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Untill we get this Intellectual Property "saga" sorted out, we can pretty much count on any cool uses for tech like this being brought in through the "front door" getting the political axe.

There are no IP issues with operating a bona fide radio station. More accurately, the issues have long been worked out. Broadcast royalties for virtually all music other than your local garage bands are covered by ASCAP. A commercial station that primarily plays music and has gross revenue under $50,000 per year need only pay an annual fee of $450 for a license to broadcast ASCAP's entire portfolio. Non-commercial stations pay rates determined by the US copyright office. It is all in ASCAP's faq.

Untill we get this Intellectual Property "saga" sorted out, we can pretty much count on any cool uses for tech like this being brought in through the "front door" getting the political axe.

There are no IP issues with operating a bona fide radio station. More accurately, the issues have long been worked out. Broadcast royalties for virtually all music other than your local garage bands are covered by ASCAP. A commercial station that primarily plays music and has gross revenue under $50,000 per year need only pay an annual fee of $450 for a license to broadcast ASCAP's entire portfolio. Non-commercial stations pay rates determined by the US copyright office. It is all in ASCAP's faq.

Broadcasting of copyrighted material is allowed as a fair-use

That's not true. Radio and TV stations have to pay royalties to play music. There are several licensing groups but the biggest are ASCAP and BMI.

Anywhere that there is a public performance of copyright music you must pay royalties to the licensing bodies for the songs that you use. This includes background music in stores, music in bars and clubs, elevators, etc.

But this works for anybody. If you can synthesize music from MIDI and vocal models, you can use that deal. The RIAA can't stop you from doing this.

A synthesized music web site could even buy blanket ASCAP and BMI licenses, which aren't too expensive, and allow music downloads. The going rate seems to be about $5000 per million downloads, or about $0.005 per song.

This is a real threat to the RIAA. If the technology works.

Because I disagree strongly with the RIAAs tactics, I want to put some versions of popular songs online on my webpage. What are the legalities associated with making my own interpretations of existing songs (my own voice, musical accompaniment)?

While I strongly support what you intend to do, within the realm of interaction with the RIAA (I've always found this sort of baiting perversely satisfying as either a participant or observer), you should know that you're trading one adversary for another.

When you perform music that was written by someone else, you have to deal with the owner of the copyright to the lyrics (as opposed to the copyright on a specific performance, which is represented by RIAA). In most cases that's a member of ASCAP.

In case you haven't thought this through, when you download a song off a P 2 P network NOBODY makes any money directly. Not the artist not the record label not the RIAA (Artists may get some marginal benifit from having there music "out there". Please see ll cool Js senate testomony about this.. .

The world has never had such a quick and easy way to produce copies before. This is new.. This is not someone in the basement making bootlegs one at a time on a crappy cassette player and selling them at college fairs.

One wonders why law enforcement isn't looking into piracy more and the RIAA has to defend itself.

If artists want to put there music out there for everyone to copy for free they wouldn't sign music deals, they'd set up web sight. Many do give music away for free!. Go to a show, SUPPORT BANDS YOU LIKE so they don't end up flipping burgers.

Maybe you don't call them royalties, but they pay licensing fees to ASCAP and BMI for each song played, just as any venue with live music, a jukebox, or karaoke is required to do, and these funds are distrubuted to copyright holders.(Some bars don't pay, and hope not to get caught, but that's another discussion, and a long one.)

While these fees are a pittence compared to the payola radio recieves from promoters, they do exist. Either you misunderstood the article you read about webcasters, or someone who doesn't understand how it all works was directly quoted. Webcasters can't afford to pay the fees because they don't have the massive revenue streams of traditional broadcasters. That's why they were crying foul. I agree that webcasters are getting screwed, and I you make a valid point about payola, but you are wrong about radio not having to pay out royalties.

"One exception to the above: a subsidary of the RIAA, whose name temporarily escapes me, is responsible for collecting the fees and redistributing them for all music played on radio where the station operator hasn't negotiated directly with the copyright holders. That's the only place the RIAA could be said to have a "monopoly" in any meaningful sense of the word. But that's barely relevent here."

Your post was otherwise excellent but the above absolutely needs to be corrected.

Radio royalties are collected by two non-profit agencies, BMI and ASCAP. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers, songwriters, and publishers. And they are not part of the RIAA.

As there are two independent agencies that handle this in the US, I guess one could call it an oligarchy, but if one is of the "RIAA is bad" mindset, then BMI and ASCAP are definitely the good guys. Again: they are non-profit agencies run by and for songwriters, composers and publishers for the purpose of getting radio royalties to the composers, songwriters and publishers.

