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Webcasting and the DMCA

Posted by michael on from the hot-and-cold-running-music dept.

nknouf writes: "A recent article on Salon talks about how college radio stations that webcast could face fee increases from $623/year to $10,000 to $20,000 per year. What's more interesting is information that Congress is considering a bill called the Music On-Line Competition Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. The bill aims to "break the hammerlock the recording industry has over music distribution." My favorite quote, from Rep. Cannon: Napster is "one of the coolest inventions of modern times.""

4 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. On the other hand... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How many people could these webcasters REALLY reach? If everyone in LA listens to a station at once that's fine, and you have millions of listeners - but since the practical reality of many webcasts is one of limited bandwith, perhaps pricing (if any) should be reflected based on how many simultaneous users could really listen at once.

    The other thing to consider is how many of the artists a station is playing are really going to get a piece of that ASCAP pie. If all you're playing is experiminetal stuff, why should ASCAP get anything from you? How about a pool composed of exactly the artists played, that seems a lot more fair.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  2. College Radio? A partial answer... by SnakeStu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...is to recognize the nature of their audience and the utility of the Open Audio License. All of the colleges I am aware of have a significant population of aspiring musicians eager to be heard, as well as many young, fresh minds open to listening to something other than what "Mom and Dad" listened to at home. So you have willing producers and open consumers, and the Open Audio License allows the college radio stations a way without fees to bring them together.

    In such an environment, a college radio station should actively promote the Open Audio License and encourage student musicians to release their work under it -- and then give it plenty of airplay (it costs them nothing). Open Audio might not work well in some markets (i.e., those where listeners expect to be given what the music industry convinces them to listen to via advertising), but I can imagine no market more prime than college radio.

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  3. Jamie Zawinski on Webcasting by ewhac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Jamie Zawinski wrote a most informative rant on the labyrinthine regulations and pitfalls that potentially face anyone wishing to Webcast. As he owns and operates the DNA Lounge nightclub in San Francisco, which does its own share of Webcasting, the man has definitely done his homework. Definitely worth a read.

    Schwab

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    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
  4. Peer-to-Peer webcasting? by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    That article got me thinking. Perhaps the nifty peer-to-peer technology behind Gnutella, Swarmcast, FreeNet, and etc. can be used to do for audio streaming the same things that it does for file sharing?


    In particular, I'm thinking of a system where anyone can broadcast audio (or even video) streams semi-anonymously. Listening nodes automatically forward the stream packets to each other, meaning that only the nodes directly adjacent to the source know who/where it is, and only those nodes use any of its bandwidth.


    Such a system could be as scalable as "real" radio, since the bandwidth available increases with the number of people listening, and it could be lawyer-resistant enough that the RIAA couldn't stop it (similar to how they haven't been able to stop mp3 file trading).


    Time to start coding I guess :^)

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    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.