Universal Music settles with XM over recording device

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

December 18, 2007, 11:20 AM

Satellite radio company XM's fight against the Recording Industry Association of America over receivers with the ability to record content may finally be coming to a close.

This morning, Universal Music Group becomes the first RIAA member involved with this ongoing lawsuit to have reached a multi-year agreement with XM, making its music available for recording on current and future hardware. Further, UMG withdrew itself from the RIAA's complaint against XM.

The suit began in the spring of 2006, when the RIAA deemed an XM receiver made by Pioneer a form of copyright infringement. The device in question was the Inno, which is capable of recording up to 50 hours of XM content in .MP3 or .WMA formats. It also works in conjunction with Napster to bookmark songs for purchase, schedule recordings, or get artist information.

In trying to establish a licensing deal, the RIAA issued a suit against XM for the Inno, seeking $150,000 in damages for every song copied onto this device by XM subscribers. The satellite company alleged the RIAA was just using the lawsuit as leverage in the deal.

Now that UMG has reached an agreement with the satellite company over licensing, and with rumors of major label Warner Music soon doing the same, it will soon become evident whether this suit was, in fact, a success for the RIAA.