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Copyright Office Rejects CARP Recommendations
dave-fu writes "This just in: webcasters can breathe a sigh of relief as common sense and good taste has won out over stuffed suits and greased pockets--CARP has been rejected. If you weren't aware of it, CARP would have imposed exorbitant fees on webcasters, effectively killing webcasting radiostations, or at least preventing them from playing all (American) copyrighted music." See our previous story, or saveinternetradio.org, or read through the Copyright Office page linked above for background information. I wouldn't rejoice just yet - while webcasters argued that the proposed rates were way too high, the RIAA argued that they were way too low. There will still be royalty rates set by the Copyright Office, and the final rates may not be anything to cheer about.
This is an air of relief for our college radiostation, because for a long time Internet has been our primary broadcasting medium. We were getting ready to find ways to recover our outreach, if our Internet outlet was cut off by CARP's rates.
We don't get too wide of a listening audience (compared to your average commercial webcaster), but it's still important that Internet maintains a wide variety of webcasters.
Note the article says that the final decision is to be made on June 20, so it's not over yet. We have put up flyers and a notice on our web page about the rates, but it's been difficult to raise awareness to this issue: most people just don't care.
(sorry, anon at work..)
Webcasters want the same rates as normal broadcasters. That is, they pay a percentage of gross sales.
So, if an Internet radio station has sales of zero, then they pay zero. If they have gross sales of a million bucks, then they pay the same fee as broadcasters that have gross sales of 5 million dollars.
This is definitely good news. At least it proves that the copyright office won't be easily swayed by the RIAA's demands. As far as the whole independent music thing goes, i believe it's a very good thing for independent music.. in the longrun that is. The bad thing is that if the approved rates are outrageous, the only stations that will be able to afford them are the ones backed by big companies such as broadcast.com and spinner.. etc. which is pretty much the same thing that happened to FM radio with monsters like clearchannel buying out all the small stations. They're the reason why there's 5 cookie-cutter station formats around the country. The good thing is that maybe this is a wake-up call to artists/labels and independent stations/media. Maybe it's finally time to move away from cookie-cutter programming and pay attention to independent labels and artists.. We've already made a big move with the Internet by overcoming the RIAA's monopoly with distributors, and college/internet stations have always done it to a certain extent.. True, at first listeners might not pay attention to it. But give it a few years.. This is only the beginning.
>>there needs to be some form of payment for commercial internet radio stations to some degree. Otherwise this would give the internet radio stations and advantage over the normal stations
And how's that? I can't get internet radio in my car. I only listen to the radio at home for very specific programs (prairie home companion, car talk...).
I use internet radio when I'm buried in a building with bad reception and I have something specific I want to listen to (9/11 coverage) or when I am looking for a very specific genre.
Do air-wave radio stations track the number of listeners at any particular time? Not that I know of.
During Diane Rehm's show yesterday, the riaa said they would go lower on licensing costs if they 'liked' the radio station. Because of that comment, I now feel the riaa wants these high music tariffs so they can use them as payola. If you play music they like, they drop your costs (possibly to 0), but if they don't, you pay the way-to-much amount and are forced out of business.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander....if internet radio must pay fees, they must be equal to those paid my commercial stations _without_ enronaccounting (formerly known as payola).
kurthanson.com is the homepage for the Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN), a fine spot for up-to-date information on what's going on in the world of webcasting.
Found both of these links at WFMU, aka numero uno webcasting radio station in the world.
Gotta love the fact that the RIAA wants to see that webcasters pay fees on top of the ASCAP/BMI fees that "real" radio stations do without getting any of the payola.
At any rate, it'll be interesting to see what the Librarian of Congress does in the next 30 days.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Here is a Newsbytes story on the ruling. A little bit more hard-news information about the decision and its likely impact.
modern choral music...