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Internet Radio May Stream North to Canada
An anonymous reader writes "With U.S. copyright royalties threatening to kill Internet radio in the U.S., Michael Geist explains why webcasters considering a move to Canada will find that the legal framework for Internet radio trades costs for complexity. There are two main areas of concern from a Canadian perspective — broadcast regulation and copyright fees. The broadcast side is surprisingly regulation-free, but there are at least three Canadian copyright collectives lining up to collect from Internet radio stations."
Just gotta make sure that 33% of your music is from Canadian artists. Enjoy :D
My internet radio station will be broadcasting from Nigeria... just think of the fund-raising possibilities!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
One of my favorite internet stations is Industrial/Techno http://ebm-radio.de/ and is hosted out of Germany. I would suspect they have little RIAA music as it is, but couldn't you just find a hosting company in another nation? Sweeden perhaps?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
DMCA has safe-harbor provisions, right? So why not let people upload songs, queue them, and then randomly stream the queue? Technically, wouldn't the RIAA have to file complaints against each file?
... companies and jobs move to a third world country. Only one thing to say: Blame Canada!
About 3 years ago the shoutcast stream i'm affiliated with ETN.FM moved everything up to Canada, and got ourselves declared as a not for profit organization. Since this is just a hobby and no one is making cash from it, it afforded us a greater ammount of legal protection than we could ever hope to receive inside the US. There was some problems gaining the non-profit status, but it wasn't too difficult.
Moving to Canada, an offshore rig or Timbuktu is not a solution.
Let's stop this madness.
Write your Congressional representative.
Save the Streams.
What? Regulation free? Haven't the Commission for Regulations and Thought Control got anything to say on this matter? Will Americans be happy with receiving minimum Canadian content? Well, I guess they were kind enough to liberate us of Celine Dion (big thanks there guys, it was an honourable sacrifice).
A Walk in the Black Forest"
...There are two main areas of concern from a Canadian perspective -- broadcast regulation and copyright fees. The broadcast side is surprisingly regulation-free ...
Actually it's quite unregulated because the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) chose to not regulate Internet broadcasting... back in 1999.
Then again, we're also allowed to say "fuck" on the radio, unlike our American cousins....
Three Squirrels
I'm a webcaster from Alaska, you insensitive clod.
You have no idea what's going on, do you?
Barbados recently won the second (appeal) round of its WTO case against the US for laws prohibiting on-line gambling. This gives Barbados the LEGAL right to take retaliatory measures. Maybe Internet Radio and Pirate Bay can both find a new home?
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
Actually, it's a sliding scale depending on the genre. While jazz and classical might have to keep over 40% of the content Canadian, pseudo-American pop music by Canadian artists need take up only 25% of the valuable airtime otheriwse devoted to truly American pop pseudo-music.
Ahem.
Avante-garde Brazilian elevator music, to take another example, has a special exemption that requires only 2% of the material aired be produced or mixed in Canada. John Cage performances are required to have only an 8% Canadian quality to the street noise that fills in the silences.
Also, for some reason, Hip Hop from Quebec counts.
These stories are free but worth money.
A station that only plays some good Canadian metal bands. Ie, Kittie, Kataklysm, and Strapping Young Lad.
SOCAN and other such organizations take a lot of heat from the digital-anarchy types for collecting performance royalties on behalf of artists. One needs to remember that performance-rights organizations aren't necessarily affiliated with record companies. They're operating on behalf of the artists themselves.
We'd all like to live in a society where culture is free and ubiquitous. Squeezing greedy record companies out of the equation with modern technology is a no-brainer. But let's not forget that organizations like SOCAN are what allow artists to support themselves. Without the revenues that royalties provide, artists can't support themselves. Personally, I'm more they're likely to find a job riding a desk than to "starve for my art".
Someone has to pay for art, and that someone is all of us who enjoy it.
That'll turn this whole sick, sad music situation around once and for all.