Collecting radio royalties is one of many things that they do in support of the individuals who work hard to create the music (royalties based on public performance, such as in bars and restaurants with live bands or jukeboxes, is just one other thing they do). These royalties, too, go to songwriters, composers and publishers, not the RIAA.

In anticipation of the next question, "aren't the publishers the record companies, so doesn't that mean that the RIAA gets more money, RIAA DIE DIE DIE DIE," the answer is: typically not. In this context, publishing refers not to the actual recording of a piece of music, but the rights to the music and lyrics. This includes, but is not limited to, printing the lyrics in the liner notes, quoting them in a book, covering a song, and using an original song in a commercial (for which multiple rights holders may have to be consulted -- including the owner of the recording, which is often a record company). Nowadays, the publisher is a smallish company, often just one or two people. One can sell or transfer their publishing rights; perhaps the most famous example is Michael Jackson's buying of much of the Beatles catalog. Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights. Here's more info.

By the way, typically for a song to be available on a legal download service, approval must be acquired from both the owner of the recording (the record company) as well as the music publisher. This is why you might see eight out of ten of an album's ten tracks available on buymusic or itunes -- for the other two, perhaps the songwriter or the composer simply did not give permission. This is one reason why getting legal services with large catalogs has been so tough... all those permissions to obtain. This is precisely why many folks have advocated extending the concept of compulsory royalties for downloads -- under such a system, the download service would not need to seek the composer's permission before making the song available for download, as long as the composer was paid a fixed fee set by law.

Even more information is here and here.

"But, the world does not take your view of the law. There are exceptions. The major one is radio. Did you know that radio is not obligated to pay for the music it plays. (And actually, it gets paid to play the music it plays!)."

In the United States, radio stations do indeed pay for the priveledge of playing music. Two non-profit organizations, BMI and ASCAP, handle the collection of these airplay royalties. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers and musicians, and the money collected goes to them, not the RIAA.

"Did you know you that's it's perfectly legal to make music complications to share with friends and family? Obviously not. You think that every copy demands a lawsuit."

There's no law which explicitly makes this legal; ie. there's no "friends and family" clause. However, this sort of casual copying is so far off the radar that nobody really cares.

Lots of people who break laws find a way to justify them. Many people steal because they need to feed their family. Or perhaps one might speed to the hospital to save a life. For every law on the book, there is probably a good argument for breaking that law on a situational basis. But, nonetheless, laws are laws. Because you can think of justification to break one -- in this case, we're talking about Title 17 -- may not be the best evidence that it needs to be changed.

Ummm...no...not even close.

Radio stations pay royalties to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.

Online webcasters, in addition to paying ASCAP/BMI/SESAC fees, pay royalties to SoundExchange.

The notable difference between what you've said and the actual situation is that the RIAA has a limitted membership consisting of only the larger labels. However, membership in the groups that collect royalties is basically unlimitted. Royalties are distributed to labels/artists based on statistical sampling done at random to determine what percentage of the pie each label/artist is entitled to. It might end up favoring the big labels, but doing it differently would make the whole process incredibly complex.

That reminds me: I've got no U2 mp3s on my puter, better go get some off Kazaa.

How old are you that you don't remember that Mary Bono is the widow of Sonny Bono (of "Sonny and Cher" fame), and not the Bono you've just mentioned?

:P

Personally, I'd like to hear more stories like Direct TV's secret war on pirates. Now, that was a cool hack... by Direct TV. Go after the offenders so the law-abiding citizens don't have to suffer from stupid laws that try to eliminate what little "fair-use" there is (DRM, CSS, DIVX, sender-pays-email, more restrictive ISP TOS, bleh). Hack the pirates. Hack the spammers. Hack the open relays. I'd much rather be self-policing than trust lawmakers to get it right. Make a virus that takes down machines used for pirating content? Fine. It frees up bandwidth more bandwidth for me.

2. You would be charging for the content, even if you weren't doing so explicitly. That charge is folded into the cost of the drinks/coffee/muffins/whatever that you'd be serving. After all, you're not showing the content out of the kindness of your heart; you're showing it in hopes that it'll draw people into your shop.

