Broadcast Law Blog

JUNE 8, 2010

According to a letter from the Copyright Office that has recently been made public, the economic troubles of broadcasters, which have been used to argue against the imposition of a performance royalty for the use of sound recordings by radio stations , are cyclical and are largely over. Thus, argues the letter, the improvement in the fortunes of radio stations merits a reexamination of whether the Performance Rights Act imposing such a royalty should be adopted.

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The Paralegal Resource

DECEMBER 21, 2010

IntroductionPeople who search the Internet for free legal forms often find the experience to be a bit frustrating. While there are some legal forms available, often the search engine results for a search for a "free legal form" lead to a site which sells forms. Even when a free or sample form is provided, it may not fit the needs of the person seeking the form, or may be written for the laws of a different state.

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Broadcast Law Blog

AUGUST 16, 2010

So you want to start streaming your radio station on the Internet ? Or maybe you want to start a whole new Internet radio station. In a session at last week's Texas Association of Broadcasters Annual Convention in Austin, Dave Oxenford talked about the legal considerations starting an Internet radio station, while Chris Dusterhoff of Bryan Broadcasting in Bryan/College Station, Texas talked about some of the technical and business issues in doing so.

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Broadcast Law Blog

AUGUST 16, 2010

So you want to start streaming your radio station on the Internet ? Or maybe you want to start a whole new Internet radio station. In a session at last week's Texas Association of Broadcasters Annual Convention in Austin, Dave Oxenford talked about the legal considerations starting an Internet radio station, while Chris Dusterhoff of Bryan Broadcasting in Bryan/College Station, Texas talked about some of the technical and business issues in doing so.

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Broadcast Law Blog

MAY 19, 2010

Last week, a US District Court Judge adopted a new interim rate to be paid by commercial radio broadcasters to ASCAP for the use of ASCAP-licensed music by over-the-air radio stations, reducing the fees paid by the industry by about $40 million dollars, or about 20% of the total that had been paid by the industry under the rate deal that expired at the end of 2009.

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Broadcast Law Blog

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

Two FCC cases were released last week fining broadcasters for violations of the FCC rule against broadcasting a telephone call (or recording a call for broadcast purposes) without first obtaining the permission of the person at the other end of the call. In one case, a licensee was fined $16,000 for phoning a woman, pretending to be a hospital calling with news that her husband had been in a motorcycle accident and had died, The FCC refused to reduce or eliminate the fine because the call was ma

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Broadcast Law Blog

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

According to British press reports , Warner Music's CEO Edger Bronfman Jr. stated that it will cease making its music available to advertising supported streaming music sites. This has prompted some questions about how this decision would affect services such as Pandora , Slacker, Accuradio and other Internet radio companies - would it deny them access to substantial amounts of music?

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Broadcast Law Blog

OCTOBER 10, 2010

Last week, the Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force asked for comments on the relationship between the protection of copyrighted content on the Internet and the effect of such protections on technology innovation and the expectations of consumers. The purpose of the inquiry is to develop a report to be circulated among the various government departments that have power over the enforcement of copyrights and the development of rules and regulations that deal with copyrighted materi

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Broadcast Law Blog

MARCH 16, 2010

The FCC today released its National Broadband Plan to Congress, and in it spelled out its suggestions for the future of television. Facilitating the deployment of ubiquitous, dependable wireless broadband service is identified as a fundamental goal of the Commission’s proposals. The authors of the Commission’s report have viewed the problems experienced by some wireless broadband providers in major markets as indicative of a coming shortage in wireless capacity.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 3, 2010

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the CALM Act, directing the Federal Communications Commission to adopt regulations controlling the volume of commercials on television broadcast stations, cable systems, satellite, and other multichannel video programming providers. This bill was passed by the Senate in September. Once signed by the President, the Federal Communications Commission will be required to adopt a rule to implement the legislation within one year, and the rule is to becom

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 14, 2010

The Copyright Royalty Board today released its Determination of Rates for noninteractive webcasting services for the period from 2011-2015. These rates will form the default rates for webcasters who have not opted into one of the many voluntary agreements negotiated last year under the Webcaster Settlement Act (see our summaries of the Pureplay webcaster deal here , the Broadcasters settlement here , the Small Webcasters or "microcaster" settlement here , the noncommercial webcasters s

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Broadcast Law Blog

MARCH 23, 2010

In recent weeks, SoundExchange has begun to send letters to broadcasters who are streaming their signals on the Internet without paying their SoundExchange royalties. Despite all of the publicity about Internet radio royalties and the controversy about the rates for those royalties, there still seem to be webcasters unfamiliar with their obligations to SoundExchange.

