Copyright Office Rejects CARP Recommendations

dave-fu writes "This just in: webcasters can breathe a sigh of relief as common sense and good taste has won out over stuffed suits and greased pockets--CARP has been rejected. If you weren't aware of it, CARP would have imposed exorbitant fees on webcasters, effectively killing webcasting radiostations, or at least preventing them from playing all (American) copyrighted music." See our previous story, or saveinternetradio.org, or read through the Copyright Office page linked above for background information. I wouldn't rejoice just yet - while webcasters argued that the proposed rates were way too high, the RIAA argued that they were way too low. There will still be royalty rates set by the Copyright Office, and the final rates may not be anything to cheer about.

What they would have required....

[lemonhed]

The requirements under CARP

A) The name of the service
B) The channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station id)
C) The type of program (Archived/Looped/Live)
D) Date of Transmission
E) Time of Transmission
F) Time zone of origination of Transmission
G) Numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program
H) Duration of transmission (to nearest second)
I) Sound Recording Title
J) The ISRC code of the recording
K) The release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case of compilation albums, the release year of the album and copyright date of the track
L) Featured recording artist
M) Retail album title
N) The recording Label
O) The UPC code of the retail album
P) The catalog number
Q) The copyright owner information
R) The musical genre of the channel or program (station format)

And a listener's log listing:
1) The name of the service or entity
2) The channel or program
3) the date and time that the user logged in (the user's timezone)
4) the date and time that the user logged out (the user's timezone)
5) The time zone where the signal was received (user)
6) Unique User identifier
7) The country in which the user received the transmissions

This is VERY Good News

[floppy ears]

The CARP fees were totally outrageious. Their purpose was (or, is) to destroy Internet radio. This would leave the major labels with virtually no competition to their radio monopoly.As an independent artist, it's good to hear at least some occasional good news.

NPR Coverage

[sphix42]

Diana Rehm covered this yesterday. There's an audio link here [wamu.org]

an accounting nigthmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing this was rejected. It would have been an accounting impossibility.

I run a net-radio over UDP. Which means, I know how many packets I send out, but not how many are recieved by listeners, or even how many people are trying to listen (if someone changes the station, we may not be notified). Additionally, we can send to independent retransmission sites that relay it onto even more listeners. Commercial radio stations get reasonalby accurate statistics on listenership. We can't. How could we make a good-faith guess at our numbers?

Re:Good, but...

[akb]

I don't see why they just couldn't use the same ASCAP/BMI stuff that they use for normal radio and apply it to internet radio also.

Web radio stations are already supposed to pay ASCAP/BMI, this is on top of and far more than those fees.

I wish people would take it upon themselves to be more informed before posting.

Re:Why is the government involved?

[Silverhammer]

Isn't the use of copyrighted works a matter of getting permission from the rights holder? Can't the rights holder insist on whatever royalty payment system he feels is appropriate?

17 USC 115. Scope of exclusive rights in nondramatic musical works: Compulsory license for making and distributing phonorecords [copyright.gov]

Re:College radiostation's view

[johnpaul191]

the whole thing is damn scary.... i work at WKDU in Philly. Drexel U college radio. we broadcast FM, but have also been webcasting for a few years. the requirements they wanted were financially impossible as well as technically. unlike crappy top 40 radio, we do not have a pre-pregrammed rotation of songs from a hard drive. we play records. many of the records are released by artists themselves and only 500 or 1,000 exist in the world. there is no way to send out the track data while the song is streaming when you play records. i would say over half of our DJs mostly play records. 90% of the reggae we have is from old 7"s, the dance DJs mix live during their sets, the punk DJs play CDs if the stuff is new, but our record library goes back to the 60s and is full of good vinyl. there is absolutately no way to digitize it.
the regualtions they were/are shooting for are totally targetted at mainstream commercial stations. i think in the process they wanted to take out all small, low budget internet only stations.
a few years ago we pondered ditching the music that is copywritten and therefore falls under this proposal. it's not really possible. a lot of indie music is registered, plus all it takes is one band doing one cover song to blow the whole thing. ARGH!
hopefully the revised deal will make more sense to non-commercial stations.

Re:Whatever happened to MBONE?

[akb]

The original MBONE's routing architecture wasn't scalable. More sophisticated routing schemes have been devised fairly recently but to my knowledge there are next to no ISPs that offer multicast connectivity to consumers.

Marshal Eubanks of Multicast Tech [multicasttech.com] did an interview on cnet radio (go here [online-tonight.com] and search for multicast) he was pretty optimistic about multicast being deployed. He gave the startling figure that 20% of broadband users had access to the multicast internet. I was shocked by this because I have scoured the 'net looking for a consumer isp that would offer it to consumers and haven't found anything. Anyone have any info?

Current CARP rejected, ruling due in 30 days.

[rustman]

You may have read today that the Librarian of Congress, based upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, issued an Order rejecting the Panel's determination proposing rates and terms for these licenses. In such cases, the law provides that the Librarian shall issue his final determination within 30 days of his decision to reject the Panel's proposed rates and terms. The final determination is due on June 20, 2002.

We hope this means that the Librarian has realized that not all current parties were properly represented at the CARP hearings, and the proposed rates and reporting requirements were unreasonable and did not represent a market rate.

Webcasters want a royalty rate that is fair and equitable to all sides - a rate based on revenues, in the 3% range, much like the royalties paid to the composers of the songs now through ASCAP and BMI. The rejected proposal would have killed the market by wiping out most if not all of the industry.

Webcasters also want reduced reporting requirements - Song Name, Artist, Album and Label where available. Not the 25 or so data points asked for by the RIAA.

We do not know what will happen next. This ruling may even mean that another CARP hearing will be held, this time we hope it will be more accessible to small internet broadcasters. (Previous CARPs required all participants to share the costs associated with it, which came out to about $300,000 for each participant.)

But internet broadcasters are happy that we can stay on the air for another 30 days. If the decision went the other way, many stations would have started shutting down this week.

Re:Encouraging people into piracy...

[Tiado]

So if the RIAA forces these high royalties on internet radio stations, then there'll be less stations to listen to, less variety, so less people will be satisfied with the selection. Soooooo, that would just encourage more people to just download MP3s so they can listen to what they want...

The RIAA also wanted to make the distribution of MP3 impossible by firing through the SSSCA to implement technology limitations that keep you from copying ANY music, also they wanted to plunge their dirty hands into the making of the Homeland Security bill. Their contribution to the bill was to make music to be considered "an act of terrorism" [I had a link to a news article but now I can't find it].

So any way you look at it, if (when?) the RIAA has their way, you'll have no choice except to be stuck with them.