Webcaster Alliance Threatens To Sue RIAA

detroitindustrial writes "The Washington Post reports that the Webcaster Alliance is threatening to sue the RIAA under the Sherman Antitrust Act. In their letter to the RIAA, the Webcaster Alliance alleges that the RIAA and the Voice of Webcasters negotiated in collusion and, 'were apparently intent on either eliminating their competitors and/or raising barriers to entry in the market for small commercial webcasting.' It goes on to say that the RIAA also wanted to eliminate smaller webcasters, who tend to play more independent material, in order to maintain their monopoly on music distribution."

Comments

RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Music

[Khakionion]

It's about time. The subject line refers to an article on The Onion about RIAA's intolerance for FM radio stations giving away music. Unfortunately, it is a very real problem here on the Internet. Hopefully this, in conjunction with the backlash noted on The Register today (it's on Slashdot's "Register" sidebar), even Joe Sixpack will wake up to the RIAA's ridiculous behavior.

Re:RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Music

[spiritraveller]

It's true though, radio stations do have to pay for the music they play. And not just for the recording either. They also have to license the words of the song and the notes of the music...

And they probably pay a lot more than $2000 a year...

This sucks for commercial-free internet radio.

Bout Time

[Izago909]

It's about damn time. They should have been stopped when they extorted royalties from webcasters who would never play any pop filth that they 'represent'. Why should someone have to pay royalties to a body that doesn't hold any of the rights to the content that's being played?

SomaFM forever!!

Re:Bout Time

[Qzukk]

Can you substantiate this claim?

Easily done. The law that enforces the royalties on streaming music (originally CARP, now the Small Webcaster Settlement Act) declares that Soundexchange (A division of the RIAA) to be the official receiver and distributor for all noninteractive digital performance royalties (from their FAQ).

What I would like to see would be for some small bands to set up their own streams, pay Soundexchange their $500 minimum yearly royalty, then sue Soundforge in small claims court, if Soundforge refuses to pay the full $500 back. In the absence of a contract permitting Soundexchange to keep any of the money, there is no reasonable expectation that any of that money belongs to Soundexchange.

From those judgements against soundexchange (maybe if enough showed up, a class action suit could be had?), it would be interesting to see where it could go next... perhaps some kind of action against them being the Royal Royalty Collector since they have been shown (by the lawsuits) to be behaving in bad faith, and that an independent company should be responsbile for royalty distribution.

Re:Bout Time

[merodach]

It seems that it would be patently illegal to ask for payment to play music that the RIAA members dont have copyright on.

The RIAA may not own the copyrights to the songs on a record (depending on the contract signed by the artist/group), but what they do own (IIRC) is the copyrights on the particular performance of the songs on the record. A slight but important difference essentially allowing a webcaster who does not use the RIAA member performance but instead uses an artist-owned performance to avoid royalties to the RIAA for playing it. Of course, the non-RIAA owner could asks for royalties on playing that performance...

Besides reading slashdot...

[Dumbush]

Is there anything we can do to help Wedcaster Alliance on this case

Sherman Anti-Trust Act Nothing

[MBCook]

Sherman Anti-Trust Act nothing, I bet it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a RICO complaint against them. They sure sound like they're about to cross the edge to me. Do what we tell you (don't download stuff) or we'll make you regret it (erase your hard drive) sure sounds like racateering to me. Do they do anything to try to stop indie lables? If you can't make a RICO complaint against them now, at the rate they're going, I can't help but wonder how long it will be before they do qualify.

and what exactly is stopping small labels?

[SuperBanana]

It goes on to say that the RIAA also wanted to eliminate smaller webcasters, who tend to play more independent material, in order to maintain their monopoly on music distribution.

What prevents smaller webcasters from hooking up with those indie labels? A record label can set any license they want. If SuperBanana Records(and the artist) wants to let webcasters play 'It Aint Easy Being Yellow' by the Bananaettes, so be it, right?

