Web Radio's Last Stand

from the more-reasons-why-the-DMCA-sucks dept

We were recently talking about why the DMCA sucks. Here's yet another example (in case you weren't convinced yet). Salon is running a good interview with the program director of a popular internet radio station that will be in serious trouble if the new recommendation for music royalties, based on the DMCA goes into effect. This non-commercial volunteer radio station currently pays about $1,000 per year in BMI and ASCAP fees for the music it plays. The new ruling would mean they would have to pay $1,000 a day to the record labels (not the artists). He points out that the folks who wrote the DMCA simply assumed that "digital music" meant perfect copies and theft. At the time they wrote the law they didn't know about streaming audio, and how it's different. A lot of people are now trying to get the law changed to take into account these things.

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