American Internet radio royalties

[Avatar of Justice]

On Slashdot an article about the new Internet radio royalty fees came up today

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070416-internet-radio-dealt-severe-blow-as-copyright-board-rejects-appeal.html

I didn't really get exactly what's going and figured someone here would know more since Wikipedia and Google aren't really helping.

1) Does every American radio station have to pay a royalty to the recording industry?

2) If not, why in the hell would NPR care about this subject?

3)Why is some government board determining fees and prices? Whatever happened to market forces?

[zircon]

Basically, the copyright board determined that internet radio stations have to pay more money for playing the same music to the same audience they were playing to before. All American radio stations have to pay royalties anyway, it's just that internet ones will be paying more now - a LOT more.

Copyright is (and has always been) a federal issue and thus matters pertaining to it are typically regulated by federal bodies. This includes things like compulsory mechanical licensing rates. Our government has a vested interest in seeing the perpetuation of new creative works, so it does various things to ensure that more are created and distributed. Awarding the creators of new works is one way to try to do that. This new measure. is dumb however.

[Avatar of Justice]

Basically, the copyright board determined that internet radio stations have to pay more money for playing the same music to the same audience they were playing to before. All American radio stations have to pay royalties anyway, it's just that internet ones will be paying more now - a LOT more.

Copyright is (and has always been) a federal issue and thus matters pertaining to it are typically regulated by federal bodies. This includes things like compulsory mechanical licensing rates. Our government has a vested interest in seeing the perpetuation of new creative works, so it does various things to ensure that more are created and distributed. Awarding the creators of new works is one way to try to do that. This new measure. is dumb however.

So what I'm getting at is, say I make an Internet radio station of all public domain/my own material. Do I still pay a royalty? The article made it sound like all Internet radio stations are paying some industry concern regardless of what material they broadcast.

[zircon]

No, if you are not playing copyrighted material then you would not have to pay royalties on it. The reason you pay royalties on copyrighted material is because copyright owners have the exclusive right of performance, distribution, broadcast (etc). However, because the gov't doesn't want people to sit on their copyrights, they allow people to perform, broadcast, and otherwise use copyrighted music... provide they pay mandatory royalties when they do.

[Avatar of Justice]

So, what you're saying is that say I was playing your music on my radio station and you...don't like me or something. You can't actually force me to take it down, you can only force me to pay up? That's....interesting if I'm understanding you correctly.

[zircon]

Yeah, that's pretty much the case. Copyright law is funny sometimes. You could actually take any of my songs and re-record them yourself (eg. you can't use MY recordings) and sell them on a CD called "Avatar of Justice: Greatest Hits", provided you pay me a measly 9.1 cents per song per CD. So let's say you took 10 of my songs and sold 'em on a CD for $18. You'd only have to pay me 91 cents. The rest is profit.