But a group of consultants in London said this is no longer the case. Consultants at the BPI in London discovered they could record RealAudio streams as .wav audio files using a software called Audio Rack, which came packaged with their soundcard, said Jollyon Benn, operations executive at the BPI's anti-piracy unit. A BBC spokesperson said Wednesday the broadcaster decided to remove material from the Radio One website as a temporary measure, while it negotiates licenses from individual record companies. But Seattle-based RealNetworks maintains the streams cannot be recorded without the website owner's permission. RealAudio streams can be recorded by the end user, but only if the content provider allows that, said Hulett.
Recording is off by default in our software.
Station webmaster John Ousby said he was waiting to speak with the BPI about the issue, but believed their advice may be misinformed. To tell people to take stuff of the Web without looking completely into it is not the best way to go about things. Ousby added the BPI may not have fully understood the implications of its allegations. Ousby said RealAudio streams could be converted to .wav files, but can only be recorded at the quality set by the Web server. Discovering methods of bypassing copyright protection is probably going to be an ongoing controversy on the Internet, said Ian Walden, head of the IT law unit at Queen Mary and Westfield College in London.