We have written much on the Copyright Royalty Board decision on Internet Radio Royalties, and have received many questions and comments on the decision.  To try to put all of the answers in one place, we have put together a comprehensive memo on the decision.  The entire memo can be found here. 

In the memo, we provide a background of the case, a summary of the decision, a discussion of what comes next, and answers to some commonly asked questions.  Those questions follow here, but for a full understanding of the case, we urge you to read the complete memo. 

 To whom does the decision apply? The Board’s decision covers only non-interactive webcasters operating pursuant to the statutory license. Essentially, a webcaster covered by this decision is one that operates like a radio station – where no listener can dictate which artists or songs he or she will hear (some limited degree of consumer influence is permitted, but a webcaster must comply with the restrictions set out in the Copyright statute). These restrictions forbid prior notification to the listeners of when any specific song will play, and restrict the number of songs by a specific artist that can be played. For more information on these restrictions, see our memo on Internet Radio – The Basics of Music Royalty Obligations.

Does the decision cover broadcasters who stream on the Internet? Yes, the decision does cover the Internet transmissions of the over-the-air content of broadcast stations. Continue Reading Copyright Royalty Board Decision on Music Royalties – Clarifying the Confusion

Last Monday, briefs were filed by the parties addressing the motions seeking rehearing of the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to dramatically raise the royalty rates paid for the use of a sound recording on an Internet radio station.  In its briefs opposing each of the webcasters’ rehearing motions, SoundExchange took a very aggressive position challenging the very right of the webcasters to raise their rehearing points.  Following the filing, SoundExchange issued another press release, quoting its President John Simson, "just because you don’ like the outcome of a fairly played game doesn’t mean that you should ask the referee to order the game to be replayed."  In fact, what the webcasters are really doing is asking for an instant replay review of an alleged winning touchdown.  Webcasters are arguing that the "officials" were mistaken in their initial determination, including arguments that the principal basis of the CRB decision, reliance on a SoundExchange expert witness who derived a model for determining what the royalties for noninteractive Internet radio should be based on what parties pay for music use in the interactive marketplace, was a fundamentally flawed model contradicted by one of SoundExchange’s own expert witnesses in the satellite radio royalty proceeding which is currently underway. 

SoundExchange spent much of its briefs challenging the right of the webcasters to raise their arguments – claiming that the webcasters should have raised their arguments at an earlier stage of the proceeding, that the webcasters’ arguments lacked supporting evidence, and even suggesting that the Broadcasters had breached the "protective order" in the satellite radio proceeding against the use of confidential material when the Broadcasters offered the evidence of the conflicting expert in the satellite radio proceeding.  Each of the webcasting parties amplified their arguments about various aspects of the decision – small webcasters suggesting that the Board should have recognized an "opt-in" category of webcasters who would pay royalties based on a percentage of their total revenue (avoiding many of the issues that the Board found with trying to compute a percentage of revenue for an entity that had multiple business lines), all webcasters challenging the $500 minimum fee per channel, and each arguing that there needed to be an aggregate tuning hour metric on which to compute royalties.  And, as set forth above, most interestingly, there was a fundamental issue raised by the Broadcasters, who discovered that a witness presented by SoundExchange in the CRB proceeding involving the royalties for satellite radio contradicted the premises of the SoundExchange expert in this proceeding on which the Board placed its greatest reliance in reaching its decision.

Continue Reading Briefs Filed With Copyright Royalty Board on Internet Radio Royalty Rehearing – SoundExchange Cries Foul

Two press releases on the Internet radio music royalty controversy were issued late last week from groups appealing to musicians  – and they couldn’t have been more different in tone.  The Future of Music Coalition, a group dedicated to voicing the opinions of musicians and citizens on Washington policy decisions regarding copyright and technology issues, released a well considered  position statement finding that webcasters – especially small commercial webcasters and noncommercial entities – "represent a rich and diverse set of listening opportunities" which provide opportunities for musicians by exposing listeners to music that is not heard elsewhere.  FMC suggests that multiple tiers of licensing are necessary so that all kinds of webcasters can continue to exist (unlike the one size fits all scheme adopted by the Copyright Royalty Board).  FMC urges SoundExchange and the webcasters to come to a settlement that will preserve webcasting while fairly compensating musicians.