You might think that if you're not kicking people out for not buying stuff, you're not charging; but in at least one circumstance, the U.S. courts have disagreed. In the U.S., business establishments that play background music (e.g. those Linkin Park/Lynyrd Skynyrd/Leonard Cohen songs you hear in the background when you go to your favorite club/bar/coffeehouse) are required to pay money for doing so to ASCAP. Most people don't realize this, but it's true. This is not incredibly aggressively enforced, but it is enforced. My favorite undergrad bar was shut down permanently because it wasn't making regular payments to ASCAP for the taped music it played before bands and in-between sets, and couldn't afford the fines and lump-sum payment once the court found against them.

Now, the music biz has all kinds of weird licensing restrictions and legislation, and I have no idea whether or not playing video content in your shop would be similar to playing music in your shop, in terms of your licensing obligations (once again, you need to talk to a real lawyer). But the fact that it is this way for music should make you look into this in more detail.

2. You would be charging for the content, even if you weren't doing so explicitly. That charge is folded into the cost of the drinks/coffee/muffins/whatever that you'd be serving. After all, you're not showing the content out of the kindness of your heart; you're showing it in hopes that it'll draw people into your shop.

You might think that if you're not kicking people out for not buying stuff, you're not charging; but in at least one circumstance, the U.S. courts have disagreed. In the U.S., business establishments that play background music (e.g. those Linkin Park/Lynyrd Skynyrd/Leonard Cohen songs you hear in the background when you go to your favorite club/bar/coffeehouse) are required to pay money for doing so to ASCAP. Most people don't realize this, but it's true. This is not incredibly aggressively enforced, but it is enforced. My favorite undergrad bar was shut down permanently because it wasn't making regular payments to ASCAP for the taped music it played before bands and in-between sets, and couldn't afford the fines and lump-sum payment once the court found against them.

Now, the music biz has all kinds of weird licensing restrictions and legislation, and I have no idea whether or not playing video content in your shop would be similar to playing music in your shop, in terms of your licensing obligations (once again, you need to talk to a real lawyer). But the fact that it is this way for music should make you look into this in more detail.

If they continue to grow this market, then the RIAA market will continue to drop.

A copyright is any of the exclusive rights granted to the author of a work under the Berne Convention, or under local copyright laws, such as USC Title 17 for those of us in the US. These exclusive rights can be transferred, as occurs with Copyright Assignment to the Free Software Foundation, but even such a transfer isn't the copyright itself, but a transfer of ownership of copyright.

The GPL not a copyright, it is a license, and a non-exclusive one at that. A person who makes use of the GPL to redistribute or modify software doesn't have a copyright for the software, they have permission from the copyright holder to do certain things under certain conditions. The GPL makes use of copyright law, but that doesn't make it a copyright.

Music licensing is more complicated. Sometimes a license is given to redistribute a work, or to use a sample in a recording; sometimes music is licensed en masse . Sometimes copyright is assigned to various parties, sometimes it isn't, sometimes it is assumed as part of a "work-for-hire" contract. Sometimes the copyright is split, the songwriter having copyrights for the lyrics, the band having copyrights for the score, the producer having copyrights for the studio recording, and these can get licensed in whatever ways. But, again, the license is not the copyright.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be interpreted as legal advice. Determining which parties own which copyrights can be a complicated issue demanding professional legal help.

Yep, this is an argument that's been hashed out, over and over again, in many fora.. and the conclusion most have come to, when the actual artists have stepped in to make a statement?.. they like it when more people listen to their music, even if they don't pay for it at first. No publicity is bad publicity, right?..

The RIAA doesn't seem to realize they're nailing their own coffin shut - no, scratch that, they're SEALING THEIR COFFINS WITH LEAD, by suing and victimizing the very people they expect to pay them for their overpriced plastic junk. That's why, from now on, if I like an artist's music enough to buy their work, I'm sending the money directly to THEM, not to the slavemasters.

And how much should one send?.. well, according to ASCAP, $2.00 per $17.00 cd is a 'reasonable amount' for artist royalties.. so by sending them, say, $5, I'm paying them 250% what they would have gotten. Then I can find the music from whichever source I want, and feel good about it, too.

All commercial organizations that want to play or stream music that is copyrighted, to a large number of people, must pay a license fee to places like ASCAP. That is what muzak (spell?) in elevators is all about. Businesses pay for that music to be heard. Even stores that sell CDs must pay for the very music that they play in their stores. So in theory, yes a company could certainly purchase CDs and P2P them, but technically they would be required to pay the same fees as if they were putting it out over the loudspeakers.

Even Happy Birthday has copyright.

