The Plight of College Radio on the Internet

[Ramona_A_Stone]

DCMA could lead to "mass exodus from the Internet by college radio," warns student broadcast group

By: Jon Newton
2002-04-18

Student radio has always been one of the most interesting, most enervating sources not just for new (and old, come to that) music, but also for all kinds of free-flow comment on every subject under the sun - all without commercials.

With the advent of the Net, it took on an entirely new, extremely important, global reach but, "The voices of these nonprofit college broadcasters are likely to be silenced due to excessive royalty fees and oppressive administrative requirements proposed by the Copyright Office in response to requirements under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed by Congress in 1998," believe a group of college broadcasters.

Deeply loved by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which, in the person of RIAA ceo and president Hilary 'Reach Out' Rosen, has been solidly behind it since it was mooted, the DCMA purports to provide frameworks for licensing deals and anti-piracy measures in this digital age.

In reality, it's yet another bid by the dying record industry to acquire some sort of control over digital audio.

The RIAA wanted webcasters to tag each listener with a unique user identifier, as well as to submit detailed records of user information such as country of origin and local time zone. It was an major and unprecedented violation of listener privacy, as EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) senior IP attorney Fred von Lohmann put it.

Only the RIAA could come up with such an idea in the first place, but it was forced to abandon it, which it did in its usual fulsome manner. RIAA spokesman Steven Marks said the, "RIAA has simplified its proposal by dropping the listener log, which resulted in considerable confusion and criticism," adding winningly, "We look forward to working with webcasters on having these reasonable regulations adopted so that record labels and artists can begin receiving royalties."

But the RIAA's move is too little and too late. "It's nice to say 'sorry, we didn't mean it,' but because of their proposal, it's in the Copyright Office's proposed regulation," said von Lohmann.

In the meanwhile, the DCMA says webcasters must pay licensing fees to record companies and it would require college broadcasters to collect, "literally millions of pieces of data annually for the music aired by their stations," says Will Robedee, general manager of Rice University's KTRU and one of the organizers of a group effort to do something about the legislation.

"There will be a mass exodus from the Internet by college radio, because the proposed fees and reporting requirements are unattainable and unrealistic," says Robedee. "Stations that are not informed on the issue will be liable for fees they didn't even know they owe."

The group is made up of KALX , University of California, Berkeley; KDVS, University of California, Davis; KUCI, University of California, Irvine; KUCR, University of California, Riverside; KCSB, University of California, Santa Barbara; KZSC, University of California, Santa Cruz; KSPC, Pomona College, Claremont, California; KFJC, Foothill College, Los Altos, California; KZSU, Stanford University, Stanford, California; KXUL, University of Louisiana at Monroe; WFNP AM and FM, State University of New York, New Paltz; WSBF, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina; and, KTRU, Rice University, Houston, Texas.

And it's taken its case to the Copyright Office and to federal legislators in the form of comments filed in response to recordkeeping rules currently under consideration in Washington, DC.

In previous copyright policy decisions, both Congress and the Copyright Office have recognized the distinctive characteristics of educational radio stations and have adopted fees and administrative requirements which allow for the distribution of royalties to copyright owners. The college broadcasters hope for the same results now.

"College radio stations provide a broad range of programming that includes a wide variety of diverse music, interviews, public affairs programming, news, public service announcements and sports play-by-play," declares Sandra Wasson, general manager of KALX at the University of California, Berkeley. "College radio stations also serve as an educational outlet for not only the students involved, but as a service to the community at large."

The group says because of the ad-hoc nature of the programming at most college radio stations, the proposed regulations would overwhelm student and community volunteers at those stations and would heavily tax the stations' restricted budgets. "As noncommercial stations, we are limited by our federal licenses in our ability to raise new money," says Joel Willer, general manager of the University of Louisiana at Monroe's KXUL. "The proposed recordkeeping regulations are targeted at large commercial Web services, and are not appropriate for small nonprofit volunteer operations like college radio stations."

On February 20, 2002, the Copyright Office announced proposed royalty fees that the college broadcasters also fear could lead to the end of their Internet broadcasts. Because of the way Congress established the fee arbitration process, the college broadcasters and the general public now have no input into the ultimate decision about these fees, which must be finalized by the Librarian of Congress by the end of May.

When determined, the college radio stations and other webcasters will have to pay royalty fees retroactively to 1998, says the broadcast group.

The complete text of the comments the college broadcasters filed with the Copyright Office is available at http://www.ulm.edu/~willer/copyright

Additional information about the DMCA and webcasters' efforts to save Internet broadcasts is available at:

http://www.rice.edu/cb/sos
[url]http://www.saveinternetradio.org/[url]
http://www.kurthanson.com/
http://www.musicianslobby.com/webcasting.htm
http://www.save-the-music.org/
http://www.beethoven.com/copyright.htm
http://www.live365.com/features/carp
http://www.radioparadise.com/?content=web_radio