Copyright Office Proposes Webcasting Regs

deadsquid writes: "Streaming to a desktop near you, the death knell of online radio stations. Continuing to pave the money trail the RIAA and others claim to be theirs and theirs alone, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel has released their ideas on what webcasters should pay to re-broadcast copyrighted material over the Internet. A good summary can be found at the Radio and Internet Newsletter, which provides an outline of what hoops net broadcasters must jump through, in addition to what they must pay. To say the rates are ridiculous is an understatement, and the amount of information required from the broadcaster to the copyright holder is ludicrous. The cost of bandwidth and delivery is already high enough, and this ruling, if upheld, kinda removes any hope of surmounting operating costs and continuing on. " Webcasters will have to report a great deal of information about their listeners according to the reporting requirements that the Copyright Office has proposed.

I thought I'd just summarize briefly for people who don't follow these issues:

Copyright law gives the record companies the right to prevent others from making copies of "their" music, except in certain cases where there is a "compulsory license" written into the law. In these cases, the record companies can't prevent anyone from using "their" music, but there is a mandatory fee that they must get paid. This "compulsory license" scheme was meant to keep the music industry from taking over the radio industry by simply refusing to license their music to certain radio stations (ones that didn't play ball, naturally). The U.S. Copyright Office sets the fees and revises them occasionally.

So the same idea was applied to webcasting music. In theory, this keeps the record companies from eliminating all-but-one or all-but-a-couple of the webcasters - anyone can webcast, you just have to pay the fee. However, if the record industry has too much influence over the process, they might try things like getting "compulsory license" fees set very high, or making sure that the record-keeping requirements are so onerous that it's impossible to comply with them.

In effect, this eliminates the "compulsory license" - because it's economically infeasible to comply with it. Webcasters can still seek individual licenses from the record companies, but this gets back to the original problem - the record companies have no obligation to make life easy for the nascent webcaster.

Comments

Great :^)

[Jeremi]

This is just the impetus Gnutella, Morpheus, Kazaa, and friends need to add anonymous peer-to-peer streaming support :^)

Re:Great :^)

[I Want GNU!]

I'm sorry to say this, as I like the idea of file sharing programs as much as the next guy, but they are usually used without any license at all and are illegal. The RIAA rips off both musicians and their fans, but pirating their music off these programs still rips off the musicians and is just plain wrong.

What we need is a system that rips off neither the musicians nor the fans, not one that promotes illegal activity (yes, there are rightful uses for file sharing programs, but usually they are for illegal music and software and movies, as can be seen by watching incoming searches).

Re:Great :^)

[TheAwfulTruth]

Stealing music is NOT a solution. It makes you just as immoral as they are. There ARE solutions. Try www.ampcast.com The more they tighten the screws the more they should be ignored. If enough people ignored them they'll dry up and float away. If not, screw their product! As an individual you CAN go elsewhere...

Re:Great :^)

[Jeremi]

What we need is a system that rips off neither the musicians nor the fans, not one that promotes illegal activity...

Well, maybe... or perhaps we need to redefine what "ripping off" means wrt "intellectual property".

I assert that the advent of cheap PCs on the the Internet changes what "natural rights" people ought to have. I believe that rights can and sometimes should change in response to changes in technology -- the Internet's great gift to humanity is that it makes data sharing as easy as speaking; that advantage outweighs the content producer's disadvantage of having to find a new business model to adapt.

Specifically, people ought to be able to copy any data they want at any time, as long as they are not benefitting commercially from that copying. As for the artists, I think systems like OpenCulture or FairTunes may be the best answer to their problems.

Re:Great :^)

[zangdesign]

By the way, just what in the hell is a "natural right"? I've seen that term popping up on /. more and more often, but no one has pointed out exactly what a "natural right" is.

I suspect that this is a term invented to cover those things that we think should be rights, but aren't listed in any document anywhere.

Last time I heard, the only rights we had (in the US) were those listed in the Bill of Rights (plus interpretations as according to various courts of law).

Can someone please inform the more ignorant of us what a "natural right" is and give some concrete examples so we know that you're not just blowing smoke up our asses?

[Specifically, people ought to be able to copy any data they want at any time, as long as they are not benefitting commercially from that copying]. Why? If I produce data, why shouldn't I get paid for the effort of assembling, collating, folding, spindling and mutilating it? These are the questions that plague me and no one seems to have a good answer.

Re:Great :^)

[the_2nd_coming]

well, the content providers of yor had a business because there was a need for some one to distribute the content.......well, as you said, the internet makes data sharing as easy as talking, woops....no more business modle.

Re:Great :^)

[Seanasy]

By the way, just what in the hell is a "natural right"?

Get an education. If you grew in the U.S.A. you need to go back to grade school and enroll in a Social Studies class.

Can someone please inform the more ignorant of us what a "natural right" is and give some concrete examples so we know that you're not just blowing smoke up our asses?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Sorry for the flame but you really are ignorant. The entire Bill of Rights (BoR) is based on the idea of natural rights. The BoR takes the idea of natural rights and codifies for practical use in a society.

See also:

• The Rights of the Colonists, Samuel Adams
• natural rights,The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.2001.

Re:Great :^)

[Lonath]

I assert that the advent of cheap PCs on the the Internet changes what "natural rights" people ought to have.

The "content" industry agrees with you. That's why they're trying to make computers illegal. =D

Re:Great :^)

[zangdesign]

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Rights (as I understand) are granted by a more powerful entity to a less-powerful entity. In other words, the government allows that people have certain rights to vote, assemble, speak, etc., but those rights can be retracted at any given time. Here in the US that would be problematic, at best. Other countries have more or less rights due to history and philosophy and it is easier to grant or deny those rights at will.

I view rights as a human construct, something we created to share power between government and the governed. Without a more powerful entity to grant rights to the lesser entity, those rights do not exist and we live in a state of anarchy. So I still don't buy the argument of natural rights.

Now, that power can be defined many ways. For instance, say I own land and you don't. I have a power that you don't, so I can grant you the right to use that land. This is not a natural right - it is a granted right that I allow you to exercise. And it only exists because I have something that you don't.

So, I have a little better understanding of "natural rights" now, you asshole, but I still don't buy it.

Re:Great :^)

[Seanasy]

First off I apologize for the flame, nothing personal. I just get frutrated when people really don't understand some of the basics tenets that this country was founded on. I really want you to understand...

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Rights (as I understand) are granted by a more powerful entity to a less-powerful entity.

You understand incorrectly if you're referring to the political system of the U.S.A. If it's your opinion that that's what rights should be then fine.

In other words, the government allows that people have certain rights to vote, assemble, speak, etc., but those rights can be retracted at any given time.

Go back to the quote "We hold these truths to be self-evident etc." The rights exist in the first place. The government is given permission by the people to restrict rights under certain circumstances. The government get its rights from the people not the other way around. This is the foundation of our form of government. Read the Bill of Rights. It doesn't grant rights to the people it sets limits on the government ensuring the rights of the people -- the rights that exist naturally. Those rights cannot be retracted at any time. The government has to have a damn good reason to deny anyone their rights.

