U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Webcasting Royalties

reiggin writes "According to Cnet News.com, radio stations must pay copyright fees for the songs played over the internet. This upholds a previous decision of a lower court and the U.S. Copyright Office. Cary Sherman, the new RIAA president, is gleeful. Guess how the rest of us feel?"

Comments

Huh?

[idiot900]

As someone who was heavily involved in college radio for all of his undergraduate years, I cannot understand why the RIAA is demanding the payment of these silly royalties by radio stations who want to webcast. My alma mater spends tens of thousands of dollars each year toward radio station maintenance to advertise the RIAA's music at no cost to the RIAA. On top of this they pay things like ASCAP public performance fees. The webcast is of lower quality than the air signal (which is pretty crappy itself by the way), so from the RIAA's perspective it is clearly advertising and not a way for people to get bit-perfect copies of the music. And yet they want people to pay them for the right to advertise for them for free.

The same record labels that demand these royalties will also happily send piles of promo CDs, related swag, free concert tickets, and on occasion an actual breathing representative to try and get college stations to play their albums.

Seems strange to me, but maybe it's just because I'm young and idealistic...

This is how Radio Works

[Syncdata]

#1: Radio station plays songs, which gain audience.
#2: Radio station plays ads to recoup overhead, and make profit.
#3: Record label gets some vague promise that it will have increased consumer awareness amongst consumers, thus increasing sales?
No.
#3 is actually: record labels get paid per song for producing the product that is garnering the audience, which is listening to the ads.
I read a fine quote on /. recently, that Life is not all skittles and beer.