Internet Radio May Stream North to Canada

An anonymous reader writes "With U.S. copyright royalties threatening to kill Internet radio in the U.S., Michael Geist explains why webcasters considering a move to Canada will find that the legal framework for Internet radio trades costs for complexity. There are two main areas of concern from a Canadian perspective — broadcast regulation and copyright fees. The broadcast side is surprisingly regulation-free, but there are at least three Canadian copyright collectives lining up to collect from Internet radio stations."

Canadian Content Law

Just gotta make sure that 33% of your music is from Canadian artists. Enjoy :D

CanCon's Genre vs. Genre Favouritism

Actually, it's a sliding scale depending on the genre. While jazz and classical might have to keep over 40% of the content Canadian, pseudo-American pop music by Canadian artists need take up only 25% of the valuable airtime otheriwse devoted to truly American pop pseudo-music.

Ahem.

Avante-garde Brazilian elevator music, to take another example, has a special exemption that requires only 2% of the material aired be produced or mixed in Canada. John Cage performances are required to have only an 8% Canadian quality to the street noise that fills in the silences.

Also, for some reason, Hip Hop from Quebec counts.

Not me!

My internet radio station will be broadcasting from Nigeria... just think of the fund-raising possibilities!

Canada? Why not anywhere else in the world?

One of my favorite internet stations is Industrial/Techno http://ebm-radio.de/ [ebm-radio.de] and is hosted out of Germany. I would suspect they have little RIAA music as it is, but couldn't you just find a hosting company in another nation? Sweeden perhaps?

Re:Canada? Why not anywhere else in the world?

Indeed, my synthpop radio [mirrorshades.org] station (plug!) is similar in scope, playing mostly things from non-RIAA labels and independant artists. I, too, have my server hosted in Germany, and the RIAA can kiss my ass. There isn't a place for people to get darkwave, ebm, futurepop type stuff from conventional radio, and net radio is often the only place to turn, outside the drunken haze of a gothic nightclub.

The thing is, there ain't no Benjamens in doing this; I, like most other webcasters, shell out our own money for our own servers or bandwidth or services like live365.com, and we do it for fun and for love of the music. So far as I know, "terrestrial" stations aren't required to pay royalties in the same way, so why are we?

How about a DMCA abuse station?

DMCA has safe-harbor provisions, right? So why not let people upload songs, queue them, and then randomly stream the queue? Technically, wouldn't the RIAA have to file complaints against each file?

Already did that

About 3 years ago the shoutcast stream i'm affiliated with ETN.FM moved everything up to Canada, and got ourselves declared as a not for profit organization. Since this is just a hobby and no one is making cash from it, it afforded us a greater ammount of legal protection than we could ever hope to receive inside the US. There was some problems gaining the non-profit status, but it wasn't too difficult.

Stop the madness!

Moving to Canada, an offshore rig or Timbuktu is not a solution.

Let's stop this madness.

Write your Congressional representative. [ipetitions.com]
Save the Streams. [savethestreams.org]

On the contrary.

There is nothing that politicians respond to more than cold, hard cash. Unions are maybe the next most potent weapon, as collective power IS power. Most geeks and enthusiasts don't have the former and have rejected the latter. (Idiots.) With nothing to back up any protest and with no meaningful influence, you can write all you want and all it'll do is occupy some landfills.

However, a move is something altogether different. Y'see, taxes ARE cold, hard cash. And all those listeners who aren't listening to the commercial stations' advertising? They ARE collective power. No listeners, no advertising revenue, no commercial stations.

(In England, pirate radio eventually forced the Government to license independent stations for the same reason. People defected in far too large numbers to the likes of Stockports' KFM and the monopoly crumbled from a lack of listeners. Protests never made a difference for the same reason they won't with Internet Radio. The people who need to protest most have made their voice willfully the weakest. It won't get heard. The chink of money, however quiet, will be. A politician can hear a cent coin falling on cotton candy from a thousand paces. Moving is the only voice left. If you don't use that, you've nothing left at all.)

CRTC

What? Regulation free? Haven't the Commission for Regulations and Thought Control got anything to say on this matter? Will Americans be happy with receiving minimum Canadian content? Well, I guess they were kind enough to liberate us of Celine Dion (big thanks there guys, it was an honourable sacrifice).

Re:CRTC

Any Internet venture is exempt from CRTC regulation, since a 1999 ruling by the commission. It's a very broad exemption too, that's been applied to mobile TV on cell phones, and interactive television. And there's no sign the exemption is going anywhere any time soon. So no Canadian content regulations, and no approval needed to launch an Internet radio station.

