WB & Sony legal case against TuneIn

Does anyone have any views on the impact of the recent legal case brought against TuneIn by Warner Brothers and Sony which has resulted in TuneIn having to remove most non-U.K. internet radio stations from its service. Could this affect Naim streaming devices. I personally believe that it will not be long before they take their aim on other services.

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Have you a link?

Google will give you many references and you canā€™t post links on this forum.

Links are ok in the Padded Cell.

Incorrect, links are fine as long as they are not commercial or links to other forumsā€¦ if you read the forum over the years you will find many informative linksā€¦ especially for posts like this which adds to the community, and what the web is all about.

From what I can see it was about determining if providing a value added curation service to web radio streams for a market, it needs to be appropriately licensedā€¦ in the UK at least.
It also appears they are in dispute with the BBC over the collation of user listening dataā€¦

But the interesting bit appears to me to be the nature of the curation such as seamless listening, genre selection and artists selectionā€¦ and I think vTuner, which Naim use, might be looking at this closely especially for their British customers.
It might mean that web radio might actually need to be accessed via an open web browserā€¦ unless the web radio station is licensed for other playback devices or services in the UK.

https://completemusicupdate.com/article/uk-court-says-tunein-needs-music-licences-for-non-uk-stations/

info here. I havenā€™t seen anything more recent

Sorry, didnā€™t realise. My link to ā€œDigitalMusicNewsā€ was rejected. I presume itā€™s because itā€™s a commercial entity.

No commercial links in the Hifi Corner, but Padded Cell is fine.

Can I quote from the article Richard? If not please remove. Essentially WB won their appeal on various points and have issued the following

ā€œā€œThis appeal verdict is very welcome. We continue to hope that TuneIn will accept that it needs to operate on a fully licensed basis, fairly paying rights holders for the music it uses to generate revenue. Such a move would be to the benefit of rights holders and listeners in the UK and elsewhere. We stand ready to enter into licensing negotiations to help facilitate that outcome,ā€ said Warner Music UK.ā€

Iā€™m sure my original post was to the Streaming Audio and NOT to the Padded Cell. It must have been moved. I just thought it was relevant to Naimā€™s streaming devices.

That could be devastating for Naim streaming products, as I assume many users will be tuning into non-U.K. stations. The BBC is strange as I can use a number of apps that give me access to BBC stations, but TuneIn have been banned. I presume, therefore, that Naim pass on our user information to the BBC.

Itā€™s so confusing, and worrying that the functionality (in terms of music availability from around the world) of Naim devices will limited.

Please read this post of Aug 2019 from Steve Harris, Software Director of Naim

As I remarked at the time, I find the ā€œAs and when BBC require extra extensions to access new features / be compliant with new requirements, we will update software accordingly.ā€ worrying. Iā€™d been much more at ease if theyā€™d said theyā€™d evaluate those new requirements instead of just saying they would make their software compliant comply regardless of what the requirements were. At least thereā€™s the GDPR safeguarding any transfer of personal/identifiable data.

Once the appeals have run their course, Iā€™m sure they will start targeting other services such a vTuner.

Indeed. They havenā€™t been buying up Dylan, Paul Simon, etc catalogues to allow free streaming by radio stations and online streaming services.

ā€œā€¦ linking to radio stations in other jurisdictions, which were not licensed to play music in the region, amounted to infringement of copyrightā€

Ok, sound reasonable they need to purchase licenses for wider distribution.

I thought radio stations used IP-filtering to block this. Like Qobuz. Should work these days. In the 90ā€™s I remember having IBM as provider and despite connecting in Sweden to a local number they sent me to New York over their internal network and then sent me out on the internet looking lika a US citizen.

Yes one key thing is that programmed web streaming is not the same as broadcast radioā€¦ there are certain licences that only permit radio and not programmed web streaming in the UK ā€¦ some sport is a good example. BBC web streams replay a repeated message of non availability for such content.
It will be interesting to see if radio and web ā€˜pseudo radioā€™ (programmed streaming) actually align at some pointā€¦ it should simplify things.

The other key consideration is curationā€¦ if web streams are accessed openly by a web browser where the user locates and plays, that seems to be acceptableā€¦ I guess akin to true radio. However if a service aggregator sorts, filters and provides added value services to the licensed media web streams it needs a licenceā€¦ and this was one of the issues with Intune in the UK. Apparently the rights licensing in the UK allows this, hence UK music streams are permittedā€¦ but not from other countries, hence why the restriction of non UK streams providing licensed media.

So, do people think that this will eventually hit vTuner and thefore the functionality/scope of Naim streaming devices, and if so when do we think it will happen? I would expect Sony and WB to hit out sometime this year having won the appeal against TuneIn.

I do think itā€™s a possibility

So do I. International popular music has many outlets, but classical music and specialist stations in the U.K. are very limited.