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To be honest, I can't remember the last time I listened to "the radio".

Especially commercial radio. There's nothing out there that's worth listening to (thank you ClearChannel). And I don't need commercial radio for news -- NPR and the Internet fill that gap very nicely.

(If you like talk radio, well, whatever, that's your business. I always found it an annoying waste of time, regardless of the show.)

In fact, the only radio station I listen to these days is on the other side of my current continent. It's as non-commercial as they get, and I get my fix through streaming and podcasts. (I hope it lasts, I hope it lasts...)

I'm very glad the iPod has NO radio at all. Hell, my car radio is tuned 99% of the time to the station supported by the FM transmitter I use with my iPod.

You need look no farther then the recent CARP ruling on Internet radio broadcasting royalties -- a quick summary can be found here -- to see what "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing" will do to freedom of choice: kill off all of the small players, making sure the Old Boy's Club has free reign.

Jay (=

For starters, you are unfortunatly a little late when it comes to the internet radio stations that so often have good electronic music. The RIAA is in the middle of killing the free internet radio stations. Some of my favorite internet streams used to be over at SomaFM where among other music I was introduced to music from Tranquility Bass, Future Sounds of London, Aphex Twins and Orbital. I would prolly not have CD's by all these bands if it wasn't for da internet stream.
Not all streams have disappeared, Digitally Imported Radio is one of the finest that is still there. Offering Trance, hard-trance, Eurodance and hard-house. For more streams check out shoutcast a collection of online music streams.

To be introduced to Electronic music you should try to find which genres within electronic you like best. Some genres are (from mellow to really fast):
- Ambient
- Trance
- Down Tempo
- Trip Hop
- Acid Jazz
- Eurodance
- House
- Garage
Several of these genres are not per-se electronic but will contain lots of modern sound influences.

For the real electronic junkies there is also what is known as scene music. This will not appeal to most people out there, but please try it and check out the rest of the scene.

The CARP determined that the only example of a "willing buyer/willing seller" was a deal cut between Yahoo! (which had recently paid $5 billion for Broadcast.com) and the RIAA in July 2000 (while the dotcom craze had not yet crashed) and based their ruling largely on the terms of that deal.

The CARP determined that the only example of a "willing buyer/willing seller" was a deal cut between Yahoo! (which had recently paid $5 billion for Broadcast.com) and the RIAA in July 2000 (while the dotcom craze had not yet crashed) and based their ruling largely on the terms of that deal.

It seems that the the Deal that Yahoo struck with the RIAA a while back has an awful lot to do with the back room shennaniganns that were somewhat implicate in the CARP arrangement.

This deserves major news coverage of it's own.

Kurt Hanson of Save Internet Radio has a letter that he received from Mark Cuban, former owner of audionet.com/broadcast.com/Yahoo! Broadcast on how the Yahoo!-RIAA deal was structured. Read the entire letter here.

Bottom line:

• The voluntary royalty deal between Yahoo! and the RIAA that the Librarian of Congress announced as his template for the entire industry last week was a deal crafted by Yahoo! to shut out small webcasters and decrease competition.
• The villian in this story is not Yahoo! (They were simply being savvy businesspeople!) The villian is the CARP process by which this anti-broadcaster, anti-small-webcaster deal became the template for the industry
• As Mark Cuban says, they didn't want percent-of-revenue pricing art Broadcast.com Why? Because "it meant every "Tom , Dick, and Harry" webcaster could come in and undercut our pricing because we had revenue and they didn't".

I run Detroit Industrial Underground. My station has a 20 simultaneous listener capacity, and I've been broacasting for 3.5 years. To give you an idea of the small scale of most internet broacasts, DIU is currently ranked 222 out of around 2800 stations on the Shoutcast directory for total time spend listening (TTSL).

Some thoughts, based on what I've read here:

Terrestrial radio stations with webcasts are as unhappy with these rates as internet broadcasters are, and they'll be lobbying against this as well.

Some people have said that these rates won't apply to stations which only play non-RIAA material. While common sense would suggest that, it has not been proven yet, and common sense doesn't seem to apply to anything involving the RIAA and U.S. Congress.

Ephemeral recordings are "temporary" recordings made solely for broadcast purposes. In the case of internet radio, they're referring to MP3s. In practice, its an excuse to add another 8.8% fee on top of the per listener per song $0.0007.

