MIT Students Find Legal Loophole To Provide Music On Demand

from the sneaky,-sneaky dept

While it's not exactly "file sharing", some MIT students have apparently contorted themselves through enough legal loopholes to build a system they believe is completely legal - and which would allow students to offer legally share music. Well, that's how the article describes it, but it's a bit of an exaggeration. What the system really does is let a limited number of students program their own music stream or radio-style broadcast, that is sent out over the TV. Really, I don't see how this is all that different than using something like Live365 to broadcast your own music station. What's more interesting, though, is how the students figured out all the legal loopholes that say that an analog broadcast falls under different requirements than a digital broadcast, and then making use of MIT's blanket license for music over television. Of course, as the article points out, the music industry has not yet responded as to whether or not they find this system to be legal. Previous attempts at following the letter of the law to create a "legal" music system have been challenged many times (often successfully) by the music industry.

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