So, even with ASCAP's figure, we're up on $3.80 a CD. That's a long, long way from the MSRP on a CD. If they could sell me a CD for an even $5.00, there should be plenty of money to go around to everyone, and I would honestly stop pirating completely. In fact, they'd see a lot more of money than they ever have in the past.

Revenue is up since September 11, 2001. See Through the Night With a Light from a Buck for details.

Out of curiousity, what royalties are webcast stations paying now? Why can't they just join ASCAP, like we real radio stations do? According to their payment plan ASCAP distributes rights to "radio, TV, cable, bars, clubs, restaurants, shopping malls, concert halls, web sites, airlines, orchestras, etc."

I understand that CARP stinks, and I agree that webcaster shouldn't have to pay such high fees. But what, if anything are they paying now? And what's wrong with existing solutions?

Let me get you started in the right direction:

You don't need to "buy the rights to rebroadcast the songs from the record companies, song writers, and publishers". You merely need to pay royalties for the public performances of copyrighted compositions to ASCAP, BMI and possibly SESAC. The total of all these will be around 5-6% of your stations gross revenue.

Copyright law specifically exempts FCC-licensed radio stations from any fees for public performance of the "Sound Recording" (that is, the copyrights owned by the record companies).

As for the power you will need to cover a decent sized metro area - you sure don't need 50-100,000 watts. The FCC breaks the license classes down into 3 main groups, Class A, B and C. Class A are typically around 5kw, Class B, 50kw, and Class C, 100kw. But an important distinction here is that these amounts are not transmitter power, but ERP (effective radiated power). Also, depending upon your transmitter's HAAT (Height above average terrain), you may be authorized for a lower power than the class of license's maximum.

You would be surprised how well 1000 watts ERP on a hill into a good circular-polarized antenna system will cover a metro area. In fact, in Los Angeles, one station transmits a mere 600 watts from Mt. Wilson and covers all of the greater Los Angeles metro area. In their case, it's the height that gives them the coverage, not so much the power.

You can learn more about station coverage contours, power and classes from the FCC.

But before you get into all that, you should read the FCC's Broadcast Station Application Process. Did I forget to mention that you need to either buy an existing license or apply for a new one? And before you can even apply for a new license, you'll need to prove that you have the financial resources to complete the station and do a technical feasibility study - usually a spacing study for commercial FM (to make sure you can fit your station into the band without causing interference to existing stations) or a Interference study for noncommercial/educational stations (in the 88.1-91.9 part of the band. You can't do these yourself, you'll need to hire a company who specializes in this and has access to the FCCs databases. Dataworld is a company that has been doing this for over 25 years.

Before you get started on this, you should do a lot of background reading. An FCC licensed station is not a toy o hobby and there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with it. Fortunately, the FCC has a How to Apply for a Broadcast Station section of their site. Unfortunately, it starts off like this:

Potential applicants for radio and television services should be aware that frequencies for these services are always in heavy demand. For example, the Commission received approximately 30,000 inquiries from persons seeking to start radio broadcast stations last year. Where broadcast frequencies remain available, competing applications are routinely received. Thus, you are cautioned at the outset that the filing of an application does not guarantee that you will receive a broadcast station construction permit. You should also be aware that in many areas of the country, no frequencies may be available on which a new station could commence operating without causing interference to existing stations, which would violate FCC rules.

There are so many other things you're going to have to think about before you apply for a license as well.

• Is the transmitter going to be at the same location as the studio? If not, how are you going to get the signal to the transmitter? (A STL, microwave band studio transmitter link, is a popular way - but you'll need a license for this too...
• If your studio is going to be co-located with your transmitter, you have to pay a lot of concern to keeping RF interference from your transmiter out of your audio signals. This means 600 ohm balanced audio feeds, not the typical RCA or miniplug consumer unbalanced audio lines.
• The minimum hardware you'll need is a transmitter/exciter, audio processor/stereo generator, antenna system, tower, Emergency alert system hardware, etc.
• You may be required to provide the FCC with a "Proof of Performance" - going out with a GPS and signal strenght meter, and proving that your transmitter and antenna system are operating as planned.
• You'll also need some monitoring instruments to make sure that your station isn't putting out too much power, or transmitting with too high of deviation (overmodulation).
• Last you'll need a way to feed audio. A Linux box playing MP3s probably won't cut it. At a minimum, you need to schedule the "legal IDs" at the top of the hour. There are commercial broadcast automation packages out there that cost under $2000, alas they all run under Windoze. There is no reason you couldn't write one for Linux.
• And I think you need at least a small mixer and a microphone so that when you need to, you can address the audience. (And aternatively play music when you're doing upgrades to the automation system.)