Moving outside the U.S. won't save internet radio. U.S. based Broadcasters can be tracked through ISP's and billing relationships with hosting companies. Also, other countries have licensing bodies which are just as rapacious as the RIAA. In Canada, SOCAN is pushing Tariff 22, which imposes a $0.25 per unique listener per month fee. This adds up to more than the RIAA + BMI/ASCAP/SESAC fees, and forces listener tracking/subscriptions for auditing purposes. See the Stop Tariff 22 website for the details.

The battle isn't lost yet. On the Shoutcast list, we're working on our response to this. In the meantine, check out Save Internet Radio and the Radio and Internet Newsletter. Finally, write your reps in Congress, and include your snail mail addresss so they know you're a constituent.

It's not widely publicized, but it IS happening, when lawmakers get hundreds (or more) of letters with a disticnt opinion on a topic. It puts lawmakers in the uncomfortable position of listening to voters as opposed to campaign contributors. Which is WHY it's not widely publicized - "If those darn voters start getting intersted, I'm going to have to do some real WORK, the bastards".

I think Alans comment on the EFF is off-base. The OSS community is a loose confederation of geeks ("Bazaar" in The Cathedral and the Bazaar). I don't speak for everyone, but I don't want to be associated with any one group, I enjoy the freedom and chaotic nature of OSS and the "community". Not to say I don't support some of what the EFF does, but I'll not join a group to give political power to a group when the power of the masses is of greater concern. If they have something worthwhile I want to support, I'll do it, otherwise I'll ignore it.

As long as I'm discussing geeks "acting up", why don't some folks go take a whack at RIAA?

KCRW, an LA NPR station, has been playing PSAs about this. They have a great page with a sample letter to your Congresscritter. And be sure to check out SaveInternetRadio.org. This is something the average non-slashdot-reader can understand far more than they can or will bother to comprehend DMCA, SSSCA, or the Russian who wrote software that let people read books, so there is a slight chance that the forces of ignorance won't take this round.

Maybe it will even save internet radio.

You haven't been paying attention to the problems with internet radio, then.

It's not that the RIAA is not allowing internet radio stations to license their works, it's that the proposed royalty rates (which are due to be accepted by Congress with a week, so give your local Congresscritter's office a phone call today if you care!) are amounting to what currently pases for 5 to 10 times the actual revenue taken in by even the more popular webcasters. Compulsory licensing doesn't help you if the rates are set too high...

A quick summary, sensibly titled Give me the story in 90 seconds is available, and information on who to contact and what to tell them can also be found at SaveInternetRadio.org

Jay (=
(Who mailed his letters off last week...)

Maybe it will even save internet radio.

You haven't been paying attention to the problems with internet radio, then.

It's not that the RIAA is not allowing internet radio stations to license their works, it's that the proposed royalty rates (which are due to be accepted by Congress with a week, so give your local Congresscritter's office a phone call today if you care!) are amounting to what currently pases for 5 to 10 times the actual revenue taken in by even the more popular webcasters. Compulsory licensing doesn't help you if the rates are set too high...

A quick summary, sensibly titled Give me the story in 90 seconds is available, and information on who to contact and what to tell them can also be found at SaveInternetRadio.org

Jay (=
(Who mailed his letters off last week...)

Don't forget when you listen to the radio there are cumplusary licenses in effect -- but the artists get NO $$$$

Contact your representative in Washington!

The SomaFM page has the info, as well as Save Internet Radio.

It's _really_ easy to do and takes about 60 seconds. Just say something like this:

"Hello, this is (your_name) from (your_city, state) ... can I speak to the aide responsible for Internet issues?" Then they'll transfer you.

When the aide picks up, just say: "I'm calling to voice my opposition to the CARP ruling that will negatively affect Internet radio stations. I think it is unfair, and I hate to think that I will lose my favorite internet radio stations soon. Internet radio is one of the best ways I can discover new music to purchase, because the FM broadcast stations in my area don't provide me with any diversity. Please help me out, and put a stop to the CARP ruling so that Internet radio will survive."

Then they'll say something like "Thanks for calling, I'll pass this on to Representative So-and-so."

If you don't do anything to help, don't come here and bitch when most of the good internet radio stations are gone. I for one, appreciate new music and diversity.

Now, go call!

Ben

yes I am, on this one:
save internet radio

Fact: The per song per listener fee for every song an internet radio station plays is 0.14 cents.

