Legality of recording from XM Radio.

**god_of_cpu** · 08-20-2004, 12:58 PM

So I wrotes this program that lets you pause, ff, rw, and record live radio and XM radio to individual WMA files.

Heres the problem though, the XM user agreement says that you shouldn't record songs, however, can they even legally enforce this if you only record the songs for your own personal use and don't distribute it? Does this just apply to songs recorded for later rebroadcast? The other question is, regardless of whether it's legal for users to do it, would it be illegal for me to release a program that enables this?

A similar program has already been released that does at least the recording functions, but maybe there breaking the law...
http://nerosoft.com/TimeTrax/index.asp

**kickercivic1** · 08-20-2004, 01:17 PM

can i try you program

I wont tell no one i swear.

**kickercivic1** · 08-20-2004, 01:23 PM

i dont see why thte software will not be legall. http://www.xmfanstore.com/showproduct.php?id=xmpcrsale
this people got a toll-free number also. and you might even want to ask this question here http://www.xmnation.net/

**god_of_cpu** · 08-20-2004, 01:31 PM

The program is just a dll and right now I only have it integrated with my main interface program which won't be released until December when all the other features are finished.

**MoFo** · 08-20-2004, 01:34 PM

sounds like a nice program..can't wait for a release

**frodobaggins** · 08-20-2004, 01:35 PM

You are violating the terms of service. But I don't think there is anything they can
do about it.

**god_of_cpu** · 08-20-2004, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by kickercivic1

i dont see why thte software will not be legall. http://www.xmfanstore.com/showproduct.php?id=xmpcrsale
this people got a toll-free number also. and you might even want to ask this question here http://www.xmnation.net/

Gave them a call, they were not 100% clear on the answer, but they said it was against the user agreement, but probably not against the law and in either case not really enforceable. They also said that XM is coming out with a new SkiFi model that will let you record to it using the device so I'm not worried about distributing the program anymore.

It's interesting that XM would release a product that would encourage people to break thier own license agreements though, somebodies heads probably gonna roll at XM when legal finds out what thier engineers have been up to

**Zip** · 08-20-2004, 05:23 PM

I TALK TO THE CUSTOMERS SO THE ENGINEERS DON'T HAVE TOO!

sorry couldn't resist

**fantomas** · 08-20-2004, 06:13 PM

i guess its the same principal as recording from the radio to a tape. you should be ok as long as you dont record the songs as mp3's and make them publicly (or privately) available to anyone else.

digital media is a new frontier and..well..there really aren't many laws saying specificly who has what rights.

does your program record each and every song as an individual wma file or does it just do the last 3 or so and then deletes them?

**Jailer** · 08-20-2004, 10:15 PM

This will probably be covered under federal copyright laws since the material is copyrighted by the artists. Just pray it doesn't fall under the DMCA which would probably make it illegal just to listen to it.