Rockbites: Internet radio showdown on Capitol Hill

newsarchive

April 2002 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

• back to April 2002 index

Internet radio showdown on Capitol Hill
15 April 2002

An imminent decision by the US Copyright Office on royalty payments may effectively spell the death of Internet radio, through a double-dipping scheme endorsed by the government and by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and driven by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). On the other hand, the issue may be a tempest in a teapot.
    News outlets including The New York Times have reported estimates of new, DMCA-based royalty payments that far exceed the budgets of most Webcasters and simulcasters. But the RIAA claims those calculations are gross exaggerations—that in many cases the new payments will be manageable or even trivial.
    Most US Webcasters already pay annual royalty fees, for the music they play, to copyright management organizations ASCAP and BMI. But a misinformed provision in the 1998 DMCA laws, which assumes that streamed audio is a 'perfect copy' of the original, requires separate, additional payments for songs streamed over the Internet.
    Building on this assumption, the Copyright Office’s three-person CARP (copyright arbitration royalty panel) recommended in February a per-song/per-listener fee that would potentially cost Webcasters hundreds of times more than they are now paying. According to a grassroots organization called Save Internet Radio, most small Webcasters would have to cease operations or operate illegally.
    Salon.com’s Katherine Mieszkowski last month interviewed Rusty Hodge, program director and general manager of San Francisco based Webcaster SomaFM, about the impending legislation. While Hodge is very concerned that SomaFM may have to shut down, he claims that Save Internet Radio’s focus on the CARP recommendation is misguided—that the real problem is the DMCA’s confusion about Internet broadcasts as 'perfect copies': “We want to see the DMCA amended to state that Internet broadcasting, which is different than peer-to-peer file sharing or online musical distribution services, should be treated the same way as over-the-air broadcasts.”
    The US Copyright Office will rule on the CARP recommendations by the end of May. | Save Internet Radio | | RIAA position on CARP recommendation | | Salon.com article | | CARP info from US Copyright Office | | top of page |

back to April 2002 index

today’s stories •

click for Rockbites Home
	Copyright © 1998 - 2001 M. Jason. All Rights Reserved. Rockbites is not for profit and supports human rights. “Rockbites” and “Alternative Daily” are service marks of Rockbites. All names are the property of their respective owners. Send your feedback or questions to feedback@rockbites.org Send your press releases to press@rockbites.org Rockbites Alternative Daily contact information