AutoHotkey Community

[garry]

I was wondering, why I can't buy a nice portable radiorecorder to record/play SD-card
a small MP3 player can do all (record analog in/record built-in radio)
use streamripper or listen/record from archive/podcast
or use ahk to automatic download searched/founded music

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=216

Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-N.J.) has introduced a bill which, if passed, would hog-tie digital radio forever. It's called the "Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006," H.R. 4861, and it demands that new radio designs obey a remarkably limited, backward-looking vision of the future.

The Audio Broadcast Flag would force innovators to work to the RIAA's specifications, putting in government-mandated locks and DRM to prevent any possible "unauthorized" copying on their new digital radio sets. That's not merely banning copying that is already unlawful The new bill would ban any use that copyright holders don't explicitly authorize beforehand.

So what would "authorized" home radio recording look like? Previous drafts and RIAA comments to the FCC give an idea. There would be no automatic recording in the RIAA's world - recordings could only be made if a human presses the button or sets the set to record at a specific time. No broadcast could be recorded for less than 30 minutes (that's right, less than: your manual record button would jam in the "on" position until half an hour has passed in order to assure that you're not recording single songs. And you wouldn't be able to fast-forward with sound or skip directly to particular songs.

This will send radio backwards in time, at just the moment when it was about to enter a new age. You can forget about a radio TiVo ever happening. The RIAA would ban any such innovation. It would be radio their way.