Fact: The RIAA is seeking 3 year's retroactive payments from each broadcasting radio station.

Now let's do the math for my personal favorite internet radio station Digitally Imported. Currently they peak at around 6000 listeners, so let's assume an average of 5000 listeners for a 24 hour period. Given the fact that the mainly play trance/house/eurodance music let's also assume that they can play about 6 songs per hour (at the extreme end of the lengths of said tracks). The total cost to the RIAA per year to run this station follows:


total_fee = (number of listeners)(proposed fee)(songs per hour)(8760 hours per year)

total_fee = (5000 listeners)($0.0014)(6 songs)(8760) = $367,920!!!


Furthermore, take into account the retroactive payments. Assuming the station even started at 0 listeners 3 years ago and grew in a linear fashion (Gaining 1667 listeners per year) the total retroactive payments come to:

retro_fee = ($73.58)(1667) + ($73.58)(3333) + ($73.58)(5000) = $735,800!!!


As far as I know, almost all independant broadcasters cannot even afford the yearly fees, let alone this outrageous yearly fee. It's simple math that can't be argued with. When the guy who ran Digitally Imported needed donations to upgrade the server that streamed the music, he was lucky to receive $3,000 over 3 weeks.

For the love of God, at least charge a lower rate or go to a profit percentage method of payment. Most webasters that I know of have no problem with these proposals, but they have been constantly rejected by the CARP commission.

To cover these yearly costs if the stationed turned to a subscription-based system, that would require the listeners to pay $80.00 a year to listen to something that is basically being offered for free as a labor of love by the creator. Now consider that FM radio is free. That would drive more listeners to the crappy cookie-cutter top-10 wasteland that is FM brodcast radio. Whose thumb is held very prominently over this media outlet? The RIAA. Is it any wonder now why they're pushing for such high fees? Drive out the internet radio stations, drive more listeners to their crappy stations, possibly boost their revenue. It's important that we think about these issues when they arrise as the big ten of the media are basically trying to dictate to us what we should and should not be able to use to entertain ourselves. So please, speak out. Raise your voice. Be heard. Thank you for listening to my thoughts on this subject.

For more information on this subject please tune into WolfFM. They are holding an excellent all-day live information broadcast on the topic at hand.

Fact: The per song per listener fee for every song an internet radio station plays is 0.14 cents.

Fact: The RIAA is seeking 3 year's retroactive payments from each broadcasting radio station.

Now let's do the math for my personal favorite internet radio station Digitally Imported. Currently they peak at around 6000 listeners, so let's assume an average of 5000 listeners for a 24 hour period. Given the fact that the mainly play trance/house/eurodance music let's also assume that they can play about 6 songs per hour (at the extreme end of the lengths of said tracks). The total cost to the RIAA per year to run this station follows:


total_fee = (number of listeners)(proposed fee)(songs per hour)(8760 hours per year)

total_fee = (5000 listeners)($0.0014)(6 songs)(8760) = $367,920!!!


Furthermore, take into account the retroactive payments. Assuming the station even started at 0 listeners 3 years ago and grew in a linear fashion (Gaining 1667 listeners per year) the total retroactive payments come to:

retro_fee = ($73.58)(1667) + ($73.58)(3333) + ($73.58)(5000) = $735,800!!!


As far as I know, almost all independant broadcasters cannot even afford the yearly fees, let alone this outrageous yearly fee. It's simple math that can't be argued with. When the guy who ran Digitally Imported needed donations to upgrade the server that streamed the music, he was lucky to receive $3,000 over 3 weeks.

For the love of God, at least charge a lower rate or go to a profit percentage method of payment. Most webasters that I know of have no problem with these proposals, but they have been constantly rejected by the CARP commission.

To cover these yearly costs if the stationed turned to a subscription-based system, that would require the listeners to pay $80.00 a year to listen to something that is basically being offered for free as a labor of love by the creator. Now consider that FM radio is free. That would drive more listeners to the crappy cookie-cutter top-10 wasteland that is FM brodcast radio. Whose thumb is held very prominently over this media outlet? The RIAA. Is it any wonder now why they're pushing for such high fees? Drive out the internet radio stations, drive more listeners to their crappy stations, possibly boost their revenue. It's important that we think about these issues when they arrise as the big ten of the media are basically trying to dictate to us what we should and should not be able to use to entertain ourselves. So please, speak out. Raise your voice. Be heard. Thank you for listening to my thoughts on this subject.

