Stream ripping is a piracy problem
Last December I wrote a post about “stream ripping” and its relation to the internet radio royalty issue. To quickly recap, I said that one possible effect of low, government-mandated internet royalty rates is the theft of that music through “stream ripping.” I said that as our internet connections became faster and the quality of internet radio broadcasts increased, an unsecure internet radio station could be a good source for music pirates. And to make it worse, music artists and record companies can’t do anything about it.
Well, I was corrected by a stream-ripper today. I said that it would be a bigger problem in the future, but he informed me that high-quality rips are available now:
BTW, quality is not a factor for stream ripping. There are plenty of excellent stations with 192, 256, or 320 kbps streams offering clean gaps and no talking or crossfading over songs. These can produce higher-quality rips than what you can buy on iTunes or Amazon.
And he continued:
Personally I only stream-rip songs I cannot buy in non-DRM’ed form from iTunes, Amazon, etc. So it seems to me that artists who don’t want me to stream rip their music have a simple alternative: let me BUY a non-DRM’ed copy of a song!
The internet radio royalty debate is not just about protecting internet radio, or even making the best of a bad situation. I think comments like the one above show why it’s essential for artists to be able to control what is done with their property.
Tags: [internet radio, stream ripping]Comments
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