RIAA sues XM Satellite over Inno

RIAA sues XM Satellite over Inno

Trust the recording industry in the United States to come up with novel ideas to sue other companies in the country. The RIAA has sued XM Satellite Radio on Tuesday over its recently launched device Inno.

This device is capable of storing up to 50 hours of music for a monthly fee. The RIAA claims that this feature is resulting in massive wholesale infringement. The problems are intensified for XM as they sell this device with the slogan of “Hear it, click it, save it”.

RIAA is seeking a massive $150,000 in damages for every song copied by XM Satellite customers using the devices. This is pretty much outrageous considering the device has been available in the market since many weeks now and the radio station plays more than 160,000 different songs every month.

XM on the other hand believes that Inno is like a high-tech videocassette recorder, which consumers can legally use to record programs for their personal use. It is different from other digital music players in the market considering users cannot use it to transfer songs to other devices or PCs. And it works as long as they pay a subscription fee to the company.

Mitch Bainwol, chief executive for the Recording Industry Association of America on the other hand says: “Yahoo!, Rhapsody, iTunes and Napster all have licenses. There’s no reason XM shouldn’t as well.”