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Two RAIN readers (one a webcast listener, one in the industry)
have sent us copies of letters they wrote to members of Congress regarding
current laws which they feel are unfairly detrimental to webcasting.
Both gentlemen make excellent points in their well-written addresses,
and we appreciate them sharing their efforts with us. What follows
is the text of each of these letters:
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"Innovation
and consumer choice have been grossly harmed..."
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Honorable Congressman:
I am writing because I am very concerned about how a federal
law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 is impacting
an industry that I care deeply about -- Internet radio broadcasting.
The DMCA mandates that radio stations must pay extra fees to
the RIAA (Recording Industry Artists of America) when broadcasting
songs over the Internet. Quite wrongly, I believe, the DMCA legislation
and its fees apply to radio stations who broadcast their content free
of charge to consumers over the Internet.
I believe the original intention of the DMCA was to mandate
fees for digital broadcasting services such as MusicPlus and DMX that
charge monthly fees to users. However under the pressure of RIAA lobbying,
the 1998 DMCA legislation applied these fees to any broadcaster who
transmitted songs over the internet, regardless of whether users had
to pay a fee for content or not.
It has now become obvious that the DMCA and its requirements
for federal copyright law has imperiled the entire Internet broadcasting
industry.
In the past 6 months, over 1,000 licensed American radio stations
have ended the internet broadcasts of their over-the-air signals.
Several Internet streaming providers have gone out of business and
the financial viability of others is financially threatened by these
fees. Innovation and consumer choice are being grossly harmed by a
requirement which appears to have been written into law to financially
benefit a single powerful interest group -- the RIAA.
With the developments in copyright law now threatening the
financial viability and long-term future of Internet broadcasting,
the technological innovation and consumer choice building potential
of online broadcasting may be lost forever.
One of the things I found most exciting about Internet broadcasting
was its ability to allow a diversity of programming to reach people
no matter where they lived. When I lived and worked in Southwest Missouri,
a region of the country with a local media without any programming
targeted toward African-American, Hispanic, or Asian audiences, the
ability to listen to stations over the Internet from other parts of
the United States which programmed African-American music and musical
programming from other cultures was a true treasure.
In my hometown of Minnesota, a low-powered station that serves
the African-American community -- KMOJ-FM -- has been able to reach
a much wider audience of interested listeners in the Minneapolis-St.
Paul region and even out of state, despite its very weak over-the-air
signal that really only can effectively reach a portion of the City
of Minneapolis.
The DMCA legislation and the associated court decisions affirming
the right of the RIAA to collect fees for all Internet broadcasts
of music has dramatically affected the Internet broadcasting industry.
Many stations have decided they cannot afford to broadcast on the
internet any longer. The wonderful diversity in consumer choice that
was becoming available over the past few years is now disappearing
and may be irretrievably gone when the radio stations and streaming
service providers still online must start handing over the fee payments
and decide to give up broadcasting.
With the DMCA legislation of 1998, it is now very clear that
Congress wrote a very shortsighted and ill-conceived law that has
negatively impacted consumers and the development of an entire industry
in a very substantial fashion.
Some analysts are now predicting that with the fee requirement,
the only companies that will be able to afford to broadcast music
over the Internet will be the record companies themselves as they
are not subject to the fees. That's called a monopoly. I believe that
this may have been the intended outcome when the RIAA successfully
lobbied for the original fees provisions in the 1998 DMCA law. The
result of the 1998 legislation is becoming very clear, consumer choices
in listening are rapidly disappearing as the radio industry gets cold
feet and leaves the Internet.
This is America, laws shouldn't benefit single interest groups
like the RIAA and the record companies at the expense of millions
of consumers and entire industries (in this case licensed radio stations
and the internet streaming companies).
I implore you to introduce and build support for legislation
that will best protect the rights of consumers and the broadcasting
industry. The DMCA must be rewritten to exclude broadcasters who offer
their programming free of charge to Internet users from paying extra
fees to the RIAA. This rewrite must cover both Internet-only radio
stations and traditional broadcasters who make their signals available
to the public over the Internet. It is completely unfair to make broadcasters
pay extra fees for broadcasting on the Internet when they are not
charging consumers anything to access this content.
The DMCA needs to be amended promptly. As the copyright provisions
of the 1998 legislation are implemented they will very likely destroy
the entire internet broadcasting industry and leave consumers with
no more listening choices than they had before the mid-1990s and the
pre-Internet days. An amendment to the DMCA Act will reinvigorate
the internet radio industry and bring back the potential of the internet
to contribute in a very important way to diversity and consumer choice
in American broadcasting.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
|
"Utterly
contrary to free enterprise..."
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Dear Senator Hatch:
Thank you for your outstanding service to the people of America.
I am writing as a small market radio broadcaster, single station owner,
who would like to continue providing an audio stream simulcast of
our over-the-air analog broadcast for listeners on the Internet. We
program a unique oldies-based format employing local announcers without
utilizing any automation. In the area of the coastal Carolinas it
is called "beach music."
Although we are federally licensed and already pay music licensing
fees, recent legislation (the DMCA), U.S. Copyright Office rulings
(in December, 2000) and high profile court decisions (the Napster
case), have virtually outlawed the simultaneous streaming of our terrestrial
broadcast on the Internet.