And now...

A Walk in the Black Forest" [wikipedia.org]

Unregulated By Choice!

...There are two main areas of concern from a Canadian perspective -- broadcast regulation and copyright fees. The broadcast side is surprisingly regulation-free ...

Actually it's quite unregulated because the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) chose to not regulate Internet broadcasting... back in 1999. [crtc.gc.ca]

Then again, we're also allowed to say "fuck" on the radio, unlike our American cousins....

Re:Unregulated By Choice!

Oh, we are allowed to say it too...it just comes out as fk.

Move North to Canada?

I'm a webcaster from Alaska, you insensitive clod.

Barbados

Barbados recently won the second (appeal) round of its WTO case against the US for laws prohibiting on-line gambling. This gives Barbados the LEGAL right to take retaliatory measures. Maybe Internet Radio and Pirate Bay can both find a new home?

Socan

SOCAN and other such organizations take a lot of heat from the digital-anarchy types for collecting performance royalties on behalf of artists. One needs to remember that performance-rights organizations aren't necessarily affiliated with record companies. They're operating on behalf of the artists themselves.

We'd all like to live in a society where culture is free and ubiquitous. Squeezing greedy record companies out of the equation with modern technology is a no-brainer. But let's not forget that organizations like SOCAN are what allow artists to support themselves. Without the revenues that royalties provide, artists can't support themselves. Personally, I'm more they're likely to find a job riding a desk than to "starve for my art".

Someone has to pay for art, and that someone is all of us who enjoy it.

So let me get this straight ...

I'm too lazy to read TFA, but the summary says that to escape royalties companies will flee north, where the only problem is the royalties?

North?

Viva el Mexico!

Pandora

Maybe we'll legally be able to get Pandora now?

(Pandora has heavy non-US disclaimers, but appears to work just fine north of the border.)

who else dreads the innevitable

Namely, that, in the name of "harmonizing Canadian and American law," Canada will institute a fee schedule worse than ours? Because, then, in the name of "harmonizing Canadian and American law," we would - obviously - need to institute a fee schedule worse than Canada's.

It would be like an arms race where the participants only hurt themselves... or like the evolution of international copyright law, if you will. OK, yeah, I know what you're thinking. It would be exactly like the evolution of international copyright durations.

FUBAR.

Cool, more Canadian content worldwide!

I once flew to a writer's conference on Canada Council grants, and hearing more Nelly Furtado is allright by me!

Copyright killed the internet star

Copyright killed the internet star

I don't care who or what you are
This damn time you've gone too far
We're gonna create a copyright czar
This is the way we raise the bar
cuz Copyright killed the internet star

Chorus

Ehm...

Should that not be "stream south from"?

Re: Internet Radio May Stream North to Canada

That's a bad idea. The stream will just freeze and then they'll play hockey on it.

Location?

If it's internet radio, why would whether it's hosted in US and Canada matter? It's played online anyway right?

Oh the irony

This is tagged 'blamecanada' yet most of this shit originates from the USA. I'm living/from the USA, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE REST OF YOU SMOKING? Do you fuckers need a clue-by-four upside your fucking hypocritical heads?

Re:Oh the irony

This is tagged 'blamecanada' yet most of this shit originates from the USA. I'm living/from the USA, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE REST OF YOU SMOKING? Do you fuckers need a clue-by-four upside your fucking hypocritical heads?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of the blame Canada stuff in South Park to make fun of Americans for not taking responsibility for their own mistakes? I think your perception of irony may be misplaced.

Best Solution

The best way to avoid the whole mess is to quit playing industry(read "popular music") copyright material.
We have open source for a reason.Much music is out there from bands dying to be heard and will release under an openmusic or other GNU-like license.
Since the Industry(read RIAA,Major labels,Career leeches)has caused this legislation in order to ruin our internet and benefit themselves,let them play with themselves,for themselves till no one is listening but themselves.
Lose the middleman(Industry) and embrace open music.
We are just as able to attract bands as they are.They do it to build their wealth while eliminating competition(us),we can do it to free music for our posterity and livelyhood.
Kind of ridiculous when you think about them,they tell us what is popular and hip since they decided so and we pay them to do it while real talent is exchanged for ease of promotion.
Time to take it back folks and quit worrying about being regulated.

Re:Video Killed the Radio Star

Dunno about you but I prefer music in the background than devoting all my time to watching it. I can't listen to rock music by watching lots of videos, I'd have to search for and play the video to listen to it. Radio 1, Video 0. Besides, video is only good for hit singles.