[LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Fwd: Article: Judges Reject Appeals From Webcasters

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Jan Whitaker wrote:
> Looks like online radio listeners will be losing some tunes. (sorry 
> about the formatting, but I'm not going through line by line to fix - 
> came to me this way)
> 
> From: djc djc at 3wcomputing.com
> To: pc-audio at pc-audio.org
> 
> Judges Reject Appeals From Webcasters
> Sites Can Tally Fees Per Listening Hours
> POSTED: 6:59 pm PDT April 16, 2007
> UPDATED: 6:59 pm PDT April 16, 2007
> LAS VEGAS  --
> Internet radio broadcasters were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of
> copyright
> judges threw out requests to reconsider a ruling that hiked the royalties
> they must
> pay to record companies and artists.
> A broad group of public and private broadcasters, including radio stations,
> small
> startup companies, National Public Radio and major online sites like Yahoo
> Inc. and
> Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, had objected to the new royalties set March 2,
> saying they
> would force a drastic cutback in services that are now enjoyed by some 50
> million
> people.

...meanwhile via a Digital TV  mailing list...

> URGENT
> Tell your MEP to Support Amendments that Would Fix the Directive!
>
>     On April 24th, the European Parliament will vote on IPRED2, the 
Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive. With one stroke,
they risk turning thousands of innocent EU citizens and businesses into
copycriminals. Only you can stop them. Sign our petition now!
<http://www.copycrime.eu/home>

For my part, I am still trying to work out what the license arrangements 
are on decoding MPEG2 used in Digial Broadcasting.
<http://www.mpegla.com/dvb/>

m

> In the latest ruling, the Copyright Royalty Board judges denied all motions
> for rehearing
> and also declined to postpone a May 15 deadline by which the new royalties
> will have
> to be collected.
> However, they did grant leniency on one point, allowing the webcasters to
> calculate
> fees by average listening hours, as they had been, as opposed to the new
> system of
> charging a royalty each time every song is heard by an online listener.
> That exemption
> counts for last year and this year. After that, the new per-song,
> per-listener fee
> structure goes into effect.
> Many webcasters say the sharply higher royalty fees will put them out of
> business.
> Talk of the ruling dominated a one-day meeting of Internet radio
> broadcasters being
> held in Las Vegas alongside the annual conference of the National
> Association of
> Broadcasters, a group representing local radio and TV stations.
> N. Mark Lam, the CEO of Live365 Inc., a privately held company that
> aggregates audio
> streams from thousands of radio stations and other small webcasters, said
> that under
> the new royalty rules, "there is no industry."
> Lam, who joined the venture capital-backed company about two years ago,
> said Live365
> just barely broke even last year and had about 4.5 million unique listeners
> every
> month.
> Also on Monday, several Internet radio broadcasters announced a campaign to
> raise
> awareness of the issue and encourage listeners to write to their
> representatives
> in Congress.
> Small broadcasters have received relief from Congress in the past,
> benefiting from
> a law passed five years ago that gave them a break on royalty rates. The
> legislation
> allowed them to pay about 12 percent of their revenues instead of having to
> calculate
> per-song, per-hour rates like larger companies had to.
> David Oxenford, a lawyer representing several webcasters, said the next
> step was
> likely an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
> Circuit,
> but he noted that process could take at least a year. Meanwhile, he said,
> the prospects
> of successfully getting a court to block the decision of the royalty board
> judges
> is slim.
> SoundExchange, a nonprofit group that collects the online royalties from
> webcasters
> and distributes them to record labels and artists, hailed the ruling in a
> statement
> and said it looked forward to working with Internet radio companies in
> order to ensure
> that the industry succeeds.
> Jonathan Potter, the head of the Digital Media Association, which
> represents several
> large webcasters including Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN network,
> said his
> group was not currently in talks with SoundExchange but may be soon. He
> said his
> group and other webcasters would be turning to Congress, where he said he
> sees "a
> lot of legislative support."
> The royalties in question only cover digital transmissions of music, and
> don't apply
> to terrestrial radio stations, as traditional radio play is seen as a
> benefit for
> record labels by promoting sales of recorded music. Both digital
> broadcasters and
> regular radio stations pay a separate royalty to the publishers and
> composers of
> music.
> 
> 
>      djc's Jukebox: http://paulmerrell.net:9212 or
> http://paulmerrell.net:9660 Saturday Evenings 9 to midnight Eastern.
> 
>      My Journal http://livejournal.com/users/djc1
> 
>              email Or Msn: djc at 3wcomputing.com
> 
>      I C Q Number Is: 4781694
> 
> Jan Whitaker
> JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
> personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
> commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> 
> 'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, there 
> is no plant.' - JW, April 2005
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-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au/
Telephone: 0414-869202