I recently told you about Time Trax, a neat program that lets you record XM radio for listening later when you have time. Apparently both the RIAA and the XM people have been following the news about this program (as the RIAA sees copyright infringement everywhere) and the results of that scrutiny is bad news for consumers.

XM has apparently discontinued the XM PCR, an XM receiver for the PC, and while they are not saying it’s due to the possibility for recording on the PC, several retailers of the receiver are saying just that according to Ars Technica. When are consumers going to wake up and put the RIAA in it’s place? This quote from the article is a scary thing:

For its part, the RIAA denies having any influence over XM’s decision to pull the PCR off the market, although it shares the concerns XM has over the product.
“We are very concerned about a variety of technologies that essentially transform performances into music libraries,” RIAA spokesman Steve Marks said. “We have communicated our concerns to XM and other broadcasters and Webcasters, (and told them) that we’d like to work together with them to address technologies that hijack these performances.”
Transforming a performance into a music library? I was doing that back in the late 70s with the help of my FM radio and a cassette player. If it wasn’t so frustrating, it would be funny how many times the recording and broadcasting industries have been up in arms about some new technology that threatened their business model. It’s high time they embraced the combination of changing technologies and consumer attitudes that lead to products like Time Trax. Who knows — if they gave consumers a product they wanted they might actually see revenues increase and make their shareholders happy.