Who owns who?

April 15, 2009 5:07 AM

There's a website out there that aggregates operational radio transmissions (similar to coastguard radio, police radio, that kind of thing). I'd like to create an iphone app that aggregates the feeds. Am I allowed to use the websites streams? Do they have any legal ownership over the streams despite the fact that they're publicly broadcast and can be picked up on any receiver?
posted by cubedweller to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Well, commercial radio and television are "publicly broadcast and can be picked up on any receiver" so that is hardly a good yardstick.
posted by rokusan at 5:18 AM on April 15

Yes but unlike commercial radio and TV, this is not copyrighted material. Sorry, should have made that clearer.
posted by cubedweller at 5:23 AM on April 15

What a great idea!
posted by InkaLomax at 5:25 AM on April 15

I don't know what your legal rights are here, as far as whether you can legally re-use the streams. I would just be careful with whatever you do as the people hosting the streams may not take kindly to what you are doing. There are costs associated with streaming transmissions (hardware, bandwidth) and if you go that route, I'd be prepared for the stream owner to limit your application's access to their stream if they don't like you piggybacking off their service.

There is someone on ebay who sells a CD called "Internet Police Scanner" for like $10. It is really just a CD with an application that has links to different streaming police scanners that other people have worked hard to put up. Many of these site owners did not take kindly to someone misrepresenting and profiting off of their work. I don't know what legal right, if any, they had.

The other thing to consider is that it is still a gray area of whether streaming police scanners online is entirely legal in the first place. I know there are cases where towns have asked stream owners to take down certain feeds but I don't believe this has ever been challenged in the courts.

I know this doesn't directly answer your question but I hope it adds to the conversation!
posted by tommccabe at 5:54 AM on April 15

Thanks tommccabe that's helpful and interesting. I think the bandwidth issue is where I'd run into problems, even just from a moral perspective. I can't imagine they have legal claim to the content though.
posted by cubedweller at 6:43 AM on April 15

"I can't imagine they have legal claim to the content though."

But they could if thy inserted their own content into the stream (like ads for example)
Or played music for which they had paid the royalties on.
Unlikely ?? Maybe - but if you are piggybacking their stream (without their permission) remember you have no control over what goes out to your users. Their might spike your stream just to have some fun - they could rickroll your entire audience for example.
posted by Xhris at 7:19 AM on April 15

Thanks Xhris - nope, none of their own content, no music, no ads, just a rebroadcasting. But still, good points.
posted by cubedweller at 7:23 AM on April 15

i have no useful content, but i wanted to point out that i would love an iphone app that did this.

also, if a police station used their radio frequency to rickroll the scanning audience, it would be *awesome*. i would buy them donuts for that.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:25 AM on April 15

There is a distinction between the source being free of copyright and the manifestation of that source being copyright free. An easy example is I can take a photo from the Library of Congress, free of copyright restrictions, and put it in a book that I publish. That photo is still free to anyone who reads the book, but there are copyright restrictions preventing a reader from legally scanning the photo from the book and using it in their own book. Likewise, if CNN plays NASA footage (free of copyright), I cannot use that clip from CNN in my own work. I have to go to NASA directly, or pay CNN for use.

So just because the original radio transmissions are free of copyright does not mean that the streams necessarily are.
posted by ochenk at 6:04 PM on April 15

That said -- this sounds like an interesting idea for an iphone app. There's no reason, if you approach the folks behind the streams directly, that they wouldn't be on board... (Assuming you have whatever revenue stuff worked out, anyway.)
posted by ph00dz at 6:57 AM on April 16