|
|
 |
|
|
|
(5/1/02) Webcaster Blackout Cries, "Mayday!"
Hundreds of Internet radio stations and channels across America have shut off their music streams today in a "Day of Silence." The broadcast blackout is intended to highlight webcasters’ concern over the upcoming U.S. Copyright Office ruling on royalty rates that may shut down or bankrupt the vast majority of the nascent Internet radio industry.
Under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Librarian of Congress is required to set "sound recordings performance royalty" rates for Internet radio stations by May 21st—and a Copyright Royalty Arbitration Panel (CARP) working for that office has recommended a rate of $.0014 per listener per song (or $.0007 for broadcast simulcasts).
Many webcasters say the proposed royalty rate is the equivalent of 200 percent or more of their revenues.
By crying 'Mayday!' webcasters are hoping that listeners will take the time to contact their representatives in Washington and ask those representatives to express their concerns to the Librarian of Congress, delivering the message that "the legislative intent of a statutory royalty rate was supposed to be to encourage the growth and diversity of the industry, not to kill it."
Already over the past four weeks, individual listeners have sent more than 20,000 letters to Congress. This grassroots effort has resulted in joint letters from more than 20 Congressional representatives questioning the recommended royalty rate. These letters were delivered to the Librarian of Congress.
"The proposed fees would definitely put us out of business," said Bill Goldsmith, the owner of popular Paradise, California-based adult rock station RadioParadise. "If that happens, everyone loses: our listeners, the artists we play, and the record labels themselves. We'd see two years of hard work and sacrifice go right down the drain."
Most webcasters set the May 1st "Day of Silence" to begin at dawn in their time zone and end in late evening. Some webcasters plan to go entirely silent, while others plan to replace their music streams with periods of silence interspersed with public service announcements on the subject.
In addition to the thousands of Internet-only webcasters participating in the "Day of Silence," certain major terrestrial broadcasters (many of which stream simulcasts of their broadcast stations on the Internet) also plan to support the effort with either silenced streams or a combination of banner ads, public service announcements and information on their websites.
The RIAA, which lobbied Congress for royalty payments in the first place, has denied that the CARP's recommended royalty rate will cause significant harm to the Internet radio industry, arguing that the industry is "crying wolf."
But Beethoven.com's Kevin Shively disagrees, noting: "Here's an example of how the CARP-recommended rate would affect webcasters: For eight of the larger independent webcasters — Beethoven, Digitally Imported, Radioio, Radio Paradise, SomaFM, 3WK, Wolf FM, and Ultimate-80s — we calculated that our total hours streamed last year were 40 million hours, and our combined revenues were $93,000. But according to the CARP panel's recommended royalty rate, we'd owe a royalty to the RIAA for the same period of $710,000!"
Goldsmith cautions against believing the press releases from the RIAA, which tries to portray the fees as being affordable. "If you do the math, you'll see that not one webcaster — large or small — can cover these fees with their present levels of income."
Comment on this story
E-mail this story to a friend
Sign up for Radio Headlines
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From the Publisher
|
|
|