I suggest you subscribe or read online Radio Shopper, a radio tech centric newsletter that also covers things that small operators need to do to fufill their oblications to the FCC and the community. And of corse, it's a great place to find used transmitters and antenna systems.

Some places to get a feel for the prices of this equipment are Broadcast Supply Worldwide and Harris Broadcast. If you are on a budget and need used equipment, Mooretronix is a great place to start.

Here's a great pictorial of the installation of a new FM antenna system and 60kw transmitter for KPFK in Los Angeles. Just to give you an idea of what is required. KPFK is a non-profit.

I also suggest reading Bob Gonsett's CGC Communicator, a really great technical newsletter for broadcasters in the Southern California area. There are hundreds of his past newsletters online, and you can read about the saga of new stations in SoCal, as well as issues with construction permits (station upgrades). Lots of good info here.

I hope this has helped give you some good background on what all is involved in starting a radio station. I've worked at a couple small commercial broadcast stations in the past. I assisted in some upgrades to the transmitters and antenna systems, so I got to see all that was involved with just the construction permit with the FCC. I even got to assist in a proof of performance once, back in the days before GPS. We had to do it all using topo and street maps.

So don't give up hope - you CAN start your own radio station. But it's really hard to do with just one person. And it will take a bunch of money. Get a critical mass of people together in your town, form a non-profit, there is a really good chance that it you're not in one of the top 100 radio markets that you can get a license and start a station.

I encourage you to try!

--rusty

• The club has, in all certainty, pays ASCAP/BMI performance royalties. Through that, the public performance is covered, no matter the medium used

Hmm, very good point, but it really opens a can of worms, as ASCAP is very vague about what's actually covered by their licenses.

One thing that they do say with regard to DJ's is that Since it is the business owner who obtains the ultimate benefit from the performance, it is the business owner who obtains the license, and I believe that a lot of DJ's work as contractors, not employees. Unless he's got his own explicit license, then he's effectively trusting that merely being likely to play the copies at a licensed venue gives him an implicit license to make as many copies as he likes. But couldn't that apply to anybody? Hey, I might end up playing my mp3's at a licensed club, so it's all right to use them for home use until then?

Hard to say without seeing the terms for one of the hundred plus license variants that they produce. Still, I wouldn't be shouting about it to Associated Press unless I was sure that it wasn't going to bring Hilary Rosen down on me like a ton of bricks.

• The club has, in all certainty, pays ASCAP/BMI performance royalties. Through that, the public performance is covered, no matter the medium used

Hmm, very good point, but it really opens a can of worms, as ASCAP is very vague about what's actually covered by their licenses.

One thing that they do say with regard to DJ's is that Since it is the business owner who obtains the ultimate benefit from the performance, it is the business owner who obtains the license, and I believe that a lot of DJ's work as contractors, not employees. Unless he's got his own explicit license, then he's effectively trusting that merely being likely to play the copies at a licensed venue gives him an implicit license to make as many copies as he likes. But couldn't that apply to anybody? Hey, I might end up playing my mp3's at a licensed club, so it's all right to use them for home use until then?

Hard to say without seeing the terms for one of the hundred plus license variants that they produce. Still, I wouldn't be shouting about it to Associated Press unless I was sure that it wasn't going to bring Hilary Rosen down on me like a ton of bricks.

ASCAP has a FAQ that deals with the whole issue of public performance of copyrighted material. Well worth reading.

/Don

BMI and ASCAP do the licensing of public performances, and they're very aggressive about drawing the line on what constitutes a public performance. From their General Licensing FAQ

Q. I'm interested in playing music in my restaurant or other business. I know that I need permission for live performances. Do I need permission if I am using only CD's, records, tapes, radio or TV?
A. Yes, you will need permission to play records or tapes in your establishment. Permission for radio and television transmissions in your business is not needed if the performance is by means of public communication of TV or radio transmissions by eating, drinking, retail or certain other establishments of a certain size which use a limited number of speakers or TVs, and if the reception is not further transmitted (for example, from one room to another) from the place in which it is received, and there is no admission charge. Your local ASCAP licensing manager can discuss your needs and advise how ASCAP can help you.

The fair way would be to track what people are downloading, and dole out the money proportionally based on that

The American Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers solved this scaling problem a long time ago. ASCAP takes a 24-hour sample of each radio station's airplay. Not all radio stations are monitored at the same time.

