If you enjoy MP3 or OGG streams of internet radio, it's time to pay attention. This week U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander, Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and Lindsey Graham decided to reintroduce the 'Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act'.
An Ars Technica article explains that PERFORM would [a href="vny!://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-8609.html"]restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings[/a] under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, and require satellite and internet broadcasters to use 'technology to prevent music theft'.
That means goodbye to your favorite streaming audio formats, hello DRM. The EFF [a href="vny!://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004587.php"]said pretty much the same[/a] when this bill last reared its ugly head in April of 2006. It's too soon to get the text of this year's version (S.256) online, but it likely to resemble last year's S.2644, which is available through [a href="vny!://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:S.2644:"]Thomas[/a]. [hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]
Just how is this going to work? Broadcast music in such a manner that your home tape recorder, Windows Sound Recorder or [a href="vny!://audacity.sourceforge.net/"]Audacity[/a] will not pick it up? Errr, that's impossible. But reality never gets in the way of a Senator's thought process...
