Can it be done?

[Dave Swift]

Can you use some kind of applet or anything else to stop people from downloading your audio files to their temp folder?

I assume there isn't, but Live365.com offers free internet radio which lets you listen to mp3's without downloading them. So how do they do that?

Any help would be much apreciated, as Multimedia isn't exactly my forte. (As you may already know.)

[kevin]

Just curious why you thought to post that question in the legal issues forum.

Regards,
Kevin

[Dave Swift]

Well live365.com allows visitors to listen to copyrighted material, and they claim what they do is legal. I assume this is because they don't allow visitors to actually download the tracks, like Napster would, but just let visitors listen to tracks, like a radio.

I am considering doing something along the same lines, but only if it is legal, and I hope I can keep it legal if prevent downloading.

[SteveS235]

They can stay away from the touchy issues by following a very strict federal act called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Consider this taken from live365.com:

The DMCA imposes certain requirements and rules with which persons subject to US law who are transmitting Internet Radio Programs must comply. Without limiting the applicability of all other laws, rules and contractual provisions that may govern your activities, you agree to comply with the following specific DMCA rules in connection with your Internet Radio Programs (for additional information, please see Live365.com's Internet Radio Programming FAQs:

You may not include in your Internet Radio Programs specific sound recordings within 1 hour of a request by a listener or at a time designated by the listener.

In any three-hour period, you should not intentionally program more than three songs (and not more than two songs in a row) from the same recording; you should not intentionally program more than four songs (and not more than three songs in a row) from the same recording artist or anthology/box set.

Continuous looped Internet Radio Programs may not be less than three hours long.

Retransmissions of Internet Radio Programs may be performed at scheduled times as follows:

Internet Radio Programs of less than one-hour: no more than three times in a two-week period;

Internet Radio Programs longer than one hour: no more than four times in any two-week period.

You should not publish advance program guides or use other means to pre-announce when particular sound recordings will be played or the order in which they will be played.

You should only include in your Internet Radio Programs sound recordings that are authorized for performance in the United States.

You should pass through (and not disable or remove) identification or technological protection information included in the sound recording (if any).





You can get general guidelines for what you want to do by reading through this legal FAQ's at: http://www.live365.com/help/faq/legal.html

If you want to read through the actual DCMA, get it here (it may put you to sleep as it is 94 pages!): http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/hr2281.pdf

[SteveS235]

Although I don't know how much of DMCA would apply to you as you live in the UK, and the DMCA is a US act.

But I think if you have a signed permission statement from the artist, and you are not making the songs available for download, and you are not profiting from the performance of these songs, you may be alright, but I'd check with an attorney just to be sure.

I've been toying with the idea of doing the same kind of thing for my site as well.

[Dave Swift]

Yes well I've done the legal homework, and I've got the MP3's (100+ of them) but now all I need is the script!