IP: Royalties set by Copyright Office will kill Webcasting

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 23:02:41 -0700
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: For IP: Royalties set by Copyright Office will kill Webcasting

CARP, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel, has just announced
recommended royalty rates for Webcasters as per the DMCA. Unfortunately,
the rates appear to be both excessive and unfair. Without any rational
explanation, "pure" Webcasters are charged twice as much per song as
broadcasters which also transmit over the air, and all broadcasters are
charged for making the "ephemeral copy" used to stream the material to
the Net (even though this should be covered by the fair use provisions of
copyright law). The rates are so high -- $1,680 per 8-hour day for a
Webcaster with 100 listeners -- that Webcasting is unlikely to be a
feasible business proposition. And broadcasters will be required to
acquire personal information from every listener and transmit that
information to the collection agent, which just happens to be -- guess
who? -- the RIAA.

There is, apparently, a comment period during which the public can (and
should) express its concerns about the proceedings, which appear to have
been dominated by the RIAA. See the article at

http://www.kurthanson.com/index.asp

for more.

--Brett Glass



------ End of Forwarded Message

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