NY Public Radio Station WNYC Decides That Time Shifting = Piracy
from the for-shame dept
I grew up in NY, and used to listen to WNYC quite a bit as a kid. It's the local public radio station. I'm pretty sure my parents still listen to it all the time. Also, I'm a huge fan of WNYC's On The Media program, which I link to frequently (and, full disclosure, who have had me on as a guest a couple of times). So it's somewhat disappointing to find out that someone at the organization appears to think that timeshifting is piracy. It is not, and the organization is wrong.Trey Harris is a big fan of WNYC, and a regular pledge drive supporter. Of course, to make his listening easier, he uses a program called Flip4Mac, which not only lets him listen to the streams, but lets him do some basic time shifting of the streams: pause, rewind, fast-forward, etc. This makes the WNYC feed more valuable and useful for him, and he's shown it by supporting them even more, having recently increased his yearly contribution.
Unfortunately, WNYC thinks he's a crook. A few days ago, the app stopped working with the WNYC feed. Trey contacted them to let them know that there must be a bug that needed fixing... and he was told instead that the app had been blocked because of piracy! As he notes, the folks making the decisions at WNYC apparently are wholly unfamiliar with the ruling in the Betamax case that says that time-shifting is legal. It's why VCRs and DVRs are legal. There's no reason why streaming audio shouldn't be legal as well.
After complaining about this publicly, WNYC (actually, the "donor's office") contacted him to clarify. They said that they weren't accusing him of piracy, but that their streaming provider said that app was used for piracy, and that's why it was blocked. Still, they argued that time shifting is "piracy"... but only if done online.
She agreed that if I used a tape recorder, or a digital recorder, to store the over-the-air broadcast, I could listen to it later, pause, rewind, etc. But she said when it went over the Internet it was different. I brought up the TiVo example, and she responded that video-on-demand programs often disallow fast-forwarding. "It's a whole new world," she said.It's not "a whole new world," in the way she thinks. There is no requirement that a DVR disable things like fast-forwarding. There is certainly no reason for them to disable this use. It's not "piracy." They're broadcasting this free over the air, and this is just someone recording the legitimate stream. All of that is perfectly legal. The only reason to break the ability to do this is to piss off legitimate listeners.
Of course, even if WNYC officials are totally wrong about this, it's really not that surprising. In a world of copyright maximalism, where we're continually taught about "ownership" of ideas and content, even where it doesn't make sense, some people almost have an instinctual reaction to think that any use like this must be "illegal" somehow. It is not, and it's a shame that WNYC seems to be sticking to this bogus explanation. Of course, I also wonder why WNYC thinks of services like dar.fm, which appears to offer up a bunch of WNYC shows for time shifting.
The whole thing remains pretty silly, of course. Time shifting is legal. An operation like WNYC shouldn't just be fine with it, it should encourage it because it makes their shows more valuable, meaning more people will listen -- and more people will be interested in donating and supporting what they do. It's a shame that they clearly haven't thought this through and simply jumped to the false conclusion that this was some sort of evil piracy.
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Filed Under: on the media, public radio, timeshifting
Companies: wnyc
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Real timeshifting here...
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Wah! I don't like what someone else is doing with their property! Rabble-rabble. Whine-whine.
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Yeah, I think you pretty much nailed WNYC's point of view there. For some reason they don't like that people can use consumer electronics to record broadcast radio. It doesn't make a lot of sense at all.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 9th, 2012 @ 7:29am
I hope the listeners punish them for being copyright maximalist bastards.
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Yes we know you are, its self evident, you really don't have to emphasise the fact.
Needy much?
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Wait... are you mocking the constumer who donates to support the show, recieves the stream, and expects to be able to use his computer and programs without coperate interfierance artificially limiting the cunsumer's property to protect a public stream?
or...
are you mocking the company that owns this combination of sound, takes the money of supporters, ignores established laws, and claim that thier listeners are one record button away from being pirates complaining about how the customer wants to use his physical propterty(the computer)?
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Re: Whine
No rational manager of a radio station should be aiming for anything other than the highest quality that can be achieved at a reasonable cost.
Time shifting is clearly a case of making listening easier. The fact that they have blocked it (How? Can that block be circumvented?), means that they are actually spending money to make their service less valuable. That will cost them donations. So some manager has decided to spend the station's scarce financial resources on driving away donations.
The board of directors should be frothing with rage at such foolishness. The manager who took that decision should be fired at once.
