Webcaster Alliance Threatens To Sue RIAA 303
detroitindustrial writes "The Washington Post reports that the Webcaster Alliance is threatening to sue the RIAA under the Sherman Antitrust Act. In their letter to the RIAA, the Webcaster Alliance alleges that the RIAA and the Voice of Webcasters negotiated in collusion and, 'were apparently intent on either eliminating their competitors and/or raising barriers to entry in the market for small commercial webcasting.' It goes on to say that the RIAA also wanted to eliminate smaller webcasters, who tend to play more independent material, in order to maintain their monopoly on music distribution."
Who Are They? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Commercial vs Non Commercial Radio Stations (Score:5, Informative)
BUT, Congress and the FCC decided that webcasting counts as mechanical reproduction, not just broadcasting, so you've gotta pay royalties to the record companies as if you were selling copies of their CDs. (Or offering them for download.)
This is called *CORUPTION IN THE GOVERNMENT*, boys and girls!
Re:what's soma FM? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.somafm.com [somafm.com]
enjoy
you're welcome
Re:RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Music (Score:5, Informative)
Artists need radio airplay to start their carrers. Hardly anybody will pay to hear an artist they've never heard before, so it's a critical first step in becoming an established artist so they can make sales with CDs and concert tickets. It's the free samples they give away so people will be more likely to buy the products.
The thing is, the RIAA tries to keep radio stations on a tight leash. If you want to have early access to the hot new song from established artist A, you have to play the songs from the not-yet-known-to-anybody artists B, C, and D. They RIAA tries hard to claim that there's not a specific quid-pro-quo, but everybody knows its the stations that are most cooperative in playing the arists the label wants played that get the most access to that label's popular artists.
This is why the RIAA would like to see the small time indie webstreamers vanish... if they're playing indie music they'll create demand for the artists who aren't being distributed by the RIAA members, and effectively steal market share from them. If it were possible for an artist to establish credibilty through non-RIAA means such as indie webstreamers and P2P downloads, and then get thier songs onto over-the-air radio stations, that artist could then enter the concert market and bypass the RIAA altogether. The RIAA would like the rule that you must already have an RIAA-published CD before being heard radio channels to hold true because that cements their role in the process, however the technology now exists to promote an artist without ever having a CD... and that's what really scares the RIAA.
Re:classic RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
Why are web radio stations different? (Score:3, Informative)
Now, if we assume that the minimum royalty rate for a small web broadcaster of $2000 represents 6.5% of revenue then the RIAA assumes that a small webcaster produces about $31,00 of revenue per year, or about $2600 a month. The question is, does that seem like a reasonable assumption? I don't think any small webcaster makes anything close to that, if anything at all after salaries, equipment costs, etc. This leaves established radio stations or corporations with money as the only players in the game, small webcasters are completely out of it financially. I wonder what percentage of revenue the RIAA thinks $2000 dollars represents for a small webcaster.
Re:I have some sympathy for the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
| Unlike traditional radio it is easy to make copys [sic] of songs that have been webcasted
As others have pointed out, this is not at all unlike traditional radio. Capturing from an FM radio station probably gives you better quality.
| and then place them on peer to peer networks such as bittorrent and napster
Neither of these are presently peer-to-peer networks.
| What inevitably happens is that people will record internet radio stations all day
History tells us that this is not what inevitably happens. Nor do people spend all day scanning in library books and thus putting book publishers out of business.
| and then put all the CD quality songs up for download
| thereby harming the music industry.
Possibly, but I'd like to see more evidence that the distribution of crappy MP3s really cuts into record company sales.
Re:Commercial vs Non Commercial Radio Stations (Score:3, Informative)
This, I am pretty sure, is not true. What about ASCAP etc.? I think there might be a compulsory-license thing going on, but I know that radio stations can't go down to Wal-Mart, buy some CDs, and just start playing them.
The crime is, Congress mandated that webcasters be treated in a ridiculously more harsh manner than regular broadcasters, all in the name of "market consolidation".
Re:Sherman Anti-Trust Act Nothing (Score:4, Informative)
It's only racketeering if you threaten to do something illegal. At the moment erasing a persons hard drive is illegal and so the RIAA could be charged under the RICO act if they were to make this threat. However they are lobbying to make it legal for them to erase peoples hard drives so that they will not be gangsters (in the eyes of the law anyways).
Yes there is! (Score:4, Informative)
Support monetarily, or writing your congressmen (and women) or any other expertise you might have. Do what you can, it can only help.
Re:and what exactly is stopping small labels? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bout Time (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, it's the same thing as radio broadcasters. Because it'd be impossible to accurately account for all the micropayments involved, radio stations simply make an all-covering per-listener-times-per-song (take the average number of songs per hour, multiply by hours in a month, multiply by the station's average rating) fee to an group that divides up the money. Some margin of error mistakes happen, but it's a pretty fair system.
The problem comes that the rate that OTA radio is paying per-listener-per-song is about half of what web streamed radio pays per-lister-per-song, which were the fees that came down and killed most of webstreaming. This group is now accusing the RIAA of cheating during the process that determined the fee to get a more-favorable-to-the-RIAA outcome.