I view rights as a human construct, something we created to share power between government and the governed. Without a more powerful entity to grant rights to the lesser entity, those rights do not exist and we live in a state of anarchy. So I still don't buy the argument of natural rights.

You are entitled to your own view of rights. But, this country, its Constitution and laws are based on the concept of natural rights. That's not my opinion, it's historical fact.

Your original post questioned whether people were "blowing smoke up your ass" with the term natural rights. They weren't. It is a well established political philosophy that is the backbone of this nation and many others.

So, I have a little better understanding of "natural rights" now, you asshole, but I still don't buy it.

I encourage you to read up on John Locke to get a better understanding of natural rights.

Re:Great :^)

[Seanasy]

Unfortunately, even the Founders and authors of the Constitution did not fully understand what rights were. They said that people were "endowed by their Creator" with rights, but I don't even think they meant this, precisely.

Being theists (of some variation) they believed that man was created by God and that by nature of that creation -- by nature of being a man -- they had rights.

They had a very clear understanding of what rights are, they believed in natural rights. And, no, they were not all theists. I believe they used the term Creator because it doesn't necessarily imply a god let alone a specific god.

If they were to generalize further, they would have realized that man has rights b/c rights are what he requires to exist, thus to live, thus to think, thus to own property, thus to be free from coersion.

They did. This is the idea behind natural rights.

People still don't realize this today. They think people have rights to the minds of others. They think that groups of people have rights (only individuals have rights). They think people have economic rights (your "right" to a job or to health care can only negate the individual rights of those who provide you a job or a health care). And if politicians think that we have a right to health care b/c we pay taxes, then that isn't a right, it's a purchased service.

I mostly agree with you here.

Owners of music have the right to sell their music to whomever they want, under any license they want. If people don't buy their music for any reason, owners are free to change the price or license restrictions. A music consumer has no rights to that music except to listen to it, to use or destroy the medium he may have bought with it (e.g., a CD), and to do anything else his license permits him. An owner of some music has every right to say whom he will allow to rebroadcast his music and under what terms. If he allows no one to broadcast it, then he will receive no royalties. Simple as that. It is only a matter of value-for-value trade.

See, here's the problem. Copyright isn't about what consumers can do with someone else's right. Creators of a copyrightable work do not naturally have any special rights to that work. Let me stress that:


Creators of a copyrightable work do not naturally have any special rights to that work.

Special rights (copyright) are granted to them through a social contract (i.e. a law). In other words, we (you, me and everybody else in this country) agree that it is of benefit to society to grant copyrights to creators of certain works in order to foster that type of work. Copyrights can be taken away, sold or thrown out. The (natural) right to life, for example, can't be taken away (murder), sold (slavery) or thrown out (suicide).

All of the rights that you list for an owner of a piece of music are rights that have been granted him by his fellow man. We, as a society, can decide he shouldn't get any special rights to that music.

Companies, not creators of copyrightable works, are abusing the copyright system for monetary gain and noone is doing anything to stop them. It's time to rework the copyright laws of this country.

Lets not forget

[cr@ckwhore]

Lets not forget that radio was the ultimate source of creation of the RIAA. I'm sick of hearing about this crap. Streaming audio, and other forms of audio delivery over the internet, is the future of broadcasting. The quality isn't too bad now, and is going to get better over time as the technology improves, just as radio did in its distant past. I'm finally convinced that the RIAA is nothing but a roadblock on the highway of progress.

Will somebody please move these retards out of the way, so we can finally move along?

Re:Lets not forget

[I Want GNU!]

Unfortunately, it is difficult for the end user to do so, since it isn't their work being ripped off. The artists must stand strong and united and say, "Hey! We made that music, and we don't like how you are restricting it! Why don't we just go and start our own association, one that doesn't put silly restrictions on things and prevent us from getting the fair end of the deal! It's time for the RIAA to stop taking advantage of us, the musicians, and our fans!"

Re:Lets not forget

[Dyolf Knip]

The very concept of an R&D department for a company is odd; "Let's spend money so as to make our current products and procedures obsolete, and then have to spend more money changing the equipment and retraining the employees."

But it never ceases to amaze me the gaping difference between companies like Intel and even Microsoft, whose existence practically centers around the obsolecence of their old products, and the member companies of the RIAA, who not only aren't interested in R&D but rather employ a large and expensive workforce, their lawyers, to try and maintain the technological status quo. An Anti-R&D, you might call it.

Civil Disobedience, anyone?

[xee]

I'm enjoying this opportunity to get a near-first post to voice my opinion about a topic i hold very near and dear to my heart. It's right there next to my American pride, and my severe freedom-loving disorder.

I think we should not be *discouraged* by this rediculous legislation. The RIAA will continue to trampel our rights to speech and expression as long as they are able to go after every single offender of these new laws. Once we achieve a critical mass greater than their lawyers can handle, they will no longer have the ability to force this legislation onto us.

This strategy of disregard for the American Way will stand as long as there are enough sheep out there buying every product the RIAA supplies them with.

The RIAA is amazingly better than Microsoft at manipulating the public. Not only is the RIAA trampeling our rights with this legislation, but they are raising our children to appreciate tasteless music. Once the youth of America grows up with no taste or preference for music, movies, or art, they will have no cause to stand up for their rights. There will be no reason to fight for the right to broadcast the music they like simply because they will have been trained to not like any particular music. There will be no impetus for creative expression once there is no example of creative expression.

The RIAA must be boycotted on a large scale. Do not buy your children the newest pop-craze. Do not pay royaltees for what is explicitly allowed in the copyright law. Do not succumb to the legislation that seeks to revoke and repeal the rights granted to us by the framers of the constitution.

Since everyone is on the terrorist bandwagon, i'd like to point something out: legislation of this sort (including the DMCA et al) is perhaps more anti-American than any terrorist organization could ever hope to be. While the terrorists are trying to fuck up our system from the outside, corporate interest is SUCCESSFULLY fucking it up from the inside.

THE RIAA IS CAUSING MORE HARM TO THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE THAN ANY TERRORIST ORGANIZATION COULD EVER DREAM TO.

This all begs the question: if Osama bin Laden is so rich, why doesn't he just hire a few lobbyists. It seems to work pretty well for the RIAA, MPAA, and others.

Re:Civil Disobedience, anyone?

[wfrp01]

Once we achieve a critical mass greater than their lawyers can handle, they will no longer have the ability to force this legislation onto us.

I wish I could agree, but I don't. You could apply that argument to anything that (rightly or wrongly) defines a crime. The threat of possible consequences might prevent this critical mass from appearing. I think that's why these cretins are pushing this agenda - they want to get in front of what will otherwise be an unstoppable juggernaut.

And come on now, the law is the law! That's why nobody ever commits fellatio in Missouri.

Re:Civil Disobedience, anyone?

[poot_rootbeer]

they are raising our children to appreciate
tasteless music.

Like hell they are. They're simply trying to make as much money as possible. And what they're doing today is no different than what they have ever done -- if it's not Britney Spears, then it's Nirvana, or Michael Jackson, or KISS, or the Beatles, or Elvis Presley, or Frankie Valli.

they will have been trained to not like any
particular music. There will be no impetus for
creative expression once there is no example of
creative expression.

