Court Rules Playlist Customization Is Not Interactive

prostoalex writes "Is music played via customized playlist delivered interactively (i.e., via user participation) or non-interactive (i.e., decisions are made on the server side)? The question does seem metaphysical, but it took Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Yahoo! six years to figure it out via a protracted legal battle. User-driven playlists are bucketed with on-demand music services, while server-driven playlists are equaled to broadcasts, thereby causing different licensing mechanisms to take place. Yahoo! inherited the legal wrangle when it purchased a music startup Launch, which built a music recommendation feature. The court decision determined that recommendation algorithms that rely on usage data to build playlists server-side are still eligible for broadcast license, thereby substantially lowering the costs of operating a music recommendation site."

So if I dont have a playlist

[Timesprout]

Am I really listening to music?

Re:the best...

[SilentSheep]

But... If you went back in time and became a lawyer specialising in internet law then you would not learn the skills to create the time machine in the first place, which means you couldn't go back in time to become a lawyer specialising in internet law... i think we may have encountered some sort of paradoxic issue with time travel here.

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Re:"Metaphysical?"

[dosquatch]

I don't think someone knows what that word means...

So I was sittn' in this bar - Toby Ornauh Toby's - with a full pint of beer in half a glass, thinkn' ter meself, if a hard drive thrashes in the server room, an' noone's there ta hear it, does it make a sound?

That's when she walked up. "What's the difference between an orange?" she says, an' I knew in an instant she'd have my one hand clappn'. Aye, lad, those legs ran all th' way from alpha to omega an' back again. Her skirt hiked up as she crost her legs, and I could see she was wearn' the cutest pair of transcendental pink pannies with just the slightest bit of angst trimmed around the edges.

All the same, though, I had just gottn' out of a seriously unhealthy codependant relationship with myself an' was in no mood for anything serious. I bought her a glass of time in a bottle, told her she was the lovliest flavor of blue I'd ever smelled, but I had an astral plane ter catch. With sadness in me soul, I redefined pi and slipped out the back of the front door.

A Wednesday, i'twas...