These stories are free but worth money.
hmm. Looks like greed will kill more American innovation and businesss. wouldn't it be a huge irony if the American small independent press was stationed in foreign countries. hope that the folks up north have the guts to tell US special interests to fuck off, our congress does not.
Antigua, not Barbados.
I'm too lazy to read TFA, but the summary says that to escape royalties companies will flee north, where the only problem is the royalties?
Viva el Mexico!
Dunno about you but I prefer music in the background than devoting all my time to watching it. I can't listen to rock music by watching lots of videos, I'd have to search for and play the video to listen to it. Radio 1, Video 0. Besides, video is only good for hit singles.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
Maybe we'll legally be able to get Pandora now?
(Pandora has heavy non-US disclaimers, but appears to work just fine north of the border.)
Namely, that, in the name of "harmonizing Canadian and American law," Canada will institute a fee schedule worse than ours? Because, then, in the name of "harmonizing Canadian and American law," we would - obviously - need to institute a fee schedule worse than Canada's.
It would be like an arms race where the participants only hurt themselves... or like the evolution of international copyright law, if you will. OK, yeah, I know what you're thinking. It would be exactly like the evolution of international copyright durations.
FUBAR.
I'm a webcaster from Alaska, you insensitive clod.
Alaskan version of Internet radio: Tube radio, playing songs with a chorus followed by a bridge to nowhere.
I once flew to a writer's conference on Canada Council grants, and hearing more Nelly Furtado is allright by me!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Copyright killed the internet star
I don't care who or what you are
This damn time you've gone too far
We're gonna create a copyright czar
This is the way we raise the bar
cuz Copyright killed the internet star
Chorus
What?
It may be less about the royalties and more about the Canadian Content laws. In Canada, broadcasters need to have a minimum amount of Canadian content. (Though "canadian content" is a pretty vague guideline)
Should that not be "stream south from"?
a horrible place
Yeah, just like when music videos killed CDs.
That's a bad idea. The stream will just freeze and then they'll play hockey on it.
He's right asshole mods. You hippies talk about the US and the Zune revenue going to the RIAA but look at the CD-R sales.
However, a move is something altogether different. Y'see, taxes ARE cold, hard cash. And all those listeners who aren't listening to the commercial stations' advertising? They ARE collective power. No listeners, no advertising revenue, no commercial stations.
(In England, pirate radio eventually forced the Government to license independent stations for the same reason. People defected in far too large numbers to the likes of Stockports' KFM and the monopoly crumbled from a lack of listeners. Protests never made a difference for the same reason they won't with Internet Radio. The people who need to protest most have made their voice willfully the weakest. It won't get heard. The chink of money, however quiet, will be. A politician can hear a cent coin falling on cotton candy from a thousand paces. Moving is the only voice left. If you don't use that, you've nothing left at all.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Internet broadcasting and national laws are oxymorans.
Freetrade for the plebs.
Broadcasting channel is a term, which describes a fairly limited amount of frequences, which can be used for limited number of public broadcasting channels.
Internet content streaming does not have this limitation, therefore the term in this context is completely meaningless, with all the related implications, eg. taxing each "internet channel".
Are you sure it was Barbados? I thought it was Antigua. It wouldn't surprise me if there was more than one country going after the online gambling thing, though...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If it's internet radio, why would whether it's hosted in US and Canada matter? It's played online anyway right?
My Own Millions Blog
This is tagged 'blamecanada' yet most of this shit originates from the USA. I'm living/from the USA, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE REST OF YOU SMOKING? Do you fuckers need a clue-by-four upside your fucking hypocritical heads?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So what's to stop the radio stations from relocating in another country? What do you lose? Ok it's ashame that college kids and hackers won't be able to run their own *live* radio shows but as long as somebody's got a station set up surely you'll be able to pipe them some content? This here new fangled internet thing works further than you can shout you know. In the same way that here in the UK pirate radio stations moved onto ships and moored outside British waters and broadcast from there, why not just move your stations out to Europe/ New Zealand/ Oz/ Timbuctu?
The best way to avoid the whole mess is to quit playing industry(read "popular music") copyright material.