Kazaa and Verizon could do something similar, by setting up some high-capacity super-nodes and logging all downloads started through those super-nodes. It wouldn't catch all downloads, but it would catch a significant sample from which Kazaa could compile relevant statistics and cut checks to ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI.

The original lyrics are also copyrighted and can't be reproduced for wide distribution (even as a vocal transformation) without consent.

Not exactly. A cover song can be publically performed with a simple ASCAP (or BMI or whatever) compulsary license. To be on the safe side, they should definately have an ASCAP license, that's not all that expensive. They still could run into problems because of the fact that they are allowing the songs to be downloaded. Technically, they should probably be paying Harry Fox (or someone similar) "7.1 cents per CD sold if the song is 5 minutes or under. Songs over 5 minutes cost slightly more, based on a rate of 1.35 cents per minute."

Seems like at least one musician thinks his A paper is being peddled all over town.

Poor guy. But there are two ways to prevent that kind of thing from happening to you:

1)Always enter into a favorable up-front royalty aggreement with any record company in contracts. Always. Even if you think the contracted work will come to nothing.

2)Join ASCAP It is a lot easier for a record company to brush off the royalty statement requests of a burnt out hippie than a powerful organziation representing him. Generally speaking.

ASCAP disagrees with you on that point.

However, the establishment is responsible for ASCAP fees, not the band.

Go to a local bar/club and pay $5 to hear a local band play for a few hours (hint - if you're afraid to waste money on a band that sucks, go for some jazz; they're generally at least better musicians). And drink beers and tip the staff. These are the people who need our patronage.

Not in the USA, you have to pay to play. Check out ASCAP for details. Knowing how harmonized world IP laws are, I'd be pretty surprised if this isn't the case in Canada as well. Note, however, that the license is in terms of revenue, so college stations might get off for free.

As far as I know (in canada, at least), it is legal to play radio in a public place without paying royalties.

Again, check the link above, but the ASCAP license (USA) specifically forbids public re-broadcast.

Victory? what is victory? to be able to get all the "Free" music many want to steal. The industry is bad so I the consumer should just take what I want.. Gimmie a break. Napster Took from Artists and gave NOTHING back to them. Maybe a few bands got some publicity, but that don't pay the rent.
The industry is failing because it doesn't give people what they want, we don't want more Boy bands or Britany. There is some good stuff coming out on major labels, although its hard to find. The homogonization of radio hasn't helped the music listening experience any.

Someone/ somehow is gonna figure out how to give the consumer the music they want without it being stolen freely. Its hard to make people pay for things they've gotten used to getting for free though.

Look the RIAA is looking out for its best interest.. Not artist's (Thus the RI is (R)ecording (I)ndustry...) .

ASCAP is supposed to look out for recording artists and writers.. I'm not a member so what/how they're doing remains to be seen. The site is good though, they explain how your supposed to make money in music for younger members. They even have a searchable database with which you can look up who wrote and performed any song..but I digress.

Victory? what is victory? to be able to get all the "Free" music many want to steal. The industry is bad so I the consumer should just take what I want.. Gimmie a break. Napster Took from Artists and gave NOTHING back to them. Maybe a few bands got some publicity, but that don't pay the rent.
The industry is failing because it doesn't give people what they want, we don't want more Boy bands or Britany. There is some good stuff coming out on major labels, although its hard to find. The homogonization of radio hasn't helped the music listening experience any.

Someone/ somehow is gonna figure out how to give the consumer the music they want without it being stolen freely. Its hard to make people pay for things they've gotten used to getting for free though.

Look the RIAA is looking out for its best interest.. Not artist's (Thus the RI is (R)ecording (I)ndustry...) .

ASCAP is supposed to look out for recording artists and writers.. I'm not a member so what/how they're doing remains to be seen. The site is good though, they explain how your supposed to make money in music for younger members. They even have a searchable database with which you can look up who wrote and performed any song..but I digress.

If you think of it this way, RIAA is hurting the economy.. So is ASCAP and BMI Webcasters let music be heard that may not have a venue elsewhere,be heard. In turn the listeners are interesed in the band, they go out and buy the CD(which pays BMI and ASCAP), In turn the bands have to play more shows... In turn they buy new musical equipment, to play more shows where more people are coming,In turn the clubs make more money and continue to have live bands. If webcasters are charged outrageous fees, then we can't play the music, thereby shutting us down, the bands don't sell any CD's the clubs don't make any money, the music stores don't sell equipment. Pretty vicious circle... my site www.nw-radio.com doesn't sell records, we let people hear music that they may not have any idea is out there ... So Why should I have to pay RIAA or BMI or ASCAP for helping THEM ?

