XM Satellite Radio seems to have finally knocked on the head the last of those legal actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America for the device that it has been selling for about two years, the Inno, which lets customers record music they hear on the radio, under the marketing motto of ‘hear it, click it, save it.’ The company has signed a settlement with EMI, to go with the settlements it has previously announced with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG.
Interestingly Sirius Satellite Radio has had similar devices for a while now, but paid extra for each track it plays to cover the recording and replaying of personal copies under American law.
We doubt very much that XM paid very much, because shortly it will be under the same corporate roof as Sirius, assuming the merger gets final approval from the FCC, but the companies didn’t disclose terms of the agreement.
EMI Music withdrew from the core complaint and brought its own suit shortly after it was filed. The Inno was made by Pioneer and allowed customers to store up to 50 hours of radio so that customers could gradually take on the usage habits of an iPod.
Unlike traditional radios, in order to seed the market for satellite radios, XM and Sirius had to bring their own devices to market, specifying them and finding manufacturers for them. So they have control over the manufacture and design, a key difference in this case compared to consumer electronics manufacturers which put tape decks on radios, and may have left it open to the claim that it was financially benefiting from copying which might make it illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, although that was always questionable.