Is there any way to avoid the fee?

There are a couple of things we'll do. Right now, we play mostly material that's on small independent record labels or artists that don't have record contracts in place. That's about half the music we play; the other half of the music is on more significant record labels, although it gets confusing to see what is on the top five record labels, because they've been acquiring a lot of smaller labels.

What the CARP ruling affects is what is known as the DMCA compulsory license, meaning that the copyright holders have to give it to you if you pay this amount. They can't selectively say: "You can't broadcast this on your radio station." So, as long as you pay these fees, you can play any material. The CARP ruling concerns what the cost is to play back copyrighted materials, if you sign this compulsory license agreement, which we actually did not sign.

Without that you have to negotiate deals separately with all the copyright holders. That's what we're doing. With about two-thirds of the music we play, we have asked permission from the copyright holders -- the smaller labels or independent artists themselves -- to play it on the air. The other third of the music, it's been hard to reach the people, and so we haven't asked, or we've asked and we've heard nothing back.

So, contacting the record labels and artists themselves is your other option?

That is a way out of it. But the problem with that is that the law is very vague about this. For example, I can go to someone and I can get permission from them to play their songs, but then they will go and sell the rights to their music to a major record label who will come back and say: "We didn't give you permission to play the songs."

You have to have a very detailed legal agreement with them, which isn't going to happen. Small record companies aren't going to sign a five-page legal agreement that defines them giving you rights to play their song in perpetuity. Quite often, they know that a lot of their money will be made when a major label comes to them in the future and says: "We want to buy the rights to this album."

In the early days when we had so many people coming to us asking us to play their music, a lot of it was from the underground music scene; it was kind of like an unspoken thing that everyone wanted as much exposure of their music as possible. A lot of them we had unspoken agreements with.

What stage is the ruling at now?

The DMCA is what makes CARP happen. So, the legislation is already in effect. But the CARP rulings just recently happened less than a month ago. It still has an approval phase to go through, but generally it's thought that the Copyright Office will approve whatever the recommendation is.

What do you think the effect is going to be on some of the smaller stations?

Well, now, when the fees suddenly go up to $350,000 a year or more, then it means basically that there's no way that a lot of stations can continue broadcasting. Their alternative is to move to start playing music purely by just unsigned artists.

Do you think that the Recording Industry Association of America is going to come after these tiny stations, run out of someone's bedroom, and actually try to enforce this?

It will probably be kind of like the way they've gone after people who have done pirate MP3 sites. If they're really small and they have a really small audience, the RIAA probably won't notice them. The ones that are going to get hurt the most are the ones that have an average audience of more than 100 people or so.

Already on the mailing lists that I'm on with a lot of other broadcasters, a lot of them just say: "Well, forget it. I'm shutting my station down. I can't risk any of this." I know of four or five smaller stations that have already shut down just out of fear right now.

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