The problem lies in the fine line between distribution and broadcast. When you distribute an MP3 online, you run the risk of violating the distributor's copyright to the actual CD medium. So, if that MP3 happens to be of a song by Metallica, and you don't have permission from the recording company, or its agent, you've violated copyright law for duplicating the CD (or a portion of it).

On the other hand, when you stream an MP3 online, you're broadcasting it. Broadcast isn't distribution, it's public performance. Public performance rights belong to the songwriters. If you broadcast that Metallica MP3 without permission from artist, or from one of the appropriate songwriter's associations, you've violated copyright law.

Thankfully, getting permission from the songwriter's associations--that's ASCAP, BMI and SESAC--is a piece of cake. The licensing rate depends on a number of factors -- available here, here and here -- but for the most part, for small internet broadcasters the fees are minimal. ASCAP charges about $250 a year to start... BMI is more expensive, SESAC is considerably less (something like $50 or $75 annually.)

The United States has additional rules for online broadcasters that don't apply to airwave broadcasters. For instance, you can't provide music on-demand... you can't announce your playlist in advance... and you can't play too many songs from the same artist/album in a row. Nor can your playlist repeat predictably or too frequently.

Other countries have less restrictive rules.

Where things get messy is where you start to provide audio on-demand, or whenever audio is made available for download. In those cases, distribution rights apply as well as (or instead of) public performance rights...

BRx.

Many artists are famous for their clashes with their labels (Prince, NIN, even The Beatles), and long before napster et al...

Before the CD, music was distributed on platters of (supposedly) vinyl consisting of a spiral groove of two orthogonal analog waveforms. This was the medium for most of the 1900s. The effect of the music monopoly on this medium was that only one manufacturing company, usually owned by record company itself, made the medium. Due to this monopoly, there was no incentive to produce good quality records as that did cost a few cents more per unit. The end results was bad quality, with some major record companies like RCA producing total shit (I bought several, and every one of them was horrible quality).

I believe one reason the CD rose in popularity so fast was that the quality was so much better, not just because of the vinyl hiss, but also because of all the clicks and pops from the garbage embedded in the vinyl. The CD wasn't totally immune from this damage, but it could correct a lot of it, and quietly skip a lot more, and you never noticed it.

Also, in the early days of the CD, record companies hadn't yet learned how to cut corners and reduce costs without completely destroying the product. Now days they are learning. The quality of CDs is going down and down as the record companies are trying to push the edge of what consumers will accept.

If there was competition in the media production phase of music production, with a compulsory licensing that allowed anyone to produce the medium and change whatever they wanted to consumers, and simply pay the publishing company that owns the rights to the recording (or the artists directly if they own it) the statutory or arbitrated fees, then the consumer would have a free market choice on who makes the CDs they buy.

In the day of vinyl (and even still today to some degree) a few companies were making reproductions of music on quality media. Usually the costs were very high, almost double. I soon found out that the original record company demanded a fee that was at least equal to, and in some cases more than, the retail cost of their own garbage. This would be a fee they would collect for not even producing the media at all. Compulsory and/or statutory licensing would have prevented this rip off.

There is precendent in statute now. This is already how the law works for certain kinds of reproductions (see The Harry Fox Agency and this licensing information page) and performances (see ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC), although it still does not work perfectly as reported in links found via Google.

Still, I think this would be a good step forward to have this kind of law in place not only for media reproduction, but also for digital online delivery.

One possible solution to this is the creation of a rights clearinghouse much like BMI or ASCAP for music publishing rights, combined with a compulsory licensing scheme with set royalty rates.

This is basically the solution that music publishers and music licensees came up with years ago (or that the government came up with for them) to solve a similar problem with music licenses. Similar schemes are being proposed for AIDS drugs and other medicines and for online music.

Of course this doesn't solve the myriad other problems associated with GM foods and restrictive patents, but it's a start.

You go camping with your friends and some of them bring a guitar. Night comes, and you decide to make fire and sing some stuff. Suddenly a pair of RIAA agents appear from nowhere and sue all of you for copyright violation.

Sorry, that trick has been tried already. ASCAP went after the American Camping Association - which represents (amongst other) some Girlscouts camps - for royalties on the songs the girls tend to sing around their campfires. This whole mess eventually was concluded by the Girlscouts asking for and getting exemption because they're a non-profit organization.

