As most of you can probably tell, no online radio stations have turned off yet. They’re all still running and broadcasting, albeit with more ads in some cases, but still there. Wasn’t the prediction that all these sites were going to shut down on doomsday?

They were, but that’s assuming that the new outrageous rates were being enforced. Turns out that they weren’t.

On the July 12, SoundExchange stated that webcasters would be allowed to continue webcasting as negotiations continued, and also agreed to the proposal of minimum per-station caps of $50,000 per year. The catch? Webcasters must “become much more compliant in their reporting” and “work on a technologically-feasible solution” to stopping people from recording Internet radio.

Recording Internet radio? Stream-ripping? Read this article. lol.

Since the 12th, SoundExchange has apparently gone back against it’s word and now says that it didn’t approve the minimum per-station caps.

Where are we at now? SoundExchange and DiMA (Digital Media Association) are now shooting nasty emails  and letters back and forth in a heated he-said-she-said debate over who said what.

Stream-ripping? Who the hell does that? Sure, that was probably big back in 2004. Then again, we wouldn’t want unprotected media floating over the Internet, would we?

So is Net Radio saved? I don’t think so. Not if it’s shut down, and definitely not if it’s restricted to a proprietary DRM that runs only on one operating system.

When will these people learn that DRM just doesn’t work?

~Jaker

Update/PS: Slightly off-topic, but still represents the lunacy of the whole ordeal:

Update #2: RIAA Admits “Stream-Ripping” is not a problem

Comment #2:

Quite simply: if you can hear it, it can be recorded. If not digitally, there’s still analog, which–in spite of what they say–very few can tell the difference. My system can do both right now: turn a stream into an MP3 or record it in analog onto a cd or cassette tape (yes, they are still around.) Feed those back into your PC and you can make MP3’s with a marginal decrease in quality. Not to mention the fact that if they DO come up with some technology to “protect” a stream from being copied, some high school kid will crack it within a week.

(Bolding by me). If that isn’t reason enough that DRM will never work, I don’t know what is. (More info on why it won’t in a later post).