I wasn't aware it was the RIAA's duty to provide any of that. You want to expose your kids to creative expression? TAKE THEM TO A DAMN ART GALLERY. Or a concert hall, or an independent film festival, or whatever. Don't rely on media profiteers to teach your kids culture.

THE RIAA IS CAUSING MORE HARM TO THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE THAN ANY TERRORIST ORGANIZATION COULD
EVER DREAM TO.

Absurd. Even putting aside the fact that terrorists have caused and will continue you to cause more people to DIE than the RIAA ever will, your statement is utterly absurd.

If your idea of "the American way of life" involves nothing more than being able to make fair-use copies of the music you buy, you might have a point. But look at all the IMPORTANT civil liberties that our own goverment is trying to reduce, in DIRECT reaction to terrorist activity.

Bah.

Re:Civil Disobedience, anyone?

[xee]

Well...
You can agree. Here's how... This juggernaut (good word, btw) will exist if the sheep are not enlightened. RIAA is attempting to oppress in just the same way as many third-world dictators are. The sheep see the sacraficial lamb, and get scared. This kinda goes on a tangent from the issue, but is relevant nonetheless. You're absolutely right: the threats of legal action will intimidate many sheep into complacancy. This is inevitable. I did not expect my call to action to awaken every single person who read it; only a few.

Also, while i do like your fellatio-in-Missouri example, it hardly compares to a radio broadcast. Fellatio is (usually) performed in private, however, a radio broadcast is -- by its very nature -- a public performance. It's easy to stay under the radar getting BJs in your own home, car, or alley, but such a low-key radio broadcast kinda defeats its own purpose. And yeah, there's lots of public fellatio jokes to be made here.

Re:Civil Disobedience, anyone?

[xee]

My argument is that a critical mass exists where the amount of civil disobedience will show that it is not a few criminals breaking the law, but the American public voicing its opinion through its actions.

Civil Disobedience is just that: civil. Criminal disobedience is something else entirely.

As I remember it (from just a couple years ago), this kinda thing was covered in high school social studies classes. And i went to a pretty bad high school. Sometimes I get the impression that /.ers just aren't thinking anymore.

Re:Civil Disobedience, anyone?

[xee]

You make a couple good points, but it's hard to find them in all the crap. :P just kidding.

I concede that the RIAA isn't killing anyone. This has been pointed out in another reply. Again, I stand corrected.

As for your creative interpretation of my argument: that I am somehow saying that it is the RIAA's responsibility to give my kids some culture... As with many other counter-arguments that people have made to this thread, you are drawing invalid conclusions -- you create a point and then argue with it as if it was my point. And again, i never said that a Commercial Success == crappy music. You did. I said that the RIAA is trying to push rather bland music into the Top 40s in the apparant hope of quelling a childs taste for music. Things are not as black and white (yeah, there's different levels of black-and-whiteness) as your argument requires. Your argument would have it that the RIAA either DOES or DOES NOT raise the children. This is so false. In fact, it's beyond false. It's rediculous. The RIAA does not raise the children. BUT then again, neither do the parents. It has been demonstrated time and again that children learn from all stimuli they are exposed to. The RIAA, in their push toward a bland Top 40, is doing all they can to keep a childs exposure to music as bland and uniform as possible. I know this is a difficult concept to explain, and probably even more difficult to understand.

Absurd requirements

[mochan_s]

Requirements

A) The name of the service
B) The channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station id)
C) The type of program (Archived/Looped/Live)
D) Date of Transmission
E) Time of Transmission
F) Time zone of origination of Transmission
G) Numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program
H) Duration of transmission (to nearest second)
I) Sound Recording Title
J) The ISRC code of the recording
K) The release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case of compilation albums, the release year of the album and copyright date of the track
L) Featured recording artist
M) Retail album title
N) The recording Label
O) The UPC code of the retail album
P) The catalog number
Q) The copyright owner information
R) The musical genre of the channel or program (station format)

Jeez. That's going to need new databases for radio stations.
At least I don't have to call in to ask what song they were just playing. I'll even get the UPC code and the album name and copyright owner information right there.


And a listener's log listing:
1) The name of the service or entity
2) The channel or program
3) the date and time that the user logged in (the user's timezone)
4) the date and time that the user logged out (the user's timezone)
5) The time zone where the signal was received (user)
6) Unique User identifier
7) The country in which the user received the transmissions

I'm sure they put on the unique user identifier in there just in case someone actually implemented all the others to comply.

Re:Absurd requirements

[thumbtack]

This is still under consideration and the commnet period is still open on the conditions and infor gatered. The problem is you will find musicians back this as they want an accurate accounting which up to now has been done from sampling, which favors the "Big Name" musicians, but does nothing for the little guy..in fact he might get left out all together...

Re:Absurd requirements

[Smack]

Or you could just make the people create accounts and ask them the geographic stuff instead of using geolocation. That would give you the UUID as well. Not anonymous, but no worse than slashdot.

Re:Absurd requirements

[Bryan Andersen]

This unique user ID can be attacked. The same reasonings behind not allowing disclosure of video and book loands can also be used to squelch this unique listener ID number.

On a side note:

Sombody needs to write an app that randomizes the content of these cookies that are being sent to M$. At boot and periodically there after it goes, finds and randomizes all the cookie values. Every 15 minutes would be a good time cycle. If it could hook it's self into app launch it wouldn't need to change what is on the disk. The paterns to look for in memory can be located on disk from the configuration files of the apps.

Look for all the methods one might possibly use to make the collected data worthless, or attack the collection of the data. It is your duty to yell and complain when companies cross your comfort threshold.

Re:Absurd requirements

[Technician]

Remember, a requirement is to prevent recording of the material by the end user. You will be required to encrypt your transmission to match the user key. There will be no multicast, recording etc. Check out the latest on the Microsoft Music Service. The player is free. It needs registered and is tied to the hardware it is installed onto. It can be installed into up to 4 devices that can play the same recording (desktop, laptop, pocket PC etc.) The recording will not work on any other device. Look it up. Read it and weep. It will not be webcast any other way. I did not download the free player. The registration requires a passport account. (Duh!) With it they will know where you are, who you are, and any borrowed music not directly D/L'ed from them (shared D/L) will not work.

Re:BMI and stuff

[xonker]

Well, if they aren't paying ASCAP and BMI, then the webcasters are obviously in violation of the copyrights of the record companies.

Yes, they should have to pay the same fees that radio stations do -- but to make them jump through hoops that radio broadcasters do not have to jump through -- including logging each user, every song/program and such is ridiculous.

It costs a hell of a lot more to put up radio towers and pay for a studio and hosts than it does to load up a couple of servers and stream data.

Yes, this is very true. Still, there's no excuse for the restrictions that they're trying to impose on Internet broadcasters.

Radio stations only have to provide playlist information a few days a year (used to mete out royalties collected by ASCAP and BMI to artists) -- they do not have to provide information about every single song they play and they are certainly not responsible for reporting who might be listening to the stations.

These guys are going to be some of the first up against the wall when the revolution comes...