Read it from the horse's (ASCAP's) mouth here:

http://www.ascap.com/playback/1996/october/girlsco uts.html

A bit of Googling around the web will yield more results.

But despite the united front against Napster, behind closed doors the relationship appears to have chilled. The argument is over what the recording industry should pay publishers for the right to stream MP3 files.

On March 9, the copyright office responded to the petitions by opening a public comment period on the question of what kind of licensing digital streaming and downloading of music files should require. Once the office settles the dispute over whether a digital stream is really the same thing as selling someone a CD, then it may arbitrate what the royalty on a digital file delivery should be.

Goldsmith thinks the industry's take-no-prisoners strategy may backfire. "They're pissing off the artists," he said. "If they piss off online radio too, what's to prevent a system that doesn't involve the recording industry at all? They're encouraging the development of an alternative relationship between producers and radio stations."

A 103-year-old song would be in the public domain even with the Bono Act.

Now, the RIAA obviously hates the idea of any money slipping out of their fingers and getting sent directly to the artists so of course they're jumping up and down. But they're dinosaurs: large, noisy, and inefficient, and the Internet is a big asteroid. All will turn out well in the end.

Now if only I could figure out how this will affect Natalie Portman, I'd be a rich man.

This article is filled with misinformation.

It's best to go right to the sources at the Copyright Office, ASCAP, BMI, RIAA, etc. The restaurant info, the who-owns-the-copyright info, etc., are wrong in implication if not in detail.

And if the legalese is too much, then go here or (when it's back up) here.

Dennis

The ASCAP license does not authorize the reproduction or distribution of music or sound recordings. To obtain these rights you should contact the Harry Fox Agency, Inc.(the wholly-owned licensing subsidiary of the National Music Publishers' Association, Inc.) for authorization to copy and distribute the music, and the copyright owner of the sound recording (usually the record label) for authorization to copy and distribute sound recordings. Information on these important rights may be obtained from the Harry Fox Agency, and the RIAA, the record labels' trade association.

snip

The copying of a copyrighted musical work or sound recording onto your server (as when you load the file containing the work), constitutes exploitation of the reproduction right, for which authorization is required. Again, you should contact the Harry Fox Agency, Inc. for authorization to copy the music onto your server, and the copyright owner of the sound recording (usually the record label), for authorization to copy the sound recording onto your sever.

The ASCAP license does not authorize the reproduction or distribution of music or sound recordings. To obtain these rights you should contact the Harry Fox Agency, Inc.(the wholly-owned licensing subsidiary of the National Music Publishers' Association, Inc.) for authorization to copy and distribute the music, and the copyright owner of the sound recording (usually the record label) for authorization to copy and distribute sound recordings. Information on these important rights may be obtained from the Harry Fox Agency, and the RIAA, the record labels' trade association.

snip

The copying of a copyrighted musical work or sound recording onto your server (as when you load the file containing the work), constitutes exploitation of the reproduction right, for which authorization is required. Again, you should contact the Harry Fox Agency, Inc. for authorization to copy the music onto your server, and the copyright owner of the sound recording (usually the record label), for authorization to copy the sound recording onto your sever.

ASCAP(American Society of Compossers Authors and Publishers) does the micro pay collection and writes the artists a check for all the little payments.

Actually where is ASCAP in all this? They're really dropping the ball. They could make this work....

At this point, I guaran-damn-tee someone will bring up the "radio stations pay royalties" point.

Why do they pay royalties?

Radio stations do not pay royalties for musical recordings. They pay royalties (via BMI/ASCAP) to songwriters and composers, not recording owners. And guess what? So does MP3.COM!

Why don't radio stations pay royalties to recording owners? Because Congress decided not to grant an exclusive right of performance for these particular works. Why? Just because.

Copyright is about an arbitrary compromise between creators, users, and society, and in particular, radio stations have lobbyists such as those which work for the NAB.

Copyright is not about what is morally right and wrong. Anyone who claims it is is trying to sell you something.

Bottom line: Radio stations have juice in Congress, and Internet companies like MP3.COM don't, at least not yet.

Radio stations don't infringe on copyright.

They do if they don't follow the licensing rules.

Note that nowhere on that link, or at any other similar organization, does it say "None of this applies if you broadcast to people who already own the CD of the song you're playing."

For mp3.com to claim that proving the listener's ownership made them magically exempt from all laws governing public performance always did strike me as pretty questionable legally. I'm totally unsurprised at the decision.