In the culture wars nothing is more contentious than copyright use/infringement, and no one is spending more time and effort on pressing its case than the Recording Industry Association of America, aka the RIAA. The device above, the Samsung Helix is a tiny, $400 radio that gives you access to satellite radio in the car and at home, but also plays back your own MP3 files and up to 750 songs that you’ve recorded from the satellites; this is the device that the RIAA’s lawyers are now crying foul over.
The New York Times reports that “not everybody is happy about this feature of the Helix and its Pioneer sibling. XM, which was largely responsible for the design of both players, has been sued by the increasingly busy lawyers of the RIAA. They’re calling the design of these players “a tool for copyright infringement. Truth is, on the pure silliness scale, the association’s case ranks right up there with Monty Python. You’ve already paid to listen to these XM songs; all the Helix adds is the ability to time-shift and replay them, just as people have done with audiocassettes for decades. Once you record a song to the Helix’s memory, that’s where it stays. You can’t burn it to a CD or transfer it to a computer; you can’t move, copy or distribute it in any way.”

Here’s the bottom line, and surely a pointer to the RIAA’s ineptitude - If you do want to burn an XM song to a CD, you’ll have to buy it online.

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