arsclist Important Issue for all Arsckist members - Saving Internet Online Radio

["Christopher Stewart" <cstewart139@xxxxxxxxx>]

The following article may also be found by going to:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/05/12/PK198486.DTL


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Online radio in peril 

 

By Neva Chonin/San Francisco Chronicle  

 

May Day had a special meaning for online music fans this year, as
hundreds of 

online radio outlets stopped the music and observed a "day of silence"
to 

call attention to a proposed law that might shut them down forever. 

 

Independent Internet radio could become history on May 21 if the Library
of 

Congress accepts its Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel's
recommendations 

for radio royalty rates. A little background: In 1998, Congress passed
the 

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which established that
Internet-only 

Webcasters must pay an additional "performance royalty" for playing 

copyrighted music. But the royalty rate of 14 cents per song, per
listener (7 

cents per song for commercial radio station simulcasts and 2 cents per
song 

for noncommercial radio simulcasts), is far more than most Webcasters
and 

community- based radio stations can afford, and royalties would be 

retroactive from October 1998. 

 

Drafted at the height of music industry paranoia over the Internet, the
law 

maintains that streamed Webcasts offer "perfect" digital copies that
could 

cut into CD sales. But as anyone who has ever listened to online radio
will 

agree, streamed sound is nowhere near "perfect" enough for bootlegging. 

Hearing streaming music doesn't encourage theft -- like broadcast radio,
it 

turns listeners on to new music and inspires them to go out and buy the
real 

thing. 

 

"There's a significant difference between downloading and file sharing
piracy 

and independent Webcasters who intend to pay for the use of the
copyright," 

points out John Jeffrey, general counsel for Live365 (www.live365.com).
"But 

we've ended up with a royalties rate that doesn't reflect the way
similar 

copyrights are treated around the world." 

 

With billions in cash flow, conglomerates such as AOL and Yahoo aren't
the 

ones in peril if the copyright panel recommendations are made law. It's
the 

Internet-only Webcasters who will be bankrupted and vanish. It's the
smaller, 

community-based stations like KUSF -- whose simulcasts from www.kusf.org
are 

on hiatus since its Web host panicked over the copyright panel's report
and 

shut down -- that will be silenced and their diverse programming that
will be 

lost. 

 

"We need the Internet -- there are listeners in other parts of the
country 

and the world who want to listen to us," says KUSF DJ Terror Bull Ted. 

"They're trying to get small people like us to fork over cash that we
can't 

afford." 

 

Internet radio has been a boon to everyone, from jazz and world music
fans to 

classical aficionados and news buffs. It offers programming unbounded by


geography, corporate restrictions, annoying commercials and the whims of


popular taste. Silencing the small-scale, low-budget mavericks who make
this 

possible would be more than unjust. It would be flat-out tragic. 

 

What can Internet radio fans do? Call their senators and Congress
people, for 

one thing. For another, visit the Save Internet Radio site at 

www.saveinternetradio.org for more suggestions and background
information on 

the digital copyright act. 



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