Seems fair ...

[rlp]

And I'm sure that the labels will forward at least 0.000000000000001% of any Webcast fees to the artist. Hell, they earned it!

What were the old fees?

[Wesley Felter]

I remember that statutory licensing was set up a while ago; why is it being changed? What were the old fees? Or are those fees for something different?

Re:What were the old fees?

[thumbtack]

These are the old fees.. the recording industry and webcasters couldn't agree, so it went to abitration. The fees are retro active until 1998 when the law was passed and must be paid within 20 days of the approval of the rates. You're going to see a lot of Webcasters disappear faster than you can type /.

This is so crazy

[FakePlasticDubya]

This is outrageous. I am the manager of a non-commercial station at a High School, and we just recently began netcasting. We already pay over $3000 a year in license fees to play music on the normal airwaves. Now we have to pay even more to play the same music over the internet? I don't understand, either we have a license to play it or not...

And anyway, how is it that we have to pay large fees to promote their music? We are non-commercial, we get nothing out of it! What is going on? A long time ago, there was the whole "Payola" scandal where the record companies paid stations to play certain records. Now it's the other way around? This is insane. We will have to stop netcasting because of this, and that makes me so angry.

Re:This is so crazy

[jmu1]

Well, asside from the absurd reality of the whole situation that is being thrust upon us by those with large sums of money more than we could ever have... why the hell are you wasting taxpayer's money on a HighSchool radio station? $3000? That could be used to get some better textbooks, hell anything! Tutorial materials for students who are not doing that great in different subjects, something other than this blatant misappropriation of the taxpayer's money.

Re:This is so crazy

[Aexia]

I'm sure $3000 is a pittance compared to the sports budget.

Re:This is so crazy

[Technician]

You can netcast. You just can't use someone elses IP without paying royalties. Do talk shows. Create your own content. Do call in shows. Get the students involved in the community. Use local talent. Record the student choir doing irish folk songs that are now public domain. Build a library. It can be done and is good for the students who are working on broadcasting. Subscribe to UPI and AP and do your own news.

Re:This is so crazy

[jmu1]

No, I do not think that all of the money poured into sports has a place. And I don't think that the school system should pay for the band either(I was a band student in a system that over one third of the money for the school went directly to us). I recieved a very substandard education and susbsequently was quite far behind when I went to university, I never graduated, now I work for the university... I do what I can to reduce costs, however there is an interesting cycle there: If you economise in any form or fashion, you don't get the money when you need it most. So, we spend spend spend at the behest of our bosses. If you leave the job, there will be one more greedy bastard to take your place. The long and the short of it is this: taxes should not be spent in education at all. You should educate your child, not the state. The state should only worry about the outside forces that we cannot protect against(which it so very recently proved it was not capable of). I don't have kids and shouldn't pay for someone else's kid(who by the way smokes smack and doesn't give two shits if he does anything with his life). Screw them, let them pay.

Just an example

[baka_boy]

My old school had a campus radio station, and about 1200 students. Last I heard, they were considering an on-campus-only webcast of the radio broadcast (since the signal was to weak to reach many parts of campus, especially the many "basement" work and rec rooms). So, assuming even 10% listenership, and the cheapest licensing schedule (for non-CPB-funded "public" stations) their fees would look something like this:

120 "listeners" * 18hr./day programming * 12 "performances"/hr. * $0.02/"performance" ==> $518.40/day.

That's right, folks, a college radio station with just over a hundred listeners could reasonably pay over $500 per day just for the privilege of putting their broadcast on the web.

Ain't (lobbyist-directed) beurocracy grand?

Re:Just an example

[The Fanfan]

You have your math wrong by 2 orders of magnitude. The proposed rate is 0.02c per performance, not $0.02 (that is 2c). So :

120 listeners * 18 hrs/day * 12 perfs/hr = 25920 perfs/day. = $5.184 /day.>br>

Not so outrageous. It still adds up to nearly $2.000 a year though...

What's really outrageous is the very idea of paying anything to the RIAA mob knowing where's the money actually goes. Beats me...

Do humanity a favor. Eat a RIAA lobbyist for breakfast.

Re:Just an example

[AnotherBlackHat]

$0.02??? According to the fee schedule I saw it was 0.02 cents. That's $5.18/day, not $518.40

What am I missing?

Re:Just an example

[donutello]

That's right, folks, a college radio station with just over a hundred listeners could reasonably pay over $500 per day just for the privilege of putting their broadcast on the web

Or they could *gasp* play something original instead of the same unadulterated crap that is licensed by the RIAA. I think it's a sad day when people proclaim that a radio station can't exist that can play something original and different.

Also, as another poster pointed out, the fee is 0.02 cents per performance - bringing the grand total to about $5.18/day.

Re:Just an example

[fishebulb]

the RIAA makes it a known fact they control %90 of the recording industry. The so called indie labels, owned by a larger company that is an RIAA member. There still is a lot of quality music out there, but it gets hard to find outside of RIAA (Mafia) world

Re:BMI and stuff

[Brian Knotts]

ASCAP and BMI collect royalties for music writers, not record companies.

Radio stations pay these royalties. However, radio stations do not pay these RIAA fees that they are trying to collect from webcasters.

A semi-well known Christian Slater Movie

[ebbomega]

I think in 1990, Christian Slater starred in a movie called Pump Up The Volume, in which he portrayed "Happy Hardon Harry", an introverted geek-boy by day, but a sexually charged authority-fighting anarchistic pirate Radio personality by night.

*SPOILER WARNING*

The FCC was called in after Harry got a letter from a kid who claimed he wanted to commit suicide. Harry calls up the kid, and talks with him, but doesn't do anything to push the kid away from killing himself. So, immediately after the phone call, the kid puts a gun against his head and pulls the trigger.

So parents of this small suburban community get in an uproar about this Hardon Harry character as he begins to expose the plots of a principal who is attempting to make her school the number one school by expelling all students with too low grades. The more he discovers, the more intent that the principal and faculty, as well as the parents and FCC, are on shutting down this pirate radio show and putting Harry in jail.

Once he is caught though, he announces to the kids (who have decided that the suburban repression of will they've been filtered through isn't necessary and have revolted against it) to keep the air alive, and make it theirs. The final shot is with the sound of dozens upon dozens of kids with their own pirate radio stations, reclaiming the "air" as theirs, just as he is thrown into the paddy-wagon and taken away by the FCC-charged police.

See the similarities? A friend of mine sets up a webcast so that we can listen to him spin some records from time to time, occasionally, when he has friends over, they have "geek-out music" sessions, where we get a whole bunch of music and just play around with it, and let our friends listen to it. Why? Why not!

So where do we draw the line? This isn't at all publicly advertised, so how in god's name do they intend on regulating this? It's going to simply blow up into a couple billion people setting up their own webcasts... it's like me setting up an ftp server off my cable connection so that my friends can get ahold of my MP3s.

Next thing you know, the companies will be forcing people to sign release forms every time they buy a CD making them promise they will never play these CDs for their friends, or loan out your tapes, DJs will have to pay royalties every time they play a club or whatever. I'll have to be charged a $5 cover every time I want to go over to a friend's house and play with his records. Soon, police will be handing out Copywrite-infringement violation tickets at house parties because the people throwing the party didn't secure the rights to the CDs.