For WGQR and any radio station that seriously examines the
current law and rulings, the fees we will have to pay (though still
not determined) and revised programming hoops we will have to jump
through, not to mention the digital equipment we will have to purchase
in order to display title/artist/record company, make playing the
beach music and oldies we love on the Internet a virtual impossibility.
Last night on C-span, I watched your hearings with great interest,
however, my specific topic was never addressed. I will tell you, with
all due respect, that the RIAA has done a real number on radio broadcasters.
It is not just the new fees that will be collected and distributed
to the record companies that I object to; it is the air play restrictions
on how many times a song or CD can be played, how it is to be introduced,
etc., and the requirement for a digital read-out of the artist, title
and copyright holder on our streaming window that borders on the ridiculous.
Senator Hatch, we still play 45's and LP's! Much of our CD library
is over ten years old! I can't justify manually encoding every song
played.
The more I study this issue, it is apparent that the major record
companies, almost acting alone, were able to rush self-interest protectionist
legislation through Congress in 1995 and 1998, that is so utterly
contrary to free enterprise and our system of justice.
Do your realize that you have created a defacto license, permitting
copyrighted music to be played, which only the few, huge record companies
can qualify for and afford? Time Warner or Sony, for example, don't
have to pay fees to play their own libraries. They don't even have
to get a compulsory license nor pay any fee whatsoever, if all they
play is their own library. A mere handful of major record companies
can put up giant Internet "radio stations" and force everyone else
off the digital net.
An audio stream, though digital, is hardly a quality reproduction;
with all the rapid technological advances, the latest stereo version
from Real Player or Media Player doesn't hold a candle to the sound
of a good CD; the broader the bandwidth used, the higher the cost.
Moreover, there is virtually no comparison in the number of
people who effortlessly receive a single station major market radio
broadcast over the air and the number of on line listeners who can
download a specific audio stream at the same time. One can number
in the millions without ever buffering or crashing. The other can
only number in the mere hundreds before the hardware and bandwidth
requirements make it economically unfeasible.
Napster's enabling was wrong and in that case, I can't blame
the record companies for their position and actions. But waiting for
a single specific song to download, is not at all the same thing as
"tuning in" to an audio stream. There is no doubt in my mind that
our small station's Internet audio stream, alone, stimulated thousands
of dollars in beach music CD sales without us earning a dime or seriously
trying to. The local record store we link to on our web page will
easily verify this.
People have been copying for their own personal use songs played
on radio stations since the first tape recorder. We've been doing
the same thing with movies on television. The recording industry certainly
hasn't been harmed. The motion picture industry certainly continues
to thrive. In both instances air play stimulated individual original
recording sales or in the case of movies, rentals.
What makes the Internet so different? That it is digital?
Remember when we went from AM to FM to High Fidelity to FM Stereo;
from black and white to color to HDTV. The technology has changed
and the quality has improved, but this is certainly not a good reason
to change all the rules.
Simply put: broadcasters who stream an identical simulcast
of their terrestrial signal should be exempt because we are already
subject to appropriate licensing and fees. Congress long ago decided
that the retransmission of a broadcast signal did not constitute a
separate performance. What makes the Internet so different?
Thank you for your consideration. I welcome the opportunity
to discuss my points in detail with the appropriate person of your
staff. I am enclosing a few sample email messages we have received.
Feel free to use my comments in anyway you see fit.
Lee W. Hauser
Owner/General Manager, WGQR
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R&R |
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RBR |
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Radio Ink |
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All Access |
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Inside Radio |
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Gavin |
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Ind.Stndard |
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Red Herring |
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Business 2.0 |
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(was eRadio) |
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(TazMedia) |
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FMQB |
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Everstream |
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iM Networks |
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RadioWave |
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RCS |
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StreamAudio |
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Dalet |
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Prophet |
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RCS |
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Billboard/Airplay Monitor Seminar |
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MOBE |
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NAB Radio Show |
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QuickTime Live! |
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Streaming Media West 2001 |
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iM Networks |
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Launch |
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MJI Interactive |
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MP3Radio.com |
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RockNews |
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RadioAMP |
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RadioWave |
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SBR Custom Channels |
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SoundsBig |
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Westwind Media |
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Amazon |
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CDNow |
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GotMerch |
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ubrandit |
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DMR UnityMail |
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MJI E-mail Director |
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Akoo |
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iM Remote Tuner |
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Access Broadcasting |
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Bandwear |
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Job Force Network |
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ABC Radio Networks |
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AMFM |
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Premiere |
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RadioWave |
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Arbitron Webcast Ratings |
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MediaMetrix |
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Nielsen/NetRatings |
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RateTheMusic.com |
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BroadcastSpots.com |
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BuyMedia |
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Interep Interactive |
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Lightningcast |
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MediaAmerica |
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RadioWave |
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Emblaze (WebRadio) |
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QuickTime |
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Real Networks |
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SurferNETWORK |
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Windows Media |
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Activate |
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Akamai Technologies |
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BroadcastURBAN |
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CLBN |
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Everstream |
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iBeam |
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iM Networks |
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Intel |
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Live365 |
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RadioWave |
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StreamAudio |
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surferNETWORK |
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VitalStream |
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WarpRadio |
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WebRadio |
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Yahoo! Broadcast |
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Innuity Media Services |
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MJI Interactive |
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RDG |
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SiteShell |
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WebPresence |
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