Stream It. Record It. Keep It.
As a content publisher, we take copyright laws very seriously. We also believe strongly in Fair Use. The laws are simple: When recording or converting media, please do not redistribute it to other people. This will keep you out of trouble.
Our products fall in the same category as VCR's, TiVo Digital Video Recorders (DVR's), Tape Recorders, CD Burners, iPods, and other popular consumer devices. All Applian products record streaming media not protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management), and are fully compliant with all copyright laws, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (Only 1% of all online video and audio is DRM protected.)
Here is what our products are NOT:
The RIAA will not come after you as long as you record for your own personal use. File sharing services like Kazaa, Morpheus and the original Napster service put their users at risk, since redistributing copyrighted content or acquiring copyrighted content that you wouldn't otherwise have access to is illegal, unless you are making a "fair use" or other permissible use of the content.
If you decide to share recordings with others, post them on the Internet, or sell them, do so at your own risk. This is may be breaking the law, unless you are making a "fair use" or other permissible use of the content.
If you're really into the legal aspect of this, there are two important parts of the copyright law relating to recordings. We've quoted the actual text of the law below, and highlighted the important parts in red.
First, the basic right of copying is outlined in section 1008:
§ 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement
of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution
of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording
medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium,
or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device
or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical
recordings.
Next, comes the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is often used to stop distribution of certain copying programs. For analog recording products like Replay Music, they operate by recording what comes out of the PC speakers, using capabilities built into Windows. Screen video recording products like Replay Video Capture work in a similar fashion. And stream capture software like Replay Media Catcher records what is passed from your network card in unencrypted fashion. We don't circumvent any copy protection systems, nor do we claim that our software is designed to circumvent copy protection systems (which it isn't).
Below is the important part of the DMCA as it relates to copying and circumventing copy protection systems:
§ 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems2
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that —
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
(3) As used in this subsection —
(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Short answer: No. (The DMCA stands for "Digital Millennium Copyright Act", which are the guidelines for what you can and cannot copy legally, and how recording products are allowed to work.)
Our stream recording technologies work by locating unencrypted media, and downloading that media as it is transmitted, in order to enable the user to view the content at a later time and/or on another device. We don't break any encryption, which is at the heart of the DMCA. (Some of our stream-capturing software may not work with future protocols as the media owners come up with more sophisticated encryption technologies.)
Some customers have reported the capabilities to strip out advertisements from certain TV sites, download full length shows in preview mode and other unintended effects. These capabilities weren't designed into the software, rather they are a side-effect of how the various media servers are architected. The intent of our products isn't to enable ad stripping or avoid paying for content.
In addition to our stream capture products, we also offer "analog" recording products. By "analog", we mean being able to capture video right from the PC's screen, or audio from the PC's speakers. These products will always work with any current or future protocol, since they are functioning completely outside of the network connection. Analog recording products give great results, but not the perfect digital reproductions of stream captured media.