The companies are burying themselves. It's going to get to the point that you're going to buy a CD and you won't be able to listen to it anyways because you don't own the rights to the CD. Soon it's going to get to a point where nobody is going to buy CDs ever again because they can't do anything with it. So the music companies are looking at their own elimination. Good job. Keep up the good work.

Re:A semi-well known Christian Slater Movie

[Sloppy]

So parents of this small suburban community get in an uproar about this Hardon Harry character as he begins to expose the plots of a principal who is attempting to make her school the number one school by expelling all students with too low grades. The more he discovers, the more intent that the principal and faculty, as well as the parents and FCC, are on shutting down this pirate radio show and putting Harry in jail.

[snip]

See the similarities? A friend of mine sets up a webcast so that we can listen to him spin some records from time to time, occasionally, when he has friends over, they have "geek-out music" sessions, where we get a whole bunch of music and just play around with it, and let our friends listen to it.

No, I don't see the similarities. In your movie example (I haven't seen the movie), it sounds like the heroic character is acting as a reporter and broadcasting information of his own, his own voice and his own experssion. It is his. In your webcast, it sounds like you're spinning someone else's record. If your webcast is your voice broadcasting news that you have researched, your opinions, etc. then there's not a damned thing the RIAA can do about it, and you don't have to fill out any forms or pay anyone.

Good Riddance, radio free rant.

[Erris]

Fine. Let the RIAA price their crap right off of the web. The last thing I want competing with pictures of my three month old daughter is a no save copy of a Lars drum lick. This will, hopefully, leave the big five music publishers further in the past and encourage more people to sign with independent studios and publishers like MP3.com sought to be. Let them rule their litle airwave monopolies, let their listnership decline to zero and let them all perish, but keep that shit off the web.

Re:Good Riddance, radio free rant.

[Lysander Luddite]

So what about the indies who can't afford the fees? Just screw them too, huh? Very constructive.

Re:Amen

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess America isn't a realy democrasy, it's more of a Corpcrasy (look ma, I made up a new word).

Three, in fact. And a couple new grammatical structures. Congrats!

Boycotting RIAA is good, but not the final solutio

[I Want GNU!]

Unfortunately, boycotting the RIAA does not work. Every little bit helps out, but they still make huge amounts of money through the mindless drones that go out and buy their "popular" music. Instead, we need to write every politician, news agency, and music label and protest the obscene actions of the RIAA. Through millions of voices, we will be heard.

Also, I must be forced to disagree with your comparison of the RIAA with terrorists. Terrorists kill people. The RIAA tramples over their rights but does not kill them. If it killed them, they could no longer to afford to buy the RIAA's music, depriving them of profits. ;-)

More than that...

[Danse]

500? That's the absolute minimum according to the rates they've proposed. If a station is simultaneously rebroadcasting via Internet an AM or FM broadcast, they pay $.07 per performance. I'm assuming this would be per song only, not per song, per user. That means if they play 10 songs an hour (seems about right, possibly a bit low) 365 days a year, they owe $6,132, plus 9% of that for the "Ephemeral License Fee", bringing the total to $6683.88. If they're not simultaneously rebroadcasting, then the cost doubles.

Re:the record companies

[TheAwfulTruth]

Uh, you mean like Ampcast? JavaMusic? and even (the now deteriorating) MP3.com? Or the thousands of indie labels and distributors like "Metropolis Records"? Yeah, I thought you did.

Golden Egg

[Alien54]

I don't know

I have this half formed thought, something about the idiot need to kill the goose that lays the golden egg because they are such a glutton for goose.

Some companies can be such idiots.

The buggy-whip makers are in charge of the auto in

[dpilot]

It's happened: The buggy-whip makers have been put in charge of the auto industry. Piece by piece, at the bequest of the old-guard publishing industries, our courts and legislators are killing the Internet and the promise it held.

Since 9/11, so many people have been quoting George Orwell's 1984. So for this circumstance, I'll have to choose a different quote from the same work, and adapt it:

"If there is hope, it must come from South America and India". (Substitute for Orwell's proles)

Say goodbye to college webcasts..

[thumbtack]

This hits the college stations and non-profits the hardest. Where dwindling budgets and volunteer help is the norm, many will just say that's it and pull the plug....One college station I'm familiar with has an annual budget of $30,000 dollars, total. They struggle everyday just to get by, and saw the internet as a way they could save money over maintaining expensive transmitters.

Re:Say goodbye to college webcasts..

[Sloppy]

If that college statement just broadcasts the same RIAA products as the megacorps themselves, then seriously, why should anyone give a damn whether they can afford this? Like the world really needs another radio station pushing Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit!

If the people at that college station really have something to say, then none of this stuff affects them anyway, since they'll either be the copyright owners, or they'll have the neighborhood bands' permissions.

Why not just plain old radio?

[Ryu2]

With all this crap to deal with, why not just listen to the good old analog radio?

Or will the RIAA get the US govt to ban that as well (like the banning of analog TV broadcast after 2010 (??)) ?

Re:Why not just plain old radio?

[Technician]

Shameless plug. North Country Radio has a very nice FM stereo synthesized transmitter kit that does this very nicely. Add a HAM 2 meter amplifier for the extra power if you want to break out of the milliwatt range. It may need retuned to the FM band. (check FCC first!) The link to the provider of the transmitter is here.
http://www.northcountryradio.com/

Move along without them

[Anonymous Coward]

I have setup a MS streaming audio server at my house, so I can listen to a radio station in Michigan where ever I am. You just plug in a radio to the audio in port, then use Real audio or MS streaming server to stream it out to your work computer or laptop whereever you are in the world.

Re:Hey, I've got an idea...

[TheAwfulTruth]

How about not buying the CD and not broadcasting it? Someone forcing you to buy that cd? Someone forcing you to broadcast it? How is it that you don't even see the other choices? Just ignore them and their product! Find other sources (They ARE out there if you look) If we want them to change a huge grass root movement of listeners is the ONLY possible solution.

Think about it, why are you even rebroadcasting their product anyway. Because it attracts listeners? So what? If your non profit, then that's hardly necessary. There is all kinds of alternative material out there. Buying a cd and playing it over and over really is the lazy, feed the monster's way out. Because they KNOW you'll buy it is how they've gotten their power. Take the power away. Don't buy, don't broadcast. (Your only advertising for the evil that much more).

so, what's in it for the artist?

[matman]

Maybe artists will realize that the record companies are preventing them from being heard. I personally tend to listen to net radio an hour a day at least... I listen to the on-air radio, well, when my alarm goes off. :) People who are into music, that make music, also tend to listen to music. If you alienate them, maybe they won't want to sign your contracts.

Letter I sent my station on campus

[bugg_superstar]

disclaimer: i edited the letter a bit for length. yes, i am a dj at the station. no, i'm not pimping us in any way ;-)

So the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel released their recommendations for how radio stations should pay if they stream over the internet. the actual release is here (http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fedreg/2002/67fr5761 .pdf). Of course, it's a tough read, so I'll sum it up for you guys, and provide relevant links at the bottom. These rules are *proposed*, and haven't gone into effect yet.

