General Motors, as well as automotive component manufacturers Denso and Clarion, are being sued by the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies. The AARC alleges that the four companies have failed to pay royalties under the Audio Home Recording Act.
Billboard reports that the suit claims “that … General Motors, via the technology companies Clarion and Denso respectively, have failed to register their in-vehicle media duplication devices.” The devices in question allow car owners to store music on a built-in hard drive so that it can be played again at a later time.
According to Billboard, the suit (which also includes Ford) “seeks an injunction against the four companies for sale and distribution of the devices, statutory damages of $2,500 per device for three years up to the filing of the lawsuit, all royalties that would have been normally owed by the companies in the three years prior plus 50 percent, and attorneys’ fees.”
GM hasn’t commented on the matter yet, but we will continue to report on the lawsuit as it progresses.
Comments
I could easily argue just about any device today falls under AHRA. This is an archaic law that should have been rendered unconstitutional in the Betamax era, under that Supreme Court ruling.
And, if this goes up to the Supremes, they may just cite that. Seeing as GM and Ford don’t really use these anymore, and statutes of limitations may be in play because of how long it took to sue over this – I suspect settlement is more likely here.
It’s a cheesy way to go mining for money. Get them to settle and pay up.
I read many years ago, when people began buying magnetic tape recorders for home use and recording their LP collection, that the act of duplicating music which was paid for is not illegal as long as the owner doesn’t resell the duplicated music in any medium. Now that we have digital storage in Gigabytes in USB flash drives, and we can download songs from iTunes and Amazon for pennies a song, why does this group accused Ford and GM now? No one who stores music in their vehicle for later playback will sell them, unless if you resell the vehicle you have to erase them, which I do agree. I was given an old iPod with over two hundred songs in it, but I will not resell those songs.