• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 26, 2007

XM has riled the music industry--again.

The National Music Publishers' Association is suing XM over its XM+MP3 service, alleging the technology lets consumers engage in digital piracy. Its lawsuit asserts that royalties paid by XM for broadcasting songs don't compensate content owners for the recording of those songs by consumers. Thus, it resembles the suit brought against XM by the Recording Industry Association of America, which is still unresolved.

The NMPA lawsuit, filed Thursday in a federal court in New York, centers on the XM+MP3 service's recording and playback capability. As long as they subscribe to XM, consumers can record songs. The earlier RIAA lawsuit, brought in May 2006, seeks $150,000 from XM for every song downloaded by subscribers using the Pioneer Inno, an electronic time-shifting device that can store up to a gigabyte of copyrighted music culled from radio airplay. Like the XM+MP3, it permits indefinite playback.

In the lawsuit, the NMPA points out that XM is touting the service's recording and playback capability as an alternative to iPod and other MP3 players--which unlike Apple's iTunes, doesn't require listeners to pay for music. A spokesman for XM, Chance Patterson, was dismissive of the new suit, saying it had no legal basis and "simply represents a negotiating tactic to gain advantage in our ongoing business discussions."

Indeed, Fred von Lohmann, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco, said the RIAA lawsuit was unlikely to succeed in light of the protections provided by the Audio Home Recording Act, passed by Congress in 1997. Von Lohmann compared the MP3 recording technologies to earlier iterations of home-recording, including analog radios equipped with cassette recording capability.