+per performance means "per song / per listener". That means every time one person hears one song, that's a performance. If 12 people listen to a webcast of 12 songs, that's 144 performances.

+epheremal recording means a backup copy of the same song to be used for streaming.

So according to these rules for webcasting, KBVR is a non-commercial broadcaster. We must pay $0.02 for every "performance". 9% of those performance fees will be added on as cost for an epheremal license fee.

So yeah....doesn't sound too bad, does it? Just wait...

Let's do a little math here. I'm assuming that 2.5% of the roughly 20,000 OSU students would listen to KBVR streaming over the internet. I don't even know the real number, so I'm just going to (hopefully) guess low. If any of you could give me better numbers, feel free.

500 listeners x 24 hours/day x 10 "performances" an hour x $0.02 per "performance" ===> $2400 A DAY. That comes out to roughly $875,000 A YEAR if we could webcast under the new rules.

For *each song* webcasted, KBVR would have to report the following information to the primary copyright holders (usually the record label, or to the individual band if you're cool like metallica and dr. dre):

A) The name of the service
B) The channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station ID)
C) The type of program (archived/looped/live)
D) Date of transmission
E) Time of transmission
F) Time zone of origination of transmission
G) Numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program
H) Duration of transmission (to nearest second)
I) Sound recording title
J) The ISRC code of the recording
K) The release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case of compilation albums, the release year of the album and copyright date of the track
L) Featured recording artist
M) Retail album title
N) The recording label
O) The UPC code of the retail album
P) The catalog number
Q) The copyright owner information
R) The musical genre of the channel or program (station format)

That's for EACH SONG WEBCASTED.

On top of that, we will have to provide the following information for *EVERY PERSON* who would listen to us over the internet:

1) The name of the service or entity
2) The channel or program
3) The date and time that the user logged in (the user's timezone)
4) The date and time that the user logged out (the user's timezone)
5) The time zone where the signal was received (user)
6) Unique user identifier
7) The country in which the user received the transmissions

These new proposed rules are pretty damn stupid. That's all I'm going to say.

Thanks for your time...

~steve

Re:Letter I sent my station on campus

[FakePlasticDubya]

Yeah, except you also made the same mistake I did. When I first read it, I thought it was two cents per performance also. However, upon closer inspection, it's actually only two tenths of a cent. That is more doable for us non-commercial stations, but it still is lame how me have to 1) buy the CD, then 2) pay a license to broadcast it, now 3) pay another license fee to netcast.

At least someone was awake...

[kubrick]

when they were choosing the acronym.

Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel

Guess it's better to be viewed as CARP than CRAP -- especially as Copyright Royalty Arbitration Panel makes a lot more syntactic sense (unless of course this panel is fully staffed by royalty :)

(ObTrivia: Speaking of acronyms, there are persistent rumours that the MLC (Methodist Ladies' College) in Melbourne, Australia (I'm in Adelaide) was going to change its name to Fitchett Uniting College, Kew. Apparently this suggested name spent several years being batted around committees before someone noticed the obvious :)

Re:At least someone was awake...

[pmc]

Likewise, City University of Newcastle upon Tyne was seriously proposed as a name of a new university in Newcastle.

Another was the company "Experts Exchange", who registered expertsexchange.com as their domain, much to the disappointment of any prospective transexuals who visited.

Re:Hey, I've got an idea...

[Waffle Iron]

How about not r(e)broadcasting anything that you don't own or is from someone that's doesn't want you to rebroadcast it? You don't own it, it wasn't given to you, don't touch it. How hard is that? Terms of contract unacceptable? Go somewhere else, or nowhere else. It's your descision, make it a responsible one.

RTFHeader. It's a compulsory license. You have a right to rebroadcast the music regardless of the owners' wishes.

The issue isn't dealing with the owners. It's dealing with the government who sets the compulsory rebroadcast licensing fees.

Re:BMI and stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone here is confusing various copyright issues:

A "SONG" that you hear on the radio consists of two separate components (1) a "composition" or the written music/lyrics/etc., and (2) a "sound recording" which is the band's recorded performance.

Ok, the rights in each, for traditional purposes (ie, broadcast radio) work like this:

(1) for the composition, there are "public performance" rights - you have to get a license in order to perform the composition to the public (ie, play it on the radio). Most copyright holders have agreed to let ASCAP/BMI handle these licenses and collect license fees.

(2) for the sound recording, there are no public performance rights, so the sound recording rights holder doesn't get money for airplay (and bar's, clubs, etc.).

Ok, the new law - it doesn't change the above for "traditional" performances, but does change it for digital performances via the internet, etc. (ie "webcasting"). The new law creates a public performance right for the sound recording. Ok, so you have to get a new license if you are a webcaster - from the sound recording rights holder. In other words you have to get the ASCAP/BMI license for the performance of the composition (nothing new, you always did), AND a license for the performance of the sound recording (new).

The new sound recording public performance right/license is subject to a "compulsory" license - ie, the record company (or whoever holds the sound recording rights) can't say no, but they are entitled to the statutory license (the rates in the article). If these rates are too high, of course, the effect is the same - they can say no by making it too expensive for anyone to ever actually do it.

All clear?

Just for some more legal fun, the other older "compulsory" license is different - it applies to the creation of copies of records (cd's, etc.) - in such a case, you would need the permission of both rights holders. This "compulsory" license fee is only for the composition, not the sound recroding. Of course the sound recording rights holder is usually the one making the copies, so it doesn't matter.

Everyone should offer their 2 cents!

[xFoz]

I just addressed and sent $0.02 to the address below. Also enclosed was a nicely worded note basically saying "No!"

Copyright Royalty Arbitration Panel (CRAP), P.O. Box 70977, Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0977.

Doesn't this violate European privacy laws?

[shoppa]

And a listener's log listing: 1) The name of the service or entity 2) The channel or program 3) the date and time that the user logged in (the user's timezone) 4) the date and time that the user logged out (the user's timezone) 5) The time zone where the signal was received (user) 6) Unique User identifier 7) The country in which the user received the transmissions

Don't most European countries already have internet privacy laws which protect users from many kinds of content logging?

What's worse...

[Danse]

I listen to Live365 and Shoutcast stations fairly often. Let's see what will happen to them:

This applies to a station with a medium-sized listener base.

(1000 listeners * 12 songs/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/yr * $.0014 Fee/performance) * 1.09 Ephemeral License Fee = $160,413.12/yr

OUCH!

There goes webcasting. Shoutcast and Live365 each have hundreds of stations. Maybe only 50 or so have a high volume of traffic, but any way you cut it, these rates will kill webcasting. But that's their intent of course, so it makes perfect sense.

Re:What's worse...

[Danse]

I didn't see any distinction made between individually run stations or any other webcaster. It looked like the rates for any webcast were the same. The only distinction was between those that simultaneously rebroadcast and those that don't. The fact that they aren't simultaneously rebroadcasting an AM/FM station doubles their rate.