Re:Commercial vs Non Commercial Radio Stations (Score:3, Informative)
But these netstreamers are claiming that the RIAA cheated in the process to determining number. The RIAA presented to CARP, the division of the Library of Congress named in the law as the authority who sets the statutory rate and reviews it from time to time, an "agreement" between the RIAA and VOW. This group of webcasters is saying that the talks between the RIAA and VOW didn't result in a useful agreement because many of the webcasters who have to pay this statutory rate aren't members of the VOW, and in fact are small scrapy competitors to the VOW members. Their claim is that the VOW rolled over and agreed to a price that hardly anybody can afford because the VOW members wanted to commit industry suicide (which effectively happened, look at all the webstreams that vanished as soon as the CARP ruling came down) because the VOW membership is too closely aligned with the broadcast interests who would benefit from the lack of webstreaming.
If this new royalty applied to the over the air radio stations too, you'd be sure they would have activated their lobbists by now...
Re:Commercial vs Non Commercial Radio Stations (Score:2, Informative)
Most CDs out there have fine print on them indicating a copyright and prohibiting any public performance or broadcast without a license. Just because you are a radio station doesn't give you the right to broadcast them, regardless of whether or not you are commercial. Think about it -- why should you automatically have the right to broadcast someone else's work for free? Instead, radio stations generally pay a license fee to ASCAP and/or BMI on a yearly basis. The vast majority of artists have agreements with one of these entities, so paying the fee essentially gives you a blanket license to broadcast (most) released CDs. There are no limits on how often you can play pieces or how many people can listen.
If your station is not paying any licensing fees (they probably are, but it's buried deep in their budget and isn't given a second thought since everyone has paid these fees for many years), they are either limiting themselves to playing exclusively independant artists that have given some kind of permission to play their works, or they're broadcasting music illegally. (I too worked with my non-profit college station and we sure as hell paid those license fees).
A majority of the online radio stations are non-commercial, as in, they don't run radio stations for money. Most are run by shoutcast and other hobbyists anyway. So, why should these radio stations have to pay royalties, if their real-world (pardon the expression) counterparts do nt have to?
You've always had to pay fees to broadcast, regardless of how you were doing it. There has to be some form of compensation for artists. Many webcasters have been paying ASCAP/BMI license fees over the years (they are much much more reasonable than the RIAA fees). The ones that weren't paying were broadcasting just as illegally before the RIAA came along with their fees.
I think the issue is not paying fees in general. It's really that the more recent RIAA fee structure is in addition to the ASCAP/BMI licenses. The (flawed) argument is that a webcast is considered a copy of the music, so there should be a per-performance, per-listener fee. But the quality is still not a true copy and you could argue that it's equivalent to a strong FM signal -- hence no different than a normal radio station. Yes it's true that an mp3 stream is more convenient to manipulate and burn to a CD, but I don't think that's enough of an argument.
Radio stations do not need to pay the RIAA fees unless they are simulcasting over the web. And when they do have webstreams, the fees are significantly lower (for non-commercial at least) than internet-only broadcasters. Webcasters generally have a harder time generating ad revenue due to the more limited listener base, yet they have to pay higher fees. Does it make sense? No. It's just a really messed up system. And it's killing a lot of good streams.
Re:Music? (Score:3, Informative)
First, and most importantly, because no judge in the land would buy this argument. No conceivable perversion of copyright law's reasons for existing could justify this. (It can't even be said to meet the creativity criterion, IMHO, and yes, I do know how low a bar that sets.)
Second, it is well established that if the same expression is duplicated, entirely independently of each other, both authors have full rights to the expression. It is rare, but it has happened. Copyright does not magically give you rights to all possible incarnations of your expression, it only protects people deriving other expressions from your expression. In real life, in most domains, the odds of duplication are so low as to be irrelevant, but music is an exception.
Re:and what exactly is stopping small labels? (Score:1, Informative)
Why doesn't this happen more then? Many small labels are essentially feeders for the larger labels and they don't want to rock the boat. They often have just as many delusions of grandeur as many musicians do these days.
Wrongo, Mary-Lou... (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. the RIAA has no control over unlicensed music. The RIAA can no more prevent me from sharing my own music than it can prevent you from sharing my music that I shared with you.
These "indies" are fighting explicitly for the right to broadcast commercial music already owned by RIAA affiliate members. Apparently you didn't RTFA, so I will quote for you the relevant part right here...
However, to be commercially viable, the Alliance believes that small webcasters need a mix of Mainstream Material and Independent Material. The Alliance is concerned that recent developments in the market for Mainstream Material have seriously jeopardized the commercial viability of its members by eliminating the ability to stream a commercially significant amount of Mainstream Material.
Ergo, I said...
It's a Sony (Score:2, Informative)
Do [RIAA members] have the patent on music, or something?
Actually, Sony is an RIAA member, and Sony does hold several patents related to the Compact Disc Digital Audio standard.
artists that have never had anything to do with any RIAA company.
If your stereo system was made by Sony, then you have done business with an RIAA and MPAA member. If you have a Sony CD recorder or have used Sony CD-R media, then you have done business with an RIAA and MPAA member. If you shot your album cover with a Sony digital camera, then you have done business with an RIAA and MPAA member. Sure, Sony Electronics and Columbia Records are quite autonomous within Sony Corporation, but they still share profits under NYSE:SNE [yahoo.com]. Likewise, if you connect to the Internet through AOL or Road Runner, then you have done business with Warner Communications, an RIAA and MPAA member.
jwz's take on webcasting (Score:3, Informative)
Flat out wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
Your argument is exactly like me never recording any purchases, and when the IRS audits you, saying, "Well come on over and check out my place, I couldn't logically have any expenditures besides what's in my house!". It's a matter of law, not of file structures.