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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."
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
Getting a minimum 128K uplink with QOS across the pond for signal relay is not for the faint of heart, or the non-commercial of budget. This is why Canada is a much preferrable option for many US-based webcasters.
At the risk of repeating what may have been said already:
http://www.saveourinternetradio.com/ - Bless you, Radio Paradise for leading the charge!
I'd bless NPR for fighting this as well, but the fact is that NPR's opposition to third-channel adjacency rules in the Low-Power FM legal tussles of 1998-2000 helped prevent the FCC from granting 90% of the possible LPFM frequencies across the US, and therefore they have forced many (including my own) non-commercial and community radio stations onto the internet.
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).
...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
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.
Viva el Mexico!
That's a bad idea. The stream will just freeze and then they'll play hockey on it.
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)
Indeed, my synthpop radio station (plug!) is similar in scope, playing mostly things from non-RIAA labels and independant artists. I, too, have my server hosted in Germany, and the RIAA can kiss my ass. There isn't a place for people to get darkwave, ebm, futurepop type stuff from conventional radio, and net radio is often the only place to turn, outside the drunken haze of a gothic nightclub.
The thing is, there ain't no Benjamens in doing this; I, like most other webcasters, shell out our own money for our own servers or bandwidth or services like live365.com, and we do it for fun and for love of the music. So far as I know, "terrestrial" stations aren't required to pay royalties in the same way, so why are we?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.