I set my Shoutcast internet radio station to play looped public service announcements all day. The PSAs heighten my listeners awareness by explaining the issue, how it affects them, how it affects me, and how they can take action. You can visit SaveInternetRadio.com for more information.

Save Internet Radio is a great website, there's lots of information on the bills that are threatening internet radio, and what you can do to help stop them from passing legislation.

As other people have mentioned, these numbers are extremely misleading and doesn't even factor in the "follow-thru" effect. That is, once a person gets a chance to download a piece of music, and find that they like it, they then go thru and "follow-up" on that artist, more often than not buying the original media for the song they had downloaded earlier, and other products by that artist they may have missed before.

This is what I do when I download music. Recently, however, the process has been:

• Listen to SomaFM
• copy down names artists from their play lists
• search for music over the internet
• If I like what I hear, I buy it. If not, it usually ends up in the bit bucket.

Does this behavior ever occur to the RIAA? Nope. "You download MP3s, you must be a pirate".

Anyone who has ever seem my CD collection would know that this couldn't be further from the truth. If anything, I'm an ardent music fan.

It amazes me that the RIAA can hem and haw about representing artists, yet when it comes to underground artists like the ones normally relegated to dance clubs and underground internet radio stations like Soma...the RIAA is virtually invisible in such positive representation. Do they actually do anything for a DJ Krust, a Dom & Roland, or a Grooverider? Not that I can see, and the clubs do well enough in this aspect. Actually, they have involved themselves in one aspect of Internet Radio: the introduction of the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) to address the issue of royalty paments. If these recommendations pass, it would basically signal the end of Internet Radio as we know it.

So in yet another instance, the RIAA is actually hurting those it claims it represents. I'm really hoping the government will shine a big bright spotlight on the Music Industry, as the more I hear about it, the less I like.

Tell me, why havent the RIAA been able to get together with some ambitious geeks and come up with a create-your-own-mix-CD type service? Don't think they could put up with the competition of people burning their own CDs for free, so instead of offering a better service, they sic the government on their own customers instead of trying to work with them.

Real smart, and how so very, very typical of Corporate America, isn't it?

Visit saveinternetradio.org, a site by the folks behind the Radio And Internet Newsletter, or RAIN. We in the radio broadcast industry are doing everything we can to make it clear that the CARP recommendations, based almost line-by-line on what the RIAA asked for, would effectively eliminate radio broadcasters from the internet streaming arena. Oddly enough, RIAA member companies are in the process of rolling out their own for-pay services... coincidence, right?

Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.

When elephants dance, its best to get out of the way. Thats exactly whats happening now as the entertainment industrythe recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainlyattempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isnt it?

Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective minds eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.

Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the toolscomputers mostlythat allow customers to practice their piracy.

Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. Thats all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.

To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturersthe companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD playershave aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.

Unfortunately for usboth authors and customerswere likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; theyre too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.

Copy-protected CDs

The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that cant be copied to or even played on some customers equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it cant guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.

Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that theyve released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.

And its only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content, Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, shouldnt technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use. Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being finessed by the technology industry, whatever that means.

Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal useand more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted materialis exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.

It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to .mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, its usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.

Ironically, or probably not, .mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to space shift music they have purchased.

Moral rights

Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artists moral rights in the work they create.

Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:

• The right of integrity;
• The right of attribution;
• The right of disclosure;
• The right to withdraw or retract; and
• The right to reply to criticism.

These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the authors personality and character and non-transferable.

The first two moral rightsthe right of integrity and the right of attributionare especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesnt.

The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an authors work from being distorted in any way that would harm the authors reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of droit au respect de l'oeuvre. Its a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.

Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.

In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works theyve licensed, the copyright owner industryincluding the recording industryis attempting to exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work.

And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalons royalty calculator to figure it out.

A DMCA rewrite?

Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulateand maybe outright bancopy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players.

Boucher isnt talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.

Internet radio

Under the U.S. Copyright Offices interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.

Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industrys safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesnt nauseate you, itll damn sure hypnotize you.

Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Lets be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.

KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:

Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, ormore likelyits just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.

Doc Searls, in his article Bizarre vs. Bazaar, eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of content (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).

A brief history of copyright

Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicatemaybe even precariousbalance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.

The Constitution granted Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the limited times of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.

Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the fair use provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.

The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted wok as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide , provides an interpretation for working writers:

As a general rule a critic or reporter should not quote at any one point more than two or three paragraphs of a book or journal article, a stanza of a poem, or a solitary chart or graph from a technical treatise.

The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.

While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.

Digital TV

According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry todaywhen in doubt blame those dang customers.

Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, its unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.

The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think thats the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included thats capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.

Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.

Digital rights management

Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. Theyre just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just dont want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.

And then there are the schizoids, the companieslike AOL Time Warner and Sonythat are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.

SSSCA > CBDTPA

The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.

According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act its really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.

Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the certified security technologies fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.

Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they cant come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.

Should we be surprised that four of Hollings top campaign donors are media conglomerates?

Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.

In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital deviceseverything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.

Whats most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:

Senator

2002

2000

1998

1996

Total

Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)

$19,000

$32,750

$215,284

$43,300

$310,334

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

$39,621

$69,900

$109,521

Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)

$49,852

$49,852

John Breaux (D-Louisiana)

$120,920

$120,920

Bill Nelson (D-Florida)

$47,550

N/A

N/A

$47,550

Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

$211,638

$211,638

$849,815

Theres no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isnt over yet. Not hardly.

So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like itll come in right around US$1 million.

Enter DigitalConsumer.org

The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the fair use rights of customers in digital media. The groups principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:

1. Users have the right to time-shift content that they have legally acquired.
2. Users have the right to space-shift content that they have legally acquired.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.

A solution

The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:

1. Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
2. Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
3. Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; theyre consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I dont know about you, but Im not much pleased any more.

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a natural person under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. Its not too late to fix it.

Even though there are increasing restrictions on the hobby, there are still some resources to help you on your quest for an Internet Radio Station. Also, don't forget to find out how you can help.

Even though there are increasing restrictions on the hobby, there are still some resources to help you on your quest for an Internet Radio Station. Also, don't forget to find out how you can help.

Even though there are increasing restrictions on the hobby, there are still some resources to help you on your quest for an Internet Radio Station. Also, don't forget to find out how you can help.

As one industry website points out,

Note that the DMCA's rationale for granting performance royalties in the digital world was based on the concept that digital copies are "perfect" copies and thus the sales of CDs (called "phonorecords" in the act) might be at risk in this new "digital millennium." ...

On the other hand, try this on for size.

• Find a reasonably good quality net broadcaster.
• Make a copy of a good song off of that net cast.
• Make a copy of that same song off of the radio
• Play back an original CD of the sound, followed by the netcast, and then the radio copy.
• notice which is the best, and which is the worst.

Internet radion, on the other hand, rarely reaches those rates. looking at the Real audio's tuner page shows 3 station:

KASR FM Radio (sports) broadcasts at 20Kbits/second (I'd describe it as grotty)

Euromix Radio(" Pop to house, trance, techno and energy remixes from DJ Daizzy, ToolMix, Terry Tate and..") broadcasts at 32K bits/second. This is actually better quality than many netcasters, but you can definitely tell that it's a net cast. even with pure voice content in a language I can't understand. KASR radio (specializing in classical music, and thus a good representative of the "high end" of the quality scale) broadcasts at 64Kbits/second. Decent quality, but -- at 6:30AM, on a Sunday -- they're at their audience limit. I can still hear the bite of audio compression (when I can reach them). --- In fact, they're not up to the quality of AM radio -- much less FM.

Going to their search listing for "Seattle", (where Real Audio is based) shows stations rangingr from 20K bps up to 96K for Groove Radio (split between audio and video). I actually found a listing for a Chicago station that claimed 256K/sec, but I couldn't get to them. (I'm guessing that they're also a video/audio mix).

When I worked at GlobalMedia.com (now defunct), we had people who could squeeze the last bit of quality out of a 64K audio stream... (some webcasters don't quite understand what the issues are for getting a decent quality webcast). Even so, the quality never stood up to broadcast radio -- much less the CD player on my computer going through my (25 year old) receiver.
-----

Once you debunk the 'perfect digital copy' myth, then you can get on to the question of what's a resonable royalty rate, as opposed to what would compensate the RIAA for their supposed loss of business.

SaveInternetRadio.org or http://208.3.135.80/

Good clearinghouse on the whole issue and links to your representatives. Speak out now or shut up later.

I should also point out this link:
http://www.saveinternetradio.org/