«
»

Intellectual Property and Culture

IP in the Press: Pay-per-listen ruling from the CRB

03.21.07 | 573 Comments

The Copyright Royalty Board, a panel within the Library of Congress, ruled on March 2 that broadcasters of radio over the web must pay a .08 cent fee – rising to .19 cents in 2010 – to the copyright owner every time a listener hears a song, the NYT reports. Futher, each channel must pay at least $500 to be able to broadcast any copyrighted material at all.

In an interesting way, this reflects the battle Litman discusses between new media and traditional media over digital use and the application of copyright law to it. Every time digital content is used,whether streaming or from a local hard drive, a "copy" of that content is technically made in the individuals consumer's RAM. The Copyright Royalty Board is here taking the stance that copyright owners are within rights to collect fees for every copy made in this way. It is important to note that the internet radio broadcasters pay a fee not for every song they broadcast, but for every listener that uses, or hears, that song. This is not the they way traditional broadcast radio licensing  works; CBS radio pays licensing fees for the limited rights to make internal copies of and to broadcast copyrighted works (the copies must be destroyed after a period of time). Because listener's of broadcast radio do not "make copies", the fee structure is not based on the number of listeners.  Massive copyright holding firms like major labels are making progress with this ruling towards an interpretation of digital copyright in a way that maximizes copyright holders' ability to control use in a historically unparalleled way.

Even in the internet radio case, one can see a deleterious impact on the cultural public sphere. The ruling that internet broadcasters must pay a fee of at least $500 to each copyright holding firm will limit the breadth of content that they can broadcast. For example, a small independent label may only posses copyright holdings on 35 artists' materials. Prior to the ruling, internet broadcasters were free to offer listeners a mix of say, 12 songs from 6 of those artists, and pay a minimal fee per song. And they could do so for many, many different such small labels. The fact that under the new ruling they must pay at least $500 to each label whose material they use will greatly curtail the selection of labels, and of music, made available to listeners. By contrast, a major label – the organizations most aggressively battling for enhance control – may hold rights to 2,500 different artist's materials. The ruling strongly encourages internet radio to emphasis major label content in their broadcast; the minimum fee of $500 grants access to more songs from a major than from an indie label.  Often times, however, artists on major labels are tightly constrained, even scripted, in the messages and music they output. The privileging the ruling places on  major content thus also narrows the range of musical messages available to the public. This in turn discourages the fermenting of broader creativity, inspiration and innovation in cultural public sphere.

Thee issue is far form decided with the CRB ruling, however, and close attention must be payed to the continuing debate over digital copyright, attention I hope to contribute to duly here and elsewhere.

573 Comments

megaphone

Spam sandwich.

Some HTML is alright. Links and such.

:

:

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word


«
»