Save Internet Radio!

ismaelson

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From the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, May 12, 2002 (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...12/PK198486.DTL)

May Day had a special meaning for online music fans this year, as hundreds of online radio outlets stopped the music and observed a "day of silence" to call attention to a proposed law that might shut them down forever.

Independent Internet radio could become history on May 21 if the Library of Congress accepts its Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel's recommendations for radio royalty rates. A little background: In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which established that Internet-only Webcasters must pay an additional "performance royalty" for playing copyrighted music. But the royalty rate of 14 cents per song, per listener (7 cents per song for commercial radio station simulcasts and 2 cents per song for noncommercial radio simulcasts), is far more than most Webcasters and community- based radio stations can afford, and royalties would be retroactive from October 1998.

Drafted at the height of music industry paranoia over the Internet, the law maintains that streamed Webcasts offer "perfect" digital copies that could cut into CD sales. But as anyone who has ever listened to online radio will agree, streamed sound is nowhere near "perfect" enough for bootlegging. Hearing streaming music doesn't encourage theft -- like broadcast radio, it turns listeners on to new music and inspires them to go out and buy the real thing.

"There's a significant difference between downloading and file sharing piracy and independent Webcasters who intend to pay for the use of the copyright," points out John Jeffrey, general counsel for Live365 (http://www.live365.com). "But we've ended up with a royalties rate that doesn't reflect the way similar copyrights are treated around the world."

With billions in cash flow, conglomerates such as AOL and Yahoo aren't the ones in peril if the copyright panel recommendations are made law. It's the Internet-only Webcasters who will be bankrupted and vanish. It's the smaller, community-based stations like KUSF -- whose simulcasts from www.kusf.org are on hiatus since its Web host panicked over the copyright panel's report and shut down -- that will be silenced and their diverse programming that will be lost.

"We need the Internet -- there are listeners in other parts of the country and the world who want to listen to us," says KUSF DJ Terror Bull Ted. "They're trying to get small people like us to fork over cash that we can't afford."

Internet radio has been a boon to everyone, from jazz and world music fans to classical aficionados and news buffs. It offers programming unbounded by geography, corporate restrictions, annoying commercials and the whims of popular taste. Silencing the small-scale, low-budget mavericks who make this possible would be more than unjust. It would be flat-out tragic.

What can Internet radio fans do? Call their senators and Congress people, for one thing. For another, visit the Save Internet Radio site at http://www.saveinternetradio.org for more suggestions and background information on the digital copyright act.
 
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