We have open source for a reason.Much music is out there from bands dying to be heard and will release under an openmusic or other GNU-like license.
Since the Industry(read RIAA,Major labels,Career leeches)has caused this legislation in order to ruin our internet and benefit themselves,let them play with themselves,for themselves till no one is listening but themselves.
Lose the middleman(Industry) and embrace open music.
We are just as able to attract bands as they are.They do it to build their wealth while eliminating competition(us),we can do it to free music for our posterity and livelyhood.
Kind of ridiculous when you think about them,they tell us what is popular and hip since they decided so and we pay them to do it while real talent is exchanged for ease of promotion.
Time to take it back folks and quit worrying about being regulated.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The real upshot of all this is... I give up. "They" win. My station will never stream again.
Truth is, everyone can sign all the petitions they want, send all the letters to Congress that they want, but at the end of the day it's still David & Goliath. And I don't like those odds, regardless of how that first David did. I just ran a radio station as a hobby, and it got damned popular for a small-scale, self-financed project. But it's over-regulated and too expensive now.
Fight "the man" you say? Why bother? I don't have the resources or time to do that. It was a fun hobby, that's all. Someone with money and power wants to kill my hobby? Let 'em have it. I've got better things to do with my time, and I damn sure have better things to do with my money. Let someone else fight it.
Stream indie content? Not my bag, man. Besides, there's lots of that already happening. Nobody streamed the content I had solely in the format I programmed - 50's & 60's oldies & nothing else. Groundbreaking? No, but fun? Oh, yeah. But it ain't as much fun as these fees and regulations. Keep it, I quit.
That's what's going to happen to internet radio.
It was fun while it lasted. RIP, RockDoggy Radio.
Legally speaking, it's where the company providing the webcast is based, and where the listeners are based. The same thing is true with online casinos. They can't be based in the US and just have a server outside the US. The whole company has to be outside the US, and the owners need to be pretty shielded as well. A while back the FBI arrested some operators of an online casino who weren't even US citizens when their plane flight made a stopover in the USA.
Also, it's just not RIAA music. Legally it's ANY music that you don't have explicit permission from the copyright owner to broadcast. This is a common mis-conception.
Rusty Hodge from SomaFM wrote about moving servers to Canada:
Gary Greenstein, former general counsel for SoundExchange recently said:
The RIAA and the major labels have take the position that the law in the territory of destination of a transmission will govern and that off-shore webcasters streaming into the US will still have liability for transmissions (i.e., public performances) that terminate in the US. Therefore, moving a webcaster's facilities off shore will not immunize them from liability or the reach of US courts, particularly if the owner/operator still has sufficient business in the US.
All the "open source" music I've heard is pretty bad. It's like all those crappy wannabe bands with their music on myspace. Open source music doesn't work the same way that open source software does. Open source software is created by people who for the most part have jobs, and are contributing to a shared open source project because the contributors mutually benefit from is (as do the users). But how does a musician benefit from putting their music in the public domain? It's not like they can go to the open source dentist when they have a toothache, or get open source medicine from their free open source doctor when they get sick.
Good musicians need to make money. Professional musicians have to make money, or else their music becomes a hobby.
And if someone IS successful through open sourcing their music, soon they'll see they can make money off it and won't "open source" it anymore.
Anyway, you probably meant CC licensed free music rather than "open source". If it were really open source, you'd just download the band's sheet music and have to perform it yourself!
German stations pay royalties too. They're just not as insane as the ones that the CRB just approved for internet radio in the US. (Retroactive to 2006 as well). Also, according to US copyright law, a digital music performance (e.g. playing a song) is defined as streaming it to a resident of the US. So in theory, these guys will be liable for their US listeners. They probably just don't have a big enough audience to make SoundExchange want to try and sue them internationally.
This is the same reason that Pandora only broadcasts in the US - they're not licensed internationally. And they're a station with deep pockets - they've raised at least $15 mil in VC money, so they'd be worth coming across the ocean to sue.