has been exempted from the rest in the name of artist promotion. The fact that the former two promote artists just as much, if not better than, radio is of little consequence.
The RIAA has agreed to support the Performance Rights Act which would amend copyright law to fix the discrepancy and “grant performers of sound recordings equal rights to compensation from terrestrial broadcaster.” In exchange radio would pay upwards of a reported $100 million per year in royalties. So the RIAA gets cash and radio gets an expanded audience.
Asked why the inclusion of radio tuner devices in portable electronics was so important, Dennis Wharton, the NAB’s EVP for communications, said that it’s “critically important” that people have access to radio’s “unparalleled lifeline service” during times of crisis or emergency.
So there you have it. We need an FM tuner in our cell phones so we can hear the news during an emergency. Can’t I just go online and read the news for myself? The Internet is also pretty darn “unparalleled” during an emergency. Forcing manufacturers to install devices on cell phones that people don’t want proves that the NAB and RIAA really don’t care about consumers at all.
Stay tuned.
This is pathetic and desperate of the NAB! Won’t this make the price of cell phone go up? They should make it an option and not a requirement. I do not even listen to music or anything on my cell phone (I use it as a phone.) and when I do, I listen on my computer to internet radio, podcasts and MP3′s on my mp3 player.
In a big emergency — say a major earthquake — the chance that your cell provider is going to be up is miniscule, and even if they are the local tower will have no power. And that’s not even mentioning what happens when everyone wants to talk at once. Even landlines will be down. As for the internet, RAIN defeats my local ISP often enough.
Historically radio stations are prepared for this, and in any event can operate from a considerable distance and need only a minimum infrastructure to survive the event.
I could make a better case for AM than FM, but 100MHz antennas are easier to deal with in a small box than 100Khz. Zune does it.
With those conditions, it is highly unlikely anyone would want to tune into random radio stations. It rapidly drains battery power and otherwise serves no purpose. If everything fails, then one would discover that immediately. Furthermore, radio stations broadcast nothing useful and there are no means for one to communicate by tuning into a station. Finally, radio waves are easily blocked by metal and earth, which exists virtually everywhere.
Quite frankly, your whim is a farce.
“exists”->”exist”
I found a great article on the terrestrial radio royalties struggle on this
Music Blog at http://www.themusicvoid.com
I think it’s likely this is a precursor to a broadcast-tax as is implemented all over Europe. There you have to pay a tax per receiver (tv/radio) per month. If you let in the inspectors, that is.
To sum it up: I beleive they are trying to spread receivers as far as possible, and push for a similar tax. Then If you have a gadget, you will have to pay tax. If your gadget doesn’t have a receiver, you’ll have to pay a fine, and replace it with one that does…
what’s fm radio, and why would I need it?
I have to disagree. I think it’s a clever idea. Being in a hurricane prone area. Having a backup FM tuner with a 16-20 battery life would be handy.
^ That is irrelevant; not everyone inhabits hurricane-prone areas.
you dont need fm radio for emergency.
you need weather radio and emergency broadcast radios.
Gotta get those 16 horse shoes welded on to those 4 horsepower cars.
Well that’s a new idea I haven’t heard before. It should be easy to add a tuner, since you can buy scanning radios with headphones for a buck at dollar stores.
It seems silly for the RIAA to try to make a manufacturer to install a feature in someone else’s product, but I guess it’s worth a try.
The idea of forcing inclusion of otherwise obsolete technology into all future portable electronics is ludicrous. Should anyone desire radio, they would get a device capable of receiving more than merely analog radio signals.
*”… it’s “critically important” that people have access to radio’s “unparalleled lifeline service” during times of crisis or emergency.”
Doubtful. If there were an emergency, it is highly unlikely that the first thing one does is tune into a radio station. Those who consider it as a lifeline are no more than foolish fools.
If the consumer is the last person the RIAA has in mind, surely the artist/composer comes next. How will the money get distributed? Yeah, thought so.