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Education Your Rights Online

Ohio Schools Drop Webcasts Because Of DMCA 43

An anonymous reader writes "The Toledo Blade is reporting that several Ohio universities have dropped their internet radio broadcasts due to the DMCA and CARP fees. It mentions how conviently parents, students and administrators used to be able to keep track of school news from accross the country and world. Now their silent thanks to the money and time that would be needed to comply with the new regulations."
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Ohio Schools Drop Webcasts Because Of DMCA

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  • Us Too (Score:2, Interesting)

    by joeljkp ( 254783 )
    This happened to my college radio station also. Mississippi State University. Closed down this Spring.
    • They do this with normal broadcasts too... let's say you go to a university that is considering starting a radio station. Now assume that your university gets donations from the local stations/Streamcast or whoever. Do they want the competition? Will they make their views known? Did the radio station ever materialize? It happened where I live at least once in the last couple years. Result: no student station. Its not just webcasts, guys.
    • Decent article came out this weekend here [siliconvalley.com] about college webcasting troubles. Lot's of college stations are gonna fold up shop (the webcasting part at least) because of this it looks like.

      I remember when the rates were being discussed on NPR with a recording industry exec there, he flat out stated that the rates being proposed would only be a guideline and that they would gladly negotiate lower fees or possibly drop them all together for non profits (and also even commercial stations who played the music they "want promoted"). It sure sounds like they forgot all about that part now that the fees are set doesn't it?
  • Yeah (Score:2, Funny)

    Serves them right, those evil pirates were a threat to the music industry and artists creativity. One might even describe those webstations operators as terrorists! It's great to know that we can continue to pay $16 for our Avril Lavigne and NOW cd's. I mean, that Avril worked her way up through the ranks of the music business. She started off singing at local clubs with a band, and then she got her big break. Oh wait...my bad. She was most likely picked out of a pool of 300 other teenage girls. Whoopsie! But still, who's going to protect her from evil terrorist music pirates.
  • "The Toledo Blade is reporting that several Ohio universities have dropped their internet radio broadcasts due to the DMCA and CARP fees. It mentions how conviently parents, students and administrators used to be able to keep track of school news from accross the country and world. Now their silent thanks to the money and time that would be needed to comply with the new regulations."

    Without these stations, the qwality of edducation is droppinng as we speek!

    Editors: it is acceptable to correct spelling. Sometimes even to paraphrase. Without editing, you're just a glorified usenet feed.
  • by Directrix1 ( 157787 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @08:18PM (#4108829)
    Sure it sucks that they couldn't play music associated with the RIAA and junk. But they could probably play music from the local bands. This would be better for the community anyways. And why couldn't they just take the retarded mainstream music offline, and only have these useful college broadcasts like games and stuff that are so needed by everyone.

    Listeners need to quit crying, and producers need to quit scurrying away like scared animals at the thought of having to change their content because of those DREADED COPYRIGHTS. Give me a break people. Alternative content exists.
    • You don't get CARP. It doesn't matter if they play all non-RIAA content - unless they've got logs from the past three years to prove it.

      Plus, the law is set up to assume that absolutely all music in the world comes from the RIAA, and then they have some weird agency that would supposedly give the money back to whoever it was supposed to go to in those cases where it doesn't.
    • Some artists like being played on the radio (MP3 or otherwise). If they don't care, can they play them? There are plenty of underground artists and some bigger ones like Jen Chapin who I am sure wouldn't care at all if they were played on a streaming radio station.

      I wonder when MP3.com will be hit hard with RIAA stuff, because the Artists submit their stuff willingly...

  • It's a university, dadgummit...isn't thare a music school thair? can't they generate they're own content? Why use someone else's copyrighted content? and thaer's lots and lots of artists out their who want theighr own stuff to get exposure. Thaiy'd probly be willing to reduce or waive their royalties to do so.
  • I have a few questions about CARP fee's and how they may affect my listening. How does this affect webstations overseas? And what about non-riaa content? I mean...it seems like the answers are obvious, no they don't affect other countries, and they shouldn't affect non-riaa music. However when I check the webpages of some of my favorite webcasters, who are usually located in Britain or Spain, I get bombarded with notices about CARP and wanting me to fax my congressman. What's the deal?
  • All the more reason small radio stations need to start broadcasting nothing but independent artists. C'mon now. A college town is the perfect place to do this with all the local bands, university concerts, etc.
  • As anyone from Cincinnati can attest, the local Miami college radio station 97X [woxy.com] (remember Dustin Hoffman in Rainman saying "Bam! The future of rock-n-roll!") is better than any other station here in town. The amount of cds in my collection that I bought after hearing it on that station, and that never would've gotten mainstream play is staggering. Unfortunately, due to reception problems and signal obstruction, I have to stream them here at work even in the same town.

    Recently, they sent out a poll asking whether listeners would be willing to pay a small monthly amount in order for them to continue broadcasting online. Although they haven't announced the results yet, I'm sure that many people, like me, indicated that they'd be willing to pay to have great music available to them. I said that $5/month sounded reasonable, but I might be willing to go higher.

    So if the station in the article is really that important to all those students, and those alum, maybe they can find ways of financing it. Besides monthly subscriptions, you could have a fundraiser with a band, sell tshirts, get more sponsors, whatever. I'm not familiar with the entire situation just from the article, but it doesn't look like the school in question even tried to keep this venture going.
  • After actually reading the article I'm still not satisfied with the explanation. UT is dropping its internet broadcast due to music licensing fees. Ok, I understand the music licensing fee issue.

    What I don't understand are the user comments. They complain about losing school news and sports broadcasts. I don't see why the compromise of "stream sports and news, not music" isn't mentioned. Dropping the station just seems to be a gross overreaction to prove the point that the legislation sucks.

    Am I missing something?

  • It may seem like an overreaction on the part of the Ohio schools, but having worked for school districts over the years I can attest that they are run by what you might call "hall monitor" personalities. People whose first reaction to an idea is not, "What an interesting idea," but, "What rule does it break?" No matter how good an idea sounds or what the benefits would be, school district management people will go out of their way to make sure everybody in the world has ample opportunity to throw in a monkey wrench. It's sort of a compulsive failure mentality, and it drives a lot of excellent people away from the world of education.

Order and simplification are the first steps toward mastery of a subject -- the actual enemy is the unknown. -- Thomas Mann

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