PriceSCAN Blog

Content creators fought similar battles against the VCR and cassette recorders, resulting in blank tape fee payments to those firms. Perhaps a similar mechanism can be worked out for MP3s on a per recorder basis, but for the moment the fees per song demanded by the RIAA are said to have been prohibitive. Meanwhile, any owner of the Creative Zen Vision M or Zen MicroPhoto who chooses to download this update faces the loss of a feature offered when the item was sold – one wonders what the class action implications of this are. And while we contemplate this, there's also the issue of products from iRiver (such as the H320 and H340), SanDisk (e.g. the Sansa e280R) and others that record off the air. Some court decisions have upheld various fair use rights for broadcast recording. Those of us who care about those rights are left to hope that manufacturers (and consumer advocacy groups) either cut a deal allowing MP3 recording or else have the stomach for a fight that could go all the way to the Supremes.