Re:and what exactly is stopping small labels?

[Telastyn]

The more appropriate question is more likely "What prevents artists from hooking up with those indie labels?"

Re:and what exactly is stopping small labels?

[Mikeytsi]

Threat of lawsuits prevents them. You go indie, tell the RIAA that they can shove the license up their asses, and they sue you, stating that you were playing RIAA music and violating copyright. Now YOU get to prove that you didn't.

Music?

[stripe]

If one can sue over copyright infringment based of a reppetitive set of tones, what is to stop someone from generating millions of tonal combintations with a computer copyrighting the lot of them and suing every "artist" that ends up duplicating them?

The grand plan

[DigiShaman]

The grand plan in the current music industry is to condition people over many generations to a specific..managible genre of music. AKA SPAM-IN-CAN CorpRock Musak. It makes perfect marketing sense. If you can manage and control what users listen to, then you can better predict your profit margins. Ever notice how all the "Alternative" music sounds the same of the past 15 years? Utter crap. And to add more salt to the wound, there is even talk in the industry to scientifically figure out what waveforms people like...err I mean music for even better corp-rock crap

Re:The grand plan

[DeltaSigma]

Underground subcultures are very much aware of this situation. It's generally regarded as a hostile act meant to destroy our culture.

Allow me to explain. Sometimes a government body's political boundries encompass two very different cultures. In a case where a smaller culture is regarded as a potential threat, problem, or nuisance the government may attempt to breed them out of existance. Sort of a peaceful genocide, it's quite simple. Noone gets killed, noone's locked up, or harmed in any way. However the government creates incentives for businesses to set up in this particular area of the country. Thus the mainstream population moves to this area in pursuit of jobs. Over the years the two cultures interbreed until the differences that once seperated the two cultures are spread so thin that, for all intensive purposes, that culture no longer exists. This is a very real problem that anthropologists are constantly attempting to combat.

The recording industry, or at least the RIAA, is attempting to do the same thing. They're taking mainstream music, tweaked to sound more punk, metal, gothic, hip-hop or what have you. In the mainstreams pursuit to be an "inDUHvidual" they cling to this facade and claim to be what we are. Over time start-up bands attempt to imitate these fake bands, the media begins to depict this coincidentally (hah) more media-friendly subculture as the true subculture, and over time what we really are and what we're really about is lost in the stream of time.

For the most part, we've lost punk to this crap already. Oh don't get me wrong I'm sure there's still a few bands and a few isolated groups which fit the original ( and political ) description of punk. However most of the punks I knew became disheartened. Their clothes, music, literature, EVERYTHING, became very difficult to find amidst this mainstream regurgitation.

Metal's suffering from the same onslaught as we speak. Nu-Metal threatens to destroy another subculture very near and dear to me in time.

My subculture sees the beginnings of the same thing for us. On the gothic front, the media appears to have chosen a multi-faceted attack with television and the popularization (helped along with a little advertising) of dark television series. Buffy was a very good example. Fashion's a little less hard to pick apart amidst the season's change of fashion obsessions so I won't speak of any direct threat there. Honestly I doubt I could pick those things out if I tried. And, though it seems to have taken them a while, I've heard the RIAA finally has a band calling themselves "gothic" that they're parading around MTV.

Some might be happy to be rid of us. Indeed there's a great many selfish people who can't see beyond their own form of living. To these people I would express my regret that they could not understand what we are. We're nothing more than a culture which holds valuable its traditions and similarities. By departing from mainstream into the gothic subculture I've learned a lot about society. And despite what mainstream sources will tell you, goths, punks, metal-heads, rivet-heads, etc., are NOT anti-cultures. That is to say, we're don't join the groups we do because we oppose mainstream in its entirety. Rather, we join these groups as they better fit our lifestyle. It was easier for me to make friends amongst goths than it was at random.