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What really surprises me is that mass market recording devices have been staved off for so long. I would assume that this is more of a result of the market's focus on television as the primary source of entertainment.
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OnTheMedia even offer up an embed source for their interviews etc and it even has an 'OMG the pirates have hacked it' download option.
Confuzzled now
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What's not piracy these days?
Recording stuff off of TV or radio with blank DVR/TiVo/DVD/VHS or iPod/CDs/Cassette..
Buying bootlegs...
Downloading...
If all that is piracy and illegal, then there's no options left to enjoy stuff...
Download everything.
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I get the On the Media podcast in iTunes where I can listen, pause, fast forward, and copy it to my heart's content.
The only radio I don't listen to is the radio I CAN'T download to my computer.
Idiots! It's not about a stupid broadcast signal anymore.
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Another reason not to donate to public radio
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First it was that home-taping was killing movies (which strangely increased in revenue with home-rentals and purchases). Now piracy is the cause of anything bad in the entertainment industry, including the reason why media companies screw their customers over, even though that behavior hasn't changed since before online copyright infringement. And now any use is "piracy," whether its "publicly" broadcasting a movie to yourself in private or time- or format-shifting, making personal backups, etc.
It's the same way that opposing corporate greed or caring about other citizens is "socialism" and doing anything suspicious is "terrorist" behavior, like being Muslim in public or questioning the TSA's effectiveness. Oh, and the temporary tattoos are laced with acid, there's poison in the Halloween candy put there by modern witches and satanists, and kids are getting high by listening to drug-effect-inducing sounds.
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Isn't this really the crux of the issue? Someone has a competitor and doesn't want to compete with this app, so they convince the license holder that this app is being used nefariously, block it and get the traffic back without having to actually improve their product.
Sounds like the source of 95% of piracy arguments.
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Is the iTunes stream free or is it pay?
Our Government blindly listens to what the **AA's tell them about piracy, somehow trusting they aren't lying to protect themselves... why do we expect a radio station to know better?
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If it was something you paid for on iTunes I could see the streaming service fighting against it. But as it is free, they are just morons.
Another victim of the "on the internet", where everything online has to be infringing and stealing trillions of dollars.
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But even that doesn't really make sense. There are at least 6 ipad apps I can think of that would let me stream that content without looking at WYNCs homepage.
So now I can only assume that someone has a personal or competition problem with this particular app.
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Sounds like its time..
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Handful of sand
Squeeze that handful of sand.
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Just for future reference, anytime I see the following phrases I complete skip over them:
copyright maximalist
legacy content industry
hollywood accounting
entitlement
You have overused those phrases to the point that they are meaningless (see semantic satiation). It's like a parrot who has a limited vocabulary. BAWK copyright maximalist, BAWK BAWK copyright mazimlalist, polly want a cracker BAWK. It's fitting that the first thing that came to mind was a parrot considering how many piracy advocates and actual pirates frequent this site.
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Well shit dude, according to your deranged logic, they need to shut down the whole station, because any "tool" that can be used to receive it can be used to commit worse crimes than piracy!
Listen to the radio station in your car? Your car can be used to KILL PEOPLE!
Listen to the radio station at home on your radio? You can bash someone over the head with it and KILL THEM!
Tools are evil! Ban all tools!
#piracyiseverywhere
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Here you go, polly! I'll hand you a cracker.
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Ah, so now we're in the business of making things illegal because they might be used to break the law, I see. Well, that should be simple enough, only have to get rid of a few things:
Cars...
Bikes...
Knives...
Guns...
Anything you could possibly use to harm someone with...
TV's...
VCR's...
DVD players...
Any electronic device in existence...
The mail system...
The internet...
Any and all drugs...
I'd go on with the list of things that might be used illegally, but I'd completely wear out my keyboard long before I got anywhere close, even with vague categories like I listed above.
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> that they are meaningless
But 'piracy' is still a-okay, right? Apparenlty, that one hasn't been overused and isn't on your little list of auto-skips.
Get real.
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You say Mike overuses the phrases, I say someone doesn't seem to like accurate descriptions.
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So.....its a freely available public radio broadcast. They are 'listener supported' so they don't have commercials that are being skipped. They don't sell their 'podcasts' online so they aren't losing that revenue...in fact, they have them available FREE on their own website.
So, what exactly is being pirated? And more importantly, why do they care?
I mean, of all the cases of "piracy" that have ever been discussed here, this one I get the least. I mean, I just don't get it.
It seems like the only reason is "because we don't want you to".
