The introduction of being able to use streaming services as an input source in Traktor has taken us as users back to the dark times of the 70s and 80s where recording and copying music was seen as a threat.
In the 80s When DAT tapes suddenly gave consumers the possibility to digitally copy music as easy as the old cassette tapes, the music industry had enough and enforced a chip called SCMS (Serial Copyright Management System) to prevent any copy frenzy by consumers. Sony amongst others accepted to implement this chip in consumer products to not face any law suits and by so killing the whole consumer DAT market. When the chip was finally in place the market had already moved on to recordable CDs.
The SCMS never succeeded to limit copying copyrighted material. It did however limit any users possibility to copy their own created recordings. And even if the SCMS chip hindered users to copy songs digitally simply doing a DA to AD copy was good enough as the quality deterioration was negligible for most users.
Today we see the same idiocy played out in Traktor. As soon as you introduce any streaming source into any deck you cannot use anything that has to do with sampling.
This of course has to do with the streaming license as a stream should in no way be able to be copied from the streaming source (and by so reintroducing the same pointless stupidity as mentioned earlier).
By so NI has taken the precaution of not letting you as a customer to fully use Traktor and what you might have paid for. As soon as you introduce a streaming source into a deck. You will not be able to use any type of loop recording come loop/audio recorder or any remix deck no matter if the source is not the stream itself.
In reality this limitation is pointless as you can overcome this by doing some creative signal routing. However this takes you as a user inconveniently back to the days before Traktor as all the extra overhead needed to get this functionality back in Traktor very much defeats the purpose why many bought this great software in the first place; simplicity, creativity and ease of use.
Instead of abiding to the streaming services ancient and ineffective copyright laws, NI should stand up putting their customers firstly by assuring any new feature will add to, and not limit the current functionality of the product.
From a legal standpoint all NI has to do is to inform the customers of what is allowed and what is not, and this can be done by simply putting forward a warning sign, with some legal link and an acceptance button.
It is not NI who will be sued if some user suddenly releases a song containing samples from another artist, no matter how the audio sample has come to be in the first place, and by so it is not NI's prerogative to act as a copyright police.
I highly doubt any producer will start suing DJs who mix parts of their tracks into a live performance as long as they have gotten payed for the use of their songs (which they will by the user using the streaming service).
In the end laws and agreements should never be upheld by technically limiting a product or service simply because it will neither be able to take into considerations all different variations of legal usage nor uphold the legality upon any creative user who wants circumvent it. It has only limited markets, products and their sales figures, history clearly proves this.
If the streaming companies forced NI to include these limitations to allow streaming services to be used into Traktor, then this was a wrong deal to be made not putting their customers and their product first.
Acting as a copyright police is putting NI's bets on the wrong team...
