Thursday, May 2, 2002

Listeners Respond as College Radio Stations Join Copyright-Fee Protest By DAN CARNEVALE Some college radio stations stopped playing music over the Internet Wednesday to protest a proposal to impose new fees and reporting requirements on radio stations that broadcast online. Thousands of would-be listeners responded by asking Congress to intervene. More than 50 radio stations took part in the protest, pulling the plug on their Internet transmissions in a "Day of Silence" that also involved hundreds of commercial stations across the country. Protesters were trying to draw attention to a recommendation made to the U.S. Copyright Office by a federal arbitrator. Under the proposal, commercial radio stations that offer simultaneous Internet transmission would pay seven-hundredths of a cent per listener for every song they play. Stations that transmit online only would pay fourteen-hundredths of a cent per listener per song. And licensed noncommercial radio stations that have simultaneous Internet transmissions -- including college stations -- would pay two-hundredths of a cent per listener per song. All stations that broadcast online would have to pay a minimum $500 fee annually to the recording industry. All the fees would be retroactive to October 1998, when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act went into effect. The Copyright Office has until May 21 to decide whether to accept the proposal, which would create rules to carry out the provisions of the copyright act. The act also restricts how many songs stations can play online from one artist or album within a period of time. College stations complain both that the proposed fees are too high and that the record-keeping requirements in the proposal would be difficult to meet. But recording-industry officials who pushed for the law say the requirements will help protect artists' copyrights, which can easily be infringed through the digital dissemination of music and other content over the Internet. As listeners found that their radio stations weren't Webcasting music, many of them used online services to contact members of Congress to complain. Lightningcast Inc. allows people to fax a form letter to federal legislators about the proposal. On Wednesday, the company was receiving about 500 requests an hour, and was on track to send about 5,000 faxes in the course of the day, said Ethan Evans, vice president for engineering at Lightningcast. That's about the same number of requests the company received during the entire month of April, he said. Some radio stations have already shut down their Internet transmissions permanently, fearing the retroactive fees permitted in the copyright act. The radio stations that are still broadcasting online organized the "Mayday" protest, said Will Robedee, vice chairman of Collegiate Broadcasters Inc. "Different stations are doing it in different ways," Mr. Robedee said. "Some have pulled their streams altogether. Some are broadcasting informational announcements." Mr. Robedee is also general manager of Rice University's KTRU, which ran a loop of a 28-minute announcement online about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in lieu of playing music. Joel Willer, general manager of KXUL at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, said that pulling the plug on the Internet transmission had not angered the station's audience, and that most people who went to the station's Web site had begun contacting members of Congress about the proposed regulations. "It has generated a lot of activity," Mr. Willer said. "There are a lot of people who are, fortunately, taking action, so the message is getting out there." Background articles from The Chronicle: College Broadcasters Fear Tracking Rule May Force an End to Webcasts (4/26/2002) Proposed Fees for Broadcasting Songs Online Worry College Radio Officials (3/8/2002) Campus Radio Station Dumps Internet Broadcasts Because of Uncertainty Over Fees (9/28/2001) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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