In any event, here's how it relates to you, the reader, if you're not part of a subculture. I mean, if you're totally mainstream this isn't going to hurt you. Are you christian though? Do you like christian music? Yeah, that won't survive if the RIAA gets its way. Actually anything that mainstream, pop/rock advertising doesn't cover will eventually be destroyed if things continue as they have been.

If you've ever liked something besides pop/rock, I reccomend you invest a bit more in ANY alternative source of music. Be it web distribution, independant labels, classic radio stations, whatever. Support everything that isn't mainstream.

This is good news!

[RCAMVideogames]

I make a living off of copyrighted material. These webcasters are forced to ethier stop or go underground becuase of the RIAA. This monopoly has no positive impact on the people outside of the record industry. There motive must be to keep the real radio and new services like XM alive. Therefore internet radio must be stopped. Thanks to ole Sherman, we don't have to take their trash.

Where do i send my donations?

[stang7423]

The RIAA has gotten out of control. This suit looks like ond of the best counter attacks that has been launched against the RIAA. Now I want to give some of my hard earned money that would have otherwise (according to the RIAA) gone for recorded music to help support the legal fees of their oppostion.

A small step for man?

[scottymonkeypants]

I think that this is a step in the right direction. More groups should be challenging the stranglehold that the RIAA currently has on the music industry, and this is a good beginning.

This isn't just about getting free music, either, nor is it about not having to hear "crappy pop music" on the radio or whatever. It's about the RIAA and the major labels screwing over their artists and everyone else on the planet in the name of making a buck. Their business model simply isn't effective anymore.

I think we need to see more moves like this, and then things will finally start to change.

Re:Commercial vs Non Commercial Radio Stations

[Elwood P Dowd]

There are specific laws for webcasting that are different from those regarding radio broadcasts.

Why should there be different laws? Otherwise, it would be too cheap to run a webcast! There would be so many different webcasters that advertisers would never know which market was listening to which stations, and labels would have no way to ensure that their product was adequately represented. Mass hysteria! Dogs and cats living together!

I'm not exaggerating. That's actually the reason. Congress just wanted to bring about "market consolidation."

ClearChannel only webcasting.

greed

[geekmetal]

Webcasters of all sizes have wrangled with the recording industry since 1998, when Congress passed a law requiring Internet radio stations to pay royalties to artists and record labels.

The RIAA by far looks to be the greediest of all in corporate america. There sure should be more musicians like Tom Petty out there who need a little support in tuning down the greed.
As long as the small stations can survive we will have music

Webcasters continue to sell out freedom, film at 1

[poptones]

I'm sick to death of hearing about webcasters pissing and moaning about the RIAA. If these fuckers really cared about embracing indie music there's nothing at all stopping them from picking up artists who have not entered the belly of the beast. There's a real opportunity here to exact a fundamental change not only in distribution, but in the way popular new music becomes popular - but just like MP3.COM, these players really don't believe the hype they're seliing. They don't even believe in their own product, which is the reason they incessantly lobby for "rights" to the other guy's prpoduct.

What they want is the "freedom" to give even more hype to the same old shit the RIAA is already peddling; To help further enlave us all to the old Hollywood lobby.

There is a world of music out there, much of it completely unrepresented in the US - artists that would LOVE exposure from these "independant broadcasters." Yet these alleged "independants" don't care for that - no, they want "the right" to help spread the boy band gospel.

Fuck the RIAA... and fuck these online broadcasters. Maybe they'll sue each other into oblivion and we can be rid of all of it.

Why do you hate the RIAA?

[pocide]

I work for a production company, and the RIAA (also, BMI) helps me by protecting my rights and being an easy go-between when it comes to ensuring I receive my due royalties.

Without organizations like the RIAA and BMI, I wouldn't recoup even 10% of the royalties I'm owed. I don't have an album in stores, so when one of my beats gets played, it's not a case of "hey, free advertising for his album." I need to be payed for those spins, and the RIAA has been nothing short of nice when it comes to helping me iron out copyright and legal issues.