Re:What's worse...

[Danse]

Live365 shows how many listening hours each station gets (actually it shows them as a range, kinda like 1-5 stars, with each star representing some number of users). Many stations have well over a thousand listeners at any given time. Many stations have over 10,000 listening hours a month. That's a lot of money they could end up paying if these rates go through.

I don't see what the hoo-hah is all about

[eldurbarn]

Copyright is a government backed monopoly meant to stimulate creativity, right?

So the RIAA is a big player, and now it's painting itself into a corner, creating a playing field where it's own chokehold on entertainment can drive the price of that entertainment high enough that, sooner or later, some other entity can enter and thrive by charging less (or nothing at all) for creative work that the RIAA has no rights to.

It looks to me that the logical conclusion of this particular idiocy is certainly in line with the original purpose behind granting copyright in the first place. The market will shake down and the RIAA will have realized that it's shot itself in the foot and will either have to backpedal furiously to regain lost market share or it will find itself out of a job.

This is bad, but it could actually be worse.

[Talsan]

At first glance, this sounds really bad, but it might not be enough to put all college stations off the air.

I run a small college station in Chicago with a school supplied budget of $4000/year. We scrape together a few other dollars, and the school does provide electricity and legal services for free, but it's still tight...

What I'm guessing the licensing companies will try to do is going to look like this:

$0.0002/per performance + $500 or 9% of the per performance cost, whichever is greater.

I would use these numbers to estimate the per year performances for us:

15 songs/hour * 30 people/song * 24 hours * 365 days * $0.0002 = $788.40

If this were all, we might be able to scrape together the extra funds, however we would have to add $1500 to that cost ($500 minimum fee to each of the 3 licensing companies). That's what's going to hurt us. That doesn't even take into account trying to report all that information... We don't have to deal with nearly that much information even when we're in a reporting weekend!

I contrast, we currently pay under $1000 per year for the licenses to play the music over the air.

But, I suppose there's still hope.

Patrick

Misinterpretation

[dantonioJr]

The amount in the tables is 0.07 cents ($0.0007) and 0.14 ($0.0014) cents, not $0.07 and $0.14 as most posters read it. This doesn't necessarily invalidate all the comments about the expense, but it puts things in a bit different perspective.

More Money Opportunities

[Lysander Luddite]

Charge for access for that information for 3rd party developers. Sure, you broadcasters could get it free from various sources, but its not practical. Enter a licensed database held by BMI, ASCAP, and the RIAA members. Suddenly, you can automate your streaming software to grab all the required info from the database. Something like Gracenote or FreeDB, but for streaming servers.

Now imagine what you'll need to pay for that info access. They get you coming and going.

Really, i believe most of these requirements can be easily overcome, but the Big Boys don't want to play fair.

SSM won't get a chance

[Krellan]

Well, that's it, folks. It's been nice having online radio while we could.

With these new regs, it will be the death knell of webcasting. Expect Live365 to fold within a month once these new regs take effect. Nullsoft Shoutcast and Spinner will hold on a little longer, as they are subsidized by AOL, but it too will disappear. The smaller independent stations? *poof*, as another poster put it! Considering the new fees are retroactive to 1998, if I were an online broadcaster, I'd be scrambling to dismantle my setup before they find me and send me the bill!

A shame this has to happen just when SSM, Source-Specific Multicast, was getting off the ground. Finally, an almost complete rearchitecturing of the failed Internet Multicast protocol. It addresses the two primary shortcomings of existing multicast -- address shortage and DoS attacks -- and looks like it actually could have worked.

To anyone who's watched developments in online radio technology, SSM is like nirvana. The Class D multicast address shortage is solved, by effectively using 64-bit addresses: a station's existing unicast IP address is simply concatenated with a multicast address in SSM's address range (232.x.x.x, equivalent to a big fat Class A!). And there's no central authority to go through, the station just simply chooses one of these address! This effectively gives the station the capability for 16 million channels (different SSM trees of listeners).

That's right, it's finally a tree! The many-to-many multicast model has been replaced with one-to-many. Formerly, a rogue client could simply inject data into the stream, and that data would be replicated to all other listeners. Not good. Since SSM is a tree, with the originating station at the root, this problem is solved. It will become much more difficult to "jam" a SSM station (a router close to the source would have to be hacked). With these two main problems solved, Internet multicasting would finally be good to go...!

It would have been a wonderful thing, had these new rules not been enacted. This new SSM protocol might have taken off, helping to alleviate the enourmous waste of bandwidth caused by having to repeatedly unicast the same stream to each individual listener.

Possibly the only good thing that can come out of this is more exposure for unsigned garage bands. If SSM helps to reduce the bandwidth cost of streaming, and the garage band owns their own copyrights (not a member of ASCAP/BMI/SESAC/RIAA), then it might be affordable for them to broadcast online....

Hmm

[Have Blue]

If this actually goes anywhere, what will it do to Apple's plans to force the MPEG-4 consortium to loosen their licensing terms?

Out by 100.

[nick_davison]

120 "listeners" * 18hr./day programming * 12 "performances"/hr. * $0.02/"performance" ==> $518.40/day.

That's right, folks, a college radio station with just over a hundred listeners could reasonably pay over $500 per day just for the privilege of putting their broadcast on the web.

Actually, the price is 0.02c not $0.02 That makes a factor of 100 difference. So the college radio would really only be paying about five bucks a day for such a small audience. Sell about a thousand dollars of advertising to your local Pizza Hut and to Nike and you've got a full year's coverage.

(I may be wrong, I'm English but I just got my American wife to check and she tells me I'm reading US currency correctly.)

So let me make sure I understand this, RIAA/gov:

[Scoria]

I pay you and my ISP exorbitant amounts of money (for licensing and bandwidth, respectively) so that I'm given the privilege of publicizing your artists.

Not to mention, the "license to license" alone costs $500 yearly. The RIAA is manipulating our government so that they can prevent the general population from innovating, broadcasting, or even listening to stations not influenced by them. An example of these unfair regulations restricting the masses is a project of mine called laconica [sic] (it will soon have a web page further detailing it here; initialized.org's development is behind schedule). Conceptually, it allows the listeners to control the stream by vote, comment on the music, create their own playlists (if the playlist is voted high enough, it begins streaming the next hour), and even upload their own music.

Considering the fact that initialized is not for profit and we'd still pay for bandwidth by the gigabyte *after* the RIAA fees, our own laconica stream will most likely fail to become a reality. (We still plan to continue developing and release the software as open source, though.)

File a comment that will help a future lawsuit

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

I see lots of people pointing out why this isn't fair or just won't work. Well, there is a comment period here, so file comments. No, I'm not niave enough to think that this will get turned around because of a few comments, but what these comments will do is lay the supporting groundwork for the inevitable lawsuits that will follow the implementation of the rules. What these suits will allege is that these rules are impossible to follow and/or that they are crafted to force Webcasters off the air. So if you believe that, file a comment. Take the rules, one by one, and explain the problem with each of them. No opinions, just facts. If you believe that the rules are impossible to implement, lay out the reasons. If you think they are financially destructive, use hard numbers. If you want to argue that the rules go above and beyond what the underlying law requires, spell it out, point for point. Remember, there will be lawsuits over this, and these comments will be used in court.

a glimmer of hope, if only for edu/pbs

[darkphyber]

In reading a section of the copyright law (17 U.S.C Section 114) there is a provision that would seem to exempt educational stations & public broadcasting stations from these fees.

