The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last week sued XM Radio over its new Inno device, which enables subscribers to the satellite radio service to record content and bookmark particular songs they'd like to hear later. On Monday, representatives from both organizations squared off on John Schaefer's Soundcheck radio show, which is available on XM and on NPR.

Steve Marks, general counsel for the RIAA, led off his comments by stating: "If this was just about time-shifting, we wouldn't have a problem at all." XM actually referred to the Inno's "time-shifting memory mode" when it announced the device in January, but Mr. Marks said that it goes beyond such capabilities by offering "a downloading service through [XM's] own end-to-end system that allows subscribers to copy songs and store them, as you can do on an iPod."

He accused XM of marketing the device "without coming to the creators of the music first to obtain the proper licenses," and he said that the RIAA wants XM to cease distribution of the Inno until proper permission has been obtained.

In his company's defense, XM vice-president of corporate affairs Chance Patterson said that Mr. Marks "has it all wrong. This device is nothing like an iPod. You cannot go out and look for a particular song at a particular time and record and store it and make copies of it. When a song comes up, you can make one personal copy of it. You can't export it to another device. There is no basis for associating this with a download service."

He also pointed out that Inno works with the XM+Napster service, enabling subscribers to purchase songs they've bookmarked for US$0.99 each. "We built it to spur record sales," Mr Patterson insisted. "We're confident this will be resolved in our favor."

He added: "We built the device to comply with the laws. I'm not going to speculate if someone will hack it or not. We built it to make it difficult to do so. This has nothing to do with this complaint. You can't export the content or in-demand record a particular song. This is much closer to what you experience with TiVo. You can schedule recordings, but you can't make a copy."

Same as or Different From the 1972 Home Recording Act?

In the process, Mr. Patterson brought up the 1972 Home Recording Act, which said that consumers recording music off their radio with a cassette recorder were not infringing on copyrights. That right was later upheld in the video realm when the film industry sued Sony over the Betamax VCR and lost.

In response, Mr. Marks dismissed any comparisons to TiVo, stating that an ad he saw for Inno during January's Consumer Electronics Show said: "This isn't a pod; it's the mothership." He claimed that XM is "in direct competition with iTunes or something like Napster or Rhapsody, who have obtained the appropriate permission."

He also said that, unlike TiVo, Inno lets the listener "cherry pick a program and save those parts forever ... It lets you library songs as you would do on an iPod. It allows you to do that without ever listening to the broadcast. Right now it has a 50-hour capacity that will grow over time. You can record 50 hours and the device gives you a list of songs. You can look at the list, delete the ones you don't want, and keep the ones you do want."

"Whether they listen to the entire broadcast or not, there is a legal protection there," Mr. Patterson replied. "The courts and Congress have been very specific with this. This is a right consumers have under the protection of law. If they only want to store and hear 8 out of 10 songs, that's their right."

When Mr. Marks noted that Sirius obtained permission for its own Inno-like device, which doesn't have the same ability to listen to live broadcasts that XM's handheld does, Mr. Patterson said: "I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Sirius' discussions regarding us. We look forward to resolving this case and moving ahead. We will aggressively defend ourselves. The record companies do receive a percentage of our revenue under the agreement we have with them."