Bulshit

[poptones]

This is why the RIAA would like to see the small time indie webstreamers vanish... if they're playing indie music they'll create demand for the artists who aren't being distributed by the RIAA members, and effectively steal market share from them

There's nothing at all stopping these "broadcasters" from playing non-RIAA label music. There's no way the RIAA can prevent it. And this fact is irrelevant, because it's not the non-RIAA music these "indies" want. The RIAA is fighting to retain control of their own poduct - they cannot control product to which they have NOT paid for rights.

The broadcasters, like you, have no argument here. If they want to play music from unsigned artists, they can. And if they would sign those artists to contracts before the RIAA gets to them, granting them rights to play given works no matter what, then the RIAA couldn't even prevent it after they signed the artists.

But the artists aren't going to do that because they see the RIAA as the master of the market, and lawsuits like these only perpeptuate that control.

These "independant broadcasters" are enemies of the revolution.

Re:Bulshit

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

More importantly, they're the most anal retentive paperwork carrying of any broadcaster out there. Try to escape fees and you're going to have to be able to sit down and show EVERY song you played since you went "independent". I should know I worked for one. We had an entire room that was devoted to nothing BUT proving we were 100% legal. Yes you can do it, but you better be prepared to not only fight but have the ammo to figh in the first place.

Re:Bulshit

[LostCluster]

The broadcasters, like you, have no argument here. If they want to play music from unsigned artists, they can. And if they would sign those artists to contracts before the RIAA gets to them, granting them rights to play given works no matter what, then the RIAA couldn't even prevent it after they signed the artists.

You missed something here. Signing such a contract giving rights to play to your early recordings before signing an RIAA contract just doesn't happen. Because signing such a deal makes it certain that an RIAA contract isn't coming your way. If you try to promote yourself the RIAA's system, then the RIAA's system will see to it that they are closed to you. Any radio station that plays even a small ammount non-RIAA music is punished by non-access. They'll find whatever artist is hot at the moment in their section of music all over the closest station in format to them in their area. It becomes very hard to compete when your opponent has all of the major artist exclusives such as interviews and local-premire songs and you don't.

The broadcasters, like you, have no argument here.
I'm a broadcaster? I didn't know that...

But the artists aren't going to do that because they see the RIAA as the master of the market, and lawsuits like these only perpeptuate that control.
Hold on, did you RFTA? The RIAA isn't suing webcasters, a group of webcasters are suing the RIAA for anti-competitive behavior during the legal process that set the webcasting rates because they presented an agreement between the RIAA and the a group "representing the webcasting industry" that didn't include any representation for them, yet they're bound by this statutory price too. They're basically accusing the RIAA of cheating Microsoft-style.

Re:Bulshit

[Surak]

There's nothing at all stopping these "broadcasters" from playing non-RIAA label music. There's no way the RIAA can prevent it. And this fact is irrelevant, because it's not the non-RIAA music these "indies" want. The RIAA is fighting to retain control of their own poduct - they cannot control product to which they have NOT paid for rights.

But under *their* terms. A major radio station in Detroit *does* play unsigned music. Despite *numerous* requests from their listeners to expand this playing of local bands, WRIF confines their local bands coverage to a show that airs only from 10-11 p.m. on Sunday nights exactly when no one is likely to even hear them. (Remember, this is a UAW town. ;) Any one know what NBC did when it wanted to kill off the original Star Trek in the 1960s? That's right, they gave it a 10-11 p.m. slot on Sunday nights. Ratings plummeted. (This is part of the reason Roddenberry decided to take ST:TNG to syndication.)

When I asked a
the program director at WRIF, he told me that it was due to their RIAA contract that they didn't expand their local bands coverage much beyond the 10-11 p.m. slot of Sunday. It's why they don't mix indie music with major labels.

But that's just what these smaller broadcasters want to do.

If indie music catches on, RIAA becomes irrelevant. It's the same reason they're suing filesharers, as I've said before.