By contrast, SoundExchange argues in its press release that some webcasters are acting in bad faith in arguing that the rates are too high – and are "engaged in a campaign of misinformation about the process, the decision itself, and the impact of the decision on the participants."  The Press Release itself is subtitled "Suggests Some Webcasters Not Telling the Truth About the Royalty Process."  The release promises an attached summary of the Board’s decision but, at the time of this posting, that summary was not apparent on the SoundExchange website.  The only misrepresentation cited by SoundExchange is the claim by webcasters that the process which arrived at the rates was unfair.  However, as pointed out by editor Kurt Hanson (a client of mine in this proceeding) on the Radio and Internet Newsletter site, here, a decision that overlooks its real world effects can fairly be characterized as being unfair.  Information about the real economics of the industry, which SoundExchange may not have appreciated, demonstrates that unfairness.Continue Reading A Tale of Two Press Releases – Who Is A Musician to Believe?

Monday was the deadline for the filing of Motions for Rehearing of the decision of the Copyright Royalty Board decision on Internet radio music royalties for 2006-2010.  As we have written before, the decision proposes significant increases in the royalties, particularly for independent webcasters who have up to now paid royalties on a percentage of revenue basis, rather than on the per song per listener basis set out in the CRB decision.  In motions filed today, many of the webcasters challenged specific aspects of the CRB decision.  And at least one party raised an issue that seems to contradict the very foundation of the Board’s decision.  Plus, in virtually all of the rehearing motions, the parties noted that additional issues may be raised on appeal to the US Court of Appeals, which do not need to be filed for several weeks.  

In the Motion filed by the Broadcasters’ group, it was argued that an expert witness offered by SoundExchange in the proceeding which is now underway to determine royalty rates for satellite radio contradicted some of the basic assumptions used by SoundExchange’s witness in this proceeding.  If the assumptions used by SoundExchange’s expert in the satellite proceeding were to be applied in this case, the royalties would actually decrease from those that were in effect before the Board’s decision. The assumptions used by the expert in the satellite proceeding seemed to confirm the claims offered by the webcaster’s witnesses in this proceeding.  Could this be a smoking gun that could undermine the decision of the Board?  We’ll have to see if the Board accepts this new evidence which seems to challenge the very foundation of the webcasting decision.

As the appeals are addressed to the CRB itself, asking that it reconsider or review its own decision, most of the other issues focused on limited matters that the parties thought that the Board might want to clarify as to avoid unintended consequences.  For instance, the appeals of the DiMA group, representing large webcasters, and the appeal that I worked on for the small commercial webcasters, both addressed the issue of the $500 per channel minimum fee which, if it was to be paid on literally every unique channel streamed by a service, could mean that some webcasters could pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars as a minimum fee.  Some webcasters (like Pandora) serve up a unique stream for every listener.  Virtually all of the parties also addressed the question of whether most webcasters could even compute a royalty based on a per song per listener basis.  This is especially true for retroactive payments, when many webcasters did not keep such records (especially those small commercial webcasters paying on a percentage of revenue basis, or noncommercial webcasters who had payed on a flat fee basis).  Continue Reading Motions for Rehearing of Copyright Royalty Decision Filed – And the Foundation of that Decision is Challenged

For those of you tired of reading about the recent Copyright Royalty Board decision on Internet Radio royalties, you can instead listen to a discussion of those royalties.  An interview that I did with World Internet Radio is available to download and listen on their website, at http://www.wirnonline.com/downloads.php.  The interview covers questions about…

Following the recent Copyright Royalty Board decision, about which we have written several times this week, many individuals and companies have asked what can be done either to reverse the decision, or to operate in a world where the decision becomes effective.   While it is much too early to access all of the options, I thought that I would outline some of the possibilities.

First, Petitions for Rehearing of the Decision can be filed by the parties to the case within 15 days of the release of the decision – by March 19.   As such a Petition asks the Board to determine that the conclusions it reached after several months of deliberation were wrong, this is an uphill battle. There is, however, a much greater possibility that the Board will clarify some of the more onerous ambiguities of the decision – such as the issue of what constitutes a "channel" or "station" to which the minimum fee attaches. 

 After Petitions for Rehearing are dealt with, the Library of Congress must publish the decision in the Federal Register. Within 30 days of such publication, parties can appeal the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The filing of a Notice of Appeal by that deadline merely starts the appellate process. The Court will establish a schedule for the case – setting dates for the filing of full legal briefs and responses to those briefs. The Court will have an oral argument after the briefs are filed. A decision will follow. In appellate cases, this process can easily take a year to complete.   In order to overturn the decision, the court must find that the decision was arbitrary and capricious – in essence that, when presented with the facts, no there was no reasonable way for the decision to turn out the way it did.  This is a high standard that must be achieved, but not one so high that appeals are never successful.  So there is always hope.

Continue Reading What Next for Internet Radio In Light of the Copyright Royalty Board Decision