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I would maybe sue them for a dollar just so People hear about what they are doing and then I would just find another Radio Station to listen to.
This Station is so wrong.
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Does that about sum it up?
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We must DRM the airwaves its the only way to be sure. o wait that's nuke the sight from orbit... it's best to do both.
DRM your content and nuke your customers.
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"Techdirt Quote."
("She agreed that if I used a tape recorder, or a digital recorder, to store the over-the-air broadcast, I could listen to it later, pause, rewind, etc. But she said when it went over the Internet it was different. I brought up the TiVo example, and she responded that video-on-demand programs often disallow fast-forwarding. "It's a whole new world," she said")
"My email to them."
LOL After that quote on techdirt the only conclusion I can come to is that she is fucking retarded. I mean the dumb bitch contradicted herself in that moronic quote rofl!
Pausing a movie on dvd = ok pausing the same movie on a stream not okay. Do you realize how fucking stupid that sounds? Where is the goddamn logic?!?!
I mean sure this might not have any impact on me since I'm 900 miles away but Jesus Christ this is just so stupid I could not help myself I had to send this.
Ask yourself this..
Streaming a movie. = Piracy
Sharing a dvd. = Okay.
Loaning a tool or anything else to someone = ok "Even though it's directly costing someone money since the person it was loaned too did not have to go out and buy another."
Having a website that people are bound to post infringing materials on. = Not okay. "On top they are held responsible to some extent."
Buying a gun and killing someone. "Smith & Wesson and the many others should be held responsible based on the logic listed above."
A note to the first person to read this.
For the love of god please slap that bitch in her propaganda spewing sewer hole she calls a mouth.
Maybe we get lucky and it knocks some sense into her.
Signed
Da Fuck?!?!
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They're not saying timeshifting is piracy.
Why single out that one player? Maybe they were alerted to someone's regular misuse of it; if someone is recording and re-posting WNYC shows on another site using that player, this would be the only way they could stop it, short of reporting them to the copyright police, which isn't easy in an anonymous online world.
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Re: They're not saying timeshifting is piracy.
I guess you could say if people are getting them somewhere else then WNYC doesn't get the webtraffic of the person downloading them. But instead of attacking a particular tool that someone uses to add value to the broadcast they should look at why people use a different site instead of WYNCs and then add the features that people are going to that other site for.
Because if the reason is as you suppose, someone is capturing the steams and reuploading them on his site, with the ability to pause/FF ect it will only be a day or two until he gets another tool with which to do so.
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Re: They're not saying timeshifting is piracy.
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On the other hand, public stations are probably exempt to the DMCA's limitations on webcasters according to paragraph (d)(1)(B)(iv).
I am not a lawyer.
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Which it practically never is. I can use Streamripper and tell it to mask itself as Firefox. How will they ever know the difference?
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Radio copyright
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Time shifting actually increases value of radio
A station that adds an archive tipically gets an increase in web site traffic of 5% a month, and downloads usually doubles every 2-3 months. Linking and comments on the content usually also increases massively.
So instead of blocking users from time-shifting, they should encourage it !
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If I were running a media outlet like WNYC, one reason I can think of for not wanting someone to use Flip4Mac or other apps to snarf streams is that, generally speaking, streaming is resource intensive - my server can only service so many listeners at a time, because it's very picky about latency, pauses, etc. So I would want to reserve live streaming of shows for people who are actually listening. It's not that I don't want people to be able to get an MP3 file of my shows -- it's just, I've set up a special server so they can get downlaod those files directly, on a server that can handle many downloads at a time.
The reasoning described above is just my speculation, but it makes a heck of a lot more sense than the "piracy" explanation Trey claims to have gotten from WNYC's donor relations rep. I agree that that explanation is ridiculous, but perhaps everyone's ire should be directed not at the rep's cluelessness or better yet, directed at the pervasiveness of "piracy" as a cultural idea that the rep seems to have picked up by osmosis, so as to make her think that "piracy" would somehow be an adequate explanation for the policy.
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Radio thinking will evolve as TV has
Radio executives must go through the same learning curve. Hopefully it will be faster because the DVR has blazed a trail, but it's expected to find some of the same thinking we say in the early days of the DVR.
http://DAR.fm is a cloud based recording service that has a database of about 20,000 shows all of which are recordable and then playable on demand. WNYC is one of the available stations.
The biggest threat to the radio industry is other media activities (social networking, games, TV, etc). They'll need all the technology possible to keep their share of people's attention to make money selling ads.
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