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What's the DMCA? Position Paper TAKE ACTION! Links

The Digital Millinium Copyright Act ("DMCA") has put all Educational and Community radio webcasts in jeopardy.


The DMCA was passed by congress in 1998. The DMCA provides a means for record labels and recording artists to collect a copyright fee for the use of recorded material when used on the internet. These fees are in addition to the fees that are paid to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.

Here are the specifics of what the DMCA means to you.

  • Stations need to pay a $20 fee to the US copyright office and file an "Initial Notice of Digital Transmissions of Sound Recordings Under Statutory license". The form is available at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/licensing/notice.pdf . If you are streaming and have not done this, you should take a look at the copyright office comments on the topic.

  • Programming restrictions.

    A. No interactivity. This becomes problematic if a listener makes a request and can expect to hear that song within a relatively short period of time.

    B. If you stream in house, you are restricted in the number of songs you can play from the same album/artist.
    Specifically... no more than 3 songs and no more than 2 in a row from a recording or no more than 4 songs and no more than 3 in a row from the same recording artist or set of sound recordings sold as a unit (box set).

    C. No advance notice of songs, except in an illustrative manner or in at an unspecified future time.

    D. Archived material also has restrictions, but I won't go into detail.

    E. Repeated programs are also restricted.

    F. Restrictions on ads that appear simultaneously with the copyrighted material. I thought D,E & F are probably not significant enough to this group to elaborate on at this point.

  • . Presentation on the Web

    A. You can't cause the users browser to automatically be forwarded to another url .

    B. Where possible you must prevent users from recording your stream.

    C. Information concerning the recording, including the artist, title and album. Exemptions include third party servers and where the technology is not common in the marketplace.

  • Fees. If the DMCA is upheld, broadcasters want to pay a fee of $0.0015 per music webcast listener hour. The RIAA is looking for $0.004 per streamed performance, or per song per listener. Don't ask me to explain how these are supposed to be calculated! Another proposal is to base the fee on a percentage of revenue from the web site. Until the copyright office makes a decision, we won't know which formula will be used.

  • Record Keeping. It is possible that you will need to file monthly reports which include title, artist, retail album title, label, catalog number, International Standard Recording Code, if available and feasible, date and time.
Back to the home page for other relevant links.

If you want to read the US copyright office SUMMARY of the DMCA, click here .

To read the full text, click here


The position paper seeking relief for Educational and Community webcasters has been endorsed by...