Wired News: Attack of the Radio Clones

Interesting "theft" of radio station information. I don't think one passes the smell test, but I hope it does. Information wants to be free.

Armed with the playlist data, Microsoft's computers try to replicate the various station playlists by dipping into the company's vault of 500,000 licensed songs. (Unlicensed songs -- like those by The Beatles -- don't get played.) Microsoft hopes the online clones, available only to PC users for now, will sound a lot like original stations, just without contests, jingles, chit-chat or local commercials.

Is all this legal? Microsoft, after all, isn't just using station call letters. It promotes its clones by using station nicknames (i.e., Star 100.7 or K-Earth 101) and, in some cases, their slogans ("today's best rock hits," "lite rock, less talk"). If you go to the Radio Plus website and click on Salt Lake City, for example, a list of 11 choices will pop up, including "Like 92.1 FM/KUUU U92 Blazin Hip-Hop Beat" and "Like 100.3 FM KSFI FM 100 Continuous Soft Hits."

In a statement, Microsoft defends itself: "The use of station names is applied only to indicate the top artists on a station, and we believe it's simply a factual statement about the radio station, similar to many other public radio charts on the web."

The word "factual" is key. Under the law, general "facts" -- how many people live in Chicago, for instance, or the number of ounces in a pound -- don't belong to anyone. In 1991, the Supreme Court ruled that even the listings in the white pages aren't protected by copyright law. "There's no expression. They're pure facts," said Long, the law professor. Database managers have been trying to convince Congress to limit the court's ruling ever since, she said.