These guys are *just* shy of violating RICO. RIAA isn't an association, it's a *cartel*. Only THEY get to decide what the public likes and listens to. If you don't like it, don't listen they tell you.

If you don't believe me, e-mail Podell. He'll tell you what he told me IRL. (Well, I'd assume anyway)

Re:Commercial vs Non Commercial Radio Stations

[1nt3lx]

RTFM.

I got a 5 watt FM transmitter a few years ago, scavenged mic, repaired a mixer, built an antenna. I ran a coax from the basement to the garage, and put the antenna up on the roof. I had a couple hundred MP3s that I'd downloaded on a 56kbps before the days of napster.

After a few hours I decided this was no longer any fun because nobody was listening. I tried to sell the whole rig on Ebay. It got delisted and I was told it was contraband.

Come to find out, after I RTFM, the whole thing was very illegal and I would have been looking at several hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for FCC licensing violations, antenna placement procesdures, song licensing, and several others. Well I took the whole rig down and was thankful I didn't get cought.

The whole experience was kind of fun. I don't remember where I put the transmitter, though. Perhaps it's cemented into the patio.

They've already done that

[yerricde]

Over the 95 years of copyright, the music publishers have already done that, employing thousands of songwriters to write the estimated 9 million songs in the collective catalogs of BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC. In my journal, I've predicted how this could cause a chilling effect on songwriting.

Yet another example of trampling over RIAA rights

[geekee]

You'd think in a free society that the owner of a copyrighted work could choose the price to allow it to be broadcast. Not so in the USA, however. Antitrust is an affront to basic freedoms. You do not have a right to someone elses work at a price of your choosing.

Re:Where ya going with this?

[Izago909]

I don't like payola either, but they do have every right to do it.

I thought payola was illegal. Wasn't some radio personality in Ohio (I think) dragged in front of congress half a century ago, along with many others, for taking bribes to play music?
If I remember correctly, this guy got a stiff punishment, much more so than peope who admitted to taking several times the ammount he took, because he was playing (and making popular) "black" music?

Another thing that demonstrates how opposed to change the recording industry is would be the ferocity in which it has hung on to the busisness models and practices it adopted from it's mafia roots. Theres an old anecdote about a guy walking by an urban high rise. He sees a black man being hung outside a window by his feet. He asks someone "What's going on up there?". The stranger replies, "Renegotiation his record contract." Who's being hung out the window now?

Besides, I'd like you to find one artist played on somaFM, bassdrive, boups.com, ukbass.xrs.net, or MANY otehrs, that is signed to a label represented by the RIAA. You are being forced to take the word of a self-riteous, monopolistic corporation that they will distribute the money to the people whom deserve it. I will trust them about as far as I can throw them.

Find a real way to make money instead of looting..

[tdk2fe]

It appears to me that this dispute is over the royalties that the RIAA has set for playing their licensed music (As opposed to a few posts I read which claimed the RIAA expected royalties on anything played over the internet).

However, to be commercially viable, the Alliance believes that small webcasters need a mix of Mainstream Material and Independent Material. The Alliance is concerned that recent developments in the market for Mainstream Material have seriously jeopardized the commercial viability of its members by eliminating the ability to stream a commercially significant amount of Mainstream Material
I personally think its these "Alliance" members who are in the wrong. They claim that in order to run a successful business, they need to play Mainstream music which belongs to other people, and that those other people are charging them too much to play something they don't own. In a capitalist society, the RIAA has the right to set whatever price they wish, and enter into agreements with whomever they wish and on whatever grounds they agree on. I don't think that because i've managed to develop a successful company, I should be forced to charge people a lesser rate for my product because people can't afford it. These 'Alliance' members realized that they aren't going to make any money off of artists nobody has heard of, and so now they want a piece of what the RIAA has built. These webcasters should look into an alternative business model, or try to find a new way to do something that would have value to people, instead of looting from an established company. Oh wait, I forgot, hardly any webcasters make a profit... so why are we here in the first place?