NAB, RIAA Agree to Collaborate on HD Radio Content Protection

NAB Pres. David Rehr, in a letter last week to RIAA Chmn. Mitch Bainwol, broached the subject of their industries “collaborating to find a workable solution to content protection issues” raised by HD Radio. Rehr said broadcasters’ goal is to “find a resolution that balances protection of copyrighted works against the important objective of ensuring the continued and rapid expansion of digital audio broadcasts.” It’s hoped such a balanced approach can help HD Radio “by removing regulatory and legislative uncertainty from the marketplace.”

A month earlier, with HD Radio having failed to gain mass-market acceptance years after its commercial introduction, CEOs of 8 of the top radio group owners gathered at a N.Y. news briefing to announce a strategic alliance to infuse the technology with cash and promotional power to take it mainstream (CED Dec 7 p2). The “charter” members of the so-called HD Digital Radio Alliance agreed to commit $200 million worth of air time and cash “inventory” in 2006 to promote HD Radio and its new “HD2” multicast channels, reporters were told.

Rehr told Bainwol that NAB questions how much HD Radio constitutes a threat to copyright or enables an authorized digital distribution of sound recordings. With the prevalence of P2P file sharing and other means of unauthorized distribution, “NAB believes the scope of any piracy risk associated with HD Radio is likely more limited than RIAA has previously asserted,” Rehr said. Even so, Rehr said, “as content creators ourselves, radio broadcasters oppose piracy in all its forms and therefore hope we can find an amicable solution to this issue.”

As a starting point, however, Rehr told Bainwol that broadcasters “strongly oppose” any effort to require digital encryption at the source. He argued: (1) No free, over-the-air broadcast service, analog or digital, has been required to encrypt its transmissions. (2) Encryption would “likely obsolete” the HD Radio receivers on the market “and millions more currently in the manufacturing pipeline.” (3) Mandatory encryption “could set back the hundreds of broadcasters” that have licensed HD Radio or begun deploying transmission equipment. (4) Legislation empowering the FCC “with overly broad authority” to encrypt digital broadcasts at the source would abandon the “longstanding Congressional paradigm” barring encryption of over-the-air programming.

In a one-page letter responding to Rehr the next day, Bainwol said preventing rampant digital piracy over HD Radio “is necessary to preserve the future of music for the health of both our industries. This is a lesson we learned the hard way once before. We firmly believe a little prudence at this juncture would go a long way.”

Even so, Bainwol told Rehr, the RIAA “has always been agnostic as to the technological method of protecting content contained in digital broadcasts.” Although RIAA agrees with many in the IT industry that encryption at the source provides among the most “robust” content protection available, a broadcast flag technology similar to that supported by the NAB for DTV “would be adequate to meet our needs,” Bainwol said. “We understand that for the reasons you mention in your letter, encryption at the source is not a technological solution that provide a viable option at this point and therefore support working with you to implement a broadcast flag solution for digital over-the-air radio.”

At CEA -- which has resisted RIAA’s calls for HD Radio content protections on grounds that no piracy threat has been proved -- Pres. Gary Shapiro hailed Rehr’s letter to the RIAA. If RIAA efforts to change the HD Radio standard were to “gain traction,” he told us, “manufacturers will be reluctant to invest” in new receivers. “The NAB is wise in insisting that any change be backward compatible. This may comfort manufacturers considering their investment in digital radio. Obviously, any negotiated results affect more than the broadcast and music industries; it affects manufacturers and consumers.”

Shapiro said he believes “there is a historic parallel here. Sinclair paralyzed the transition to HDTV by questioning the ATSC standard. Manufacturers responded to this uncertainty by removing tuners from their DTV sets and selling monitors. The result was that manufacturers learned that there is a healthy market for monitors and the DTV market has been changed.” Shapiro wasn’t available to comment on Bainwol’s reply.