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Librarian of Congress Accepts RoC, Rejects CARP
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posted by mpawlo
on Thursday June 20, @05:18PM
from the abbreviations-r-us dept.
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The Librarian of Congress has accepted the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights and rejected the rates and terms recommended by a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) for the statutory license for eligible nonsubscription services to perform sound recordings publicly by means of webcasting and the statutory license to make ephemeral recordings of sound recordings for use of sound recordings.
September 1, 2002 is the effective date of the rates. Further, webcasters and others using the statutory licenses will have to pay royalties for all of their activities under the licenses since October 28, 1998. UPDATE: Wired.com, The Washington Post, and News.com have coverage.
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Link provided by Nick Moffitt.
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Librarian of Congress Accepts RoC, Rejects CARP
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The Fine Print:
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I think that maybe a closer look shows that the CARP got exactly what it wanted:
" "Webcasters and broadcasters asked that the Librarian reject the CARP's approach and provide them with an option to pay a rate based on a percentage of their revenues, rather than a per-performance rate. However, the Panel concluded that a percentage of revenue approach was less desirable for a number of reasons. Those reasons
included the CARP's conclusion that a per-performance rate is directly tied to the right being licensed (i.e., the right of public performance). The CARP also observed that due to varying business models among webcasters, some of which offer features unrelated to music, identifying the relevant revenue base against which a percentage should be applied consistently would be complex and difficult [emphasis added]. Finally, the CARP noted that because many webcasters are currently generating very little revenue, a percentage of revenue rate would require copyright owners to allow extensive use of their property with little or no compensation [BULLSH^&* comment added]. The Librarian found these
conclusions reasonable and saw no reason to abandon the CARP's per performance approach."
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What is really a shame is that the webcasters couldn't propose a reasonable alternative to this decision. A much better tactic than going for percent of revenues would have been to go for a redefinition of "performance". It is the fact that performance is defined as a song streamed to a user that is the real problem. If "performance" was redefined to be a song played over the internet, regardless of the number of listeners, this would have greatly reduced the complexity of the issue and allows the webcasters to proposer reasonable fees. For example, you might still develop a sliding scale for the fees, such as Gross Revenues for the business 75K per year = song performance fee of $.02/song (for 15 songs/hr this is about $2600 per year)and then scale it up from there to a maximum of about $.05/song. The problem with linking the rate to the audience size is that the royalties then grow linearly with audience size, but revenue does not.
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If I'm not mistaken, these new rules mean that every non-commercial broadcaster on MP3.com must now pony up $500 just to be on the air, and then the additional per-stream royalty. This effectively puts a large majority of hobbyist broadcasters out of commission. I'm left wondering what logic the music industry could possibly have for wanting this.
Surely, if people are not making money off of the broadcasting, then there is no unjust enrichment. I think the big worry from the music industry is that people will rip the streams (as is certainly possible) to create MP3s, or perhaps that if there's a TON of great live streams out there, they won't need to buy so many CDs. These are the straws I grasp at in order to believe that the recording industry actually does have some degree of humanity left. Of course, I am increasingly led to believe that in fact they do not and are motivated merely by the goal of ensuring that NOBODY distributes "its" music but the big 5 labels and their chronies. And in turn, the motivation for that is, (a) myopia, stupidity, and a lack of understanding about technology, (b) greed, (c) meanness.
(and by the way...I have no idea how tracking revenues is a more complicated way of determining royalties than tracking the number of streams. The IRS legally requires the former and nobody will account for the latter.)
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Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
- Isaac Asimov
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