"The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clauses (1), (2), and (3) of section 106 do not apply to sound recordings included in educational television and radio programs (as defined in section 397 of title 47) distributed or transmitted by or through public broadcasting entities (as defined by section 118(g)): Provided, That copies or phonorecords of said programs are not commercially distributed by or through public broadcasting entities to the general public."

http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/92chap1.htm l# 114

It still doesn't help other stations, but at least it's a start..

Exce-fucking-llent! Ha ha ha ha ha!

[gnovos]

Q. So the end result of this regulation will be?

A. The next generation of "radio" (broadband wireless webcasting) playing nothing but independant bands and singers without recording contacts.

Q. And the result of THIS?

A. The RIAA will slowly and painfull starve to death and go out of business as it's bands become relgated into obscurity.

There was a great story I was told when I was akid about King Midas who loved gold. He loved it so much that he was granted his one and only wish, that everything he touched would turn to gold... He had a wonderful time turning things into gold, but when dinner time cam around, he suddenly discovered that he couldn't eat without turning the food to gold. He couldn't eat, he couldn't drink, and even his own beautiful daughter was turned to gold.

If the RIAA members were human beings, you know the kind with mothers and fathers, not the kind decanted in tubes, they would have been told this story as children. They would realize that the stronger thier grip on the music, the more they lose it. The crueler they are to thier arch-nemisis, thier customers, the poorer they will be.

Cheer on legislation like this! This is the beginning of the end for them.

Is this license fee payable to independents?

[ikekrull]

If this law is passed, doesn't this mean that if I, Joe Average, mix up a couple of tracks and find some webcasters playing my tracks, that I can extract money from them?

How do I go about doing that, and if the state is deputizing the RIAA to be their tax-collectors (conveniently only collecting taxes for their clients), then this really stinks.

What this should mean is that artists would be able to release music independently from any specific label and get paid if their material is played.

Personally, I think that if this law to to be fairly and equitably applied to the majority of the copyright-holders in the country, then some type of government-funded independent registry should be maintained where artists interested in deriving income from webcasted tracks must register them with at no charge.

A percentage of the money could be taken by the governement to cover the costs of running the registry.

Radio stations would then check the single, unified list, and credit the appropriate account.

Yes, it could be a goddamn big list, but thats the price you pay for a fair and just law.

Payments would be held by the government for the period that copyright lasts (however long that might be), and the artist, upon providing appropriate identification, could collect the money.

This would not preclude the RIAA from extracting revenue from their artists web-play, but would help to ensure that all copyright-holders, not just those financed by the RIAA to benefit.

I mean, how is this supposed to work otherwise?

Am I, a guy with not much more than a guitar to his name, going to be able to afford a lawyer to sue the radio stations? Thats ridiculous.

This law promotes the efforts of a tiny percentage of copyright-holders and does nothing to promote the creation of new works (unless they are on RIAA labels).

Is this governement by the people, for the people?

Because it sounds like government by the RIAA for the RIAA.

Aren't there alternatives?

[gotan]

I mean, there's a lot of music that is not under control of the big labels, some of it even entirely free like some of the "Open Music" project, but maybe also local Bands you can work out a special contract for (many will be happy for the promotion). Yeah, it's not Britney Spears, and it takes some research to get what you want (you can't play the Hitlists). Also it obviously wouldn't work for any station to compose their entire program out of it, but it would help nevertheless, even if it makes up only part of the program. Also it would create a way for Artists to get known without becoming a slave of the RIAA.

I can see some advantages of this system for the price of a little work (finding music of that kind, but once that is done you could exchange information with others who did similar work), the main one being, to take some power out of the hands of the big lables by creating alternative ways for artists and their audience to find each other. And as a nice side effect the station can reduce some costs.

So what am i missing?
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You seem to have missed the point...

[ebbomega]

Actually, another big portion of the movie is him playing a lot of controversial banned music... another reason the FCC is trying to track him down.

But moreso, the point here is that the reaction is the same... the more that they try to clamp down on something that is inevitable, the more it's going to sift right through their fingers.

They can't clamp down on webcasts on the sole basis that they're too many and they're too small to be able to get them all. In an informational and technical sense, it's like trying to impose regulation on web pages. The point is that the more they use conventional means to find these sights, the more unconventional means the webcasters will use, and the less they'll be able to control.

When they attack something that isn't centralised (like filesharing) all they serve is decentralisation of whatever it is they think they know. Look at Napster. Right after its uselessness was shown, there were a least half a dozen clones ready to take its place (Gnutella, Audiogalaxy, Limewire, Hotline, Kazaa, Morpheous, etc.)

What happens when they clamp down on these ones?

The thing is if they try to do it the same with webcasts, they're going to be insane if they think they can control them. All they'll result in shutting down major free webcasts is in spawning a lot more minor free webcasts that will be harder to combat.

They asked for it

[Jebediah21]

If this has the effect the RIAA wants then I say fine.* If the RIAA kills NetStations I won't have any easy way to hear music without buying it first (which is what they want), or jumping through the hoops of finding a song on IRC or OpenNap. When that happens I'm going Southeast Asia on the RIAA. Yes, I will run a pirating ring in my spare time. I'm fucking fed up with the bullshit they feed us. If they're going to take the law into their own hands so will I. And if by some odd chance KNAC.com or SnakeNet Metal Radio go down then it's full out war.

How much damage can I do to the RIAA before getting caught is the real question. One person may not make the RIAA notice, but imagine how much pirated music you could give away to a campus full of college aged kids. Let's see...
100 CD-R's == $30
1 CD-R MP3's ~~ 100 songs || 10 Albums
So with $30 and some time I can seed quite a number of people with quite a few MP3's. The only restriction? Share the music with others.

I think your mistaken

[wizarddc]

It's the Copyright Royalty Arbitration Panel.

Re:Scoring: Viva La Revolution!

[xee]

Ouch. That's a sticky situation. Although i'm not sure of the exact stipulations, i know there are some limits to fair-use when you limit your audience to a specific membership. For example, as I understand the law, private libraries are not allowed fair-use protection.

Re:BMI and stuff

[Bryan Andersen]

This logging and reporting can be attacked. The same reasonings behind the law that protects one from having one's book and video lending records from being exposed can be used to attack these logging requirements.

Re:Absurd requirements & Microsoft

[Technician]

The webcaster requirements can be most easly be met by Microsoft. Add the fact that end user recording is disabled in Microsoft software, the XP registration for location, and secure media player for tracking your billing. It will be simple to tie into your passport account and bill your charge card. Do you have your passport account yet? Microsoft will be the only one permitted to stream music as they are the only one that can meet the secure media path to guarantee you can pay to listen, but not record. Nobody else will have the clout to get the record companies to license the material for streaming. There will be no price competition. It will cost you more to compete.