BY PAUL MALONEY
It appears that the U.S. Copyright Office, in handing down a set of reporting requirements for Internet streamers that use copyrighted music, has almost unilaterally followed the wishes of the record industry.

What broadcasters are taking as a ridiculously onerous set of requirements for webcasting and streaming broadcast and satellite radio transmissions was released without fanfare in a February 7 document titled "Notice and Recordkeeping for Use of Sound Recordings Under Statutory License." Brian Parsons's RadioHorizon reports (here) that, "broadcasters, to say the least, are stunned" and "outraged."

Indeed, the Copyright Office document, in different sections, reads "in fashioning the proposed new regulations, the Office is adopting RIAA's recommended changes for recordkeeping requirements..," and "this approach follows RIAA's recommendation with regard to the recordkeeping requirements."

The report comes as webcasters and the record industry anxiously await the decision of the CARP arbitration panel, due this week, on the exact copyright royalty rate for streamed music.

The Copyright Office, on January 10, nullified a tentative streaming agreement between the RIAA and broadcasters (RAIN coverage here) that would have set royalty terms for streamed broadcasts. (The agreement was first reported in December -- see coverage here.)

The order requires the originating source of a webcast to provide to copyright holders no less than eighteen data points for every song streamed, including the "numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program," "the ISRC code of the recording," and the UPC code and catalog number of the retail album. Additionally, the Copyright Office honored an RIAA request that webcasters supply at least seven additional pieces of information on the receivers of the streamed content (listeners) -- such as the date and time the user logged in and out of the stream, the country and time zone of the listener, and a "unique user identifier."

Parsons's article, which concisely lists all of the requirements, goes on to say, "All of this information and more would be required to be in a specific data file format and reported."

The piece says broadcasters are up-in-arms over these obligations, calling them a "tremendous burden" which "involves collecting information that they just don't have." However, the Copyright Office (in the order) justifies the requirements as "reasonably based on the premise that the copyright owners need certain specific information to monitor compliance and use." The report supplies the RIAA argument that says the information is "'easily provided, not burdensome, and in fact, is currently provided by a number of licensees who have obtained licenses through negotiations with the RIAA...'"

Should "other interested parties...find the requirements too stringent and burdensome in spite of RIAA's assertions," the report continues, the office gives until March 11 to file comments, with "reply comments" due April 8.

The notice itself is available online in a text format here, and in Adobe .pdf format here. As of publication, there has yet been no online response from the NAB nor DiMA.

...

... At least on the surface, it seems likely that this order will bolster the argument that the record industry is trying to use the DMCA to hamper the efforts of independent webcasters and online music services. What legitimate need do copyright holders really have for the exact UPC code of the retail CD from which a song was streamed? If you work at a radio station (or group) with an entire music library on an automation system's hard drive, it would seem that you have a little work ahead of you -- in finding original UPC codes from the CD packaging (as if stations bought CDs retail), catalogue numbers, etc. And there must certainly be privacy and technology issues to deal with in tracking down specific information about listeners. Does the "unique user identifier" have something to do with the national ID cards we'll all soon be carrying? -- PM ...

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The January RAIN Vendor Guide: Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs help you capitalize on the value of your listener/user database. Give your audience members the incentives to become valued customers, and strengthen the bond between your product and your target demo through loyalty programs like these from the RAIN January Vendor Guide:

Loyalty programs

Access Broadcasting Inc. Access Broadcasting offers Internet solutions to help stations and broadcast groups increase the value of their advertising products and packages, manage and promote to their listeners, and increase revenues 5%-15%, for as low as just $99 per month. Fairwest It seems Tracy Johnson, Greg Strassell, Keith Clark, Tom Poleman, Bev Tilden, Jimmy deCastro, Carl Gardiner, Jeff McClusky, Rick Cummings, Angela Perrelli, Sammy Simpson, Mike Danger, Reid Reker, George Johns, Dave Charles…. must know something about loyalty. FMW eListenerSuite Great radio stations understand that their website is a doorway through which they can reach out to their most important listener who is already highly engaged with the station — the P1 listener contributing the most Time Spent Listening.

From The New York Times: "In their bitter battles against Napster and other free music downloading services, record company executives have wielded one moral argument that has placed their position beyond self-interest: the fans take the music without proper permission and don't pay the artists a dime.

"Last December, the major record labels responded with two Internet services of their own where fans pay monthly fees to download songs. Under this arrangement, however, the performers still don't get a dime: for each song downloaded, they stand to get only a fraction of a cent, according to the calculations of disgruntled managers and lawyers...

"The crux of the debate over artists' compensation involves whether they should get a licensing fee or a royalty payment.

"When their music is used in movies, in commercials and on Internet sites, artists are paid a licensing fee, which, after payments to the producer and the publisher, is split 50-50 between artist and label. Although Pressplay and MusicNet license the music, the bands are not paid a licensing fee. Instead, the labels pay their artists a standard royalty for each song accessed by a fan, as they would for a CD sold.

"This means that the artist gets on average less than 15 percent instead of 50 percent. But, out of that, 35 to 45 percent is deducted for standard CD expenses like packaging and promotional copies — expenses that obviously don't exist in the online world.

"As one rock manager computes it, if a consumer buys the standard Gold Plan on Pressplay, paying $19.95 for 75 songs downloaded to a hard drive and 750 streamed so that they can be heard only once, an artist, after these deductions, gets $.0023 per song downloaded. To earn a penny, more than four songs must be downloaded...

"The arguments the labels are using, said Jill Berliner, a leading music lawyer, are exactly the ones Napster made. 'And, from our perspective, if the technology is going to be out there and the artist isn't really going to make money, we'd prefer that our fans just get it for free,' she said."

This article appeared in yesterday's New York Times. To read it online, click here.

The Internet is continuing to grow at the same average rate it's maintained since the early 90s. Moreover, traffic growth will soon make pipelines built on today's networking technology insufficient.

Those are the findings of a recent study by Internet expert Dr. Lawrence Roberts, and quoted in a press release from Caspain Networks -- a network "infrastructure" company that, of course, would stand to profit from the need to upgrade networking services.

It's been speculated that the growth of the Internet has been slowing, as evidenced by falling revenues of service providers and the increase of available bandwidth on some networks. These factors, as well as fluctuations caused by seasonal variation and statistical anomaly, have led many to believe that the "boom" of growth of the Internet was subsiding.

But Roberts says, that in studying network traffic of 20 leading "tier 1" service provider networks, traffic on the Internet continues to triple every year.

See the press release from the Caspain Networks company here.