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Broadcast Law Blog

OCTOBER 25, 2010

The NAB Radio Board today voted to adopt a Terms Sheet to offer to the musicFirst Coalition which, if agreed to by musicFirst and adopted by Congress, will settle the contentious issue of whether to impose a sound recording performance royalty (the "performance tax") on over-the-air broadcasters. If adopted, that will mean that broadcasters in the United States, for the first time, will pay a royalty to artists and record labels, in addition to the royalties paid to ASCAP, BMI and SESA

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 21, 2010

The broadcast trade press has recently been full of talk of the possibility of reaching a settlement with the recording industry on the adoption of a Performance Royalty for broadcast stations -paying performers and record companies for the use of music by radio stations (on top of the fees already paid through ASCAP, BMI and SESAC to composers). The latest controversy was set off by comments made at the Conclave Radio Conference by Bonneville Radio's CEO Bruce Reese, who has also been prominent

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 21, 2010

The broadcast trade press has recently been full of talk of the possibility of reaching a settlement with the recording industry on the adoption of a Performance Royalty for broadcast stations -paying performers and record companies for the use of music by radio stations (on top of the fees already paid through ASCAP, BMI and SESAC to composers). The latest controversy was set off by comments made at the Conclave Radio Conference by Bonneville Radio's CEO Bruce Reese, who has also been prominent

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 13, 2010

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit today struck down the FCC's indecency rules , finding that the rules were so vague as to not put broadcasters on notice of what programming was prohibited and what was permitted. Today's decision was reached following a remand of this case to the Second Circuit by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's decision did not resolve all questions about the FCC's rules, instead only deciding that the lower court's prior decision voiding the rules was not j

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Broadcast Law Blog

AUGUST 4, 2010

Congress last week adopted a bill important to all US media companies that produce content that can be received overseas. This would include anyone with content on their website (including user generated content) that could potentially give rise to a legal judgment overseas. As explained in detail in Davis Wright Tremaine's memo on the act - the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act (“SPEECH Act”) - companies and individuals were bringing

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Broadcast Law Blog

MARCH 9, 2010

In one more indication that the Broadcast Performance Royalty (or " performance tax " as opponents of the legislation call it) is not dead yet is an article in yesterday's New York Times reviewing the issues at stake in the proceeding. What was perhaps most interesting about that article was the fact that it appeared only one page away from an article about Internet Radio service Pandora , and a discussion of how that hugely popular service was almost driven out of business by music ro

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Broadcast Law Blog

JANUARY 26, 2010

With the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics less than 2 weeks away, and March Madness not far behind, we once again need to remind our readers that all three are trademarked terms, meaning that their use, particularly for commercial purposes, is limited. We've wrote here last year about the use of the term "Super Bowl" in commercials, and about the use of "Olympics" two years ago ( here ).

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Broadcast Law Blog

MAY 24, 2010

In a very cryptic announcement , the Chairs of the House and Senate commerce committees, and the Chairs of the subcommittees dealing specifically with communications matters, have announced that they are beginning the process of rewriting the Communications Act of 1934 , the Act which governs regulation of broadcasters as well as telecommunications, satellite and mobile communications entities.

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Broadcast Law Blog

OCTOBER 31, 2010

The Copyright Office has just released a Notice of Inquiry asking whether Federal protection should be extended to sound recordings recorded prior to 1972. A sound recording is a song as recorded by a particular artist. Sound recordings were first protected under Federal law in 1972. Prior to that, unauthorized recordings or reproductions of an artist's recoding were policed under various state criminal and civil law.

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Broadcast Law Blog

AUGUST 4, 2010

Congress last week adopted a bill important to all US media companies that produce content that can be received overseas. This would include anyone with content on their website (including user generated content) that could potentially give rise to a legal judgment overseas. As explained in detail in Davis Wright Tremaine's memo on the act - the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act (“SPEECH Act”) - companies and individuals were bringing

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Litigation Litigating Court Legal 64

Broadcast Law Blog

MARCH 18, 2010

The.co top level domain (TLD) is being opened to the general public, and one can envision a run on registrations similar to that experienced for.com. It is easy to see why the Colombia country code, formerly available in that country only, may become very popular in the US and elsewhere. For one thing,co is the standard abbreviation for "company.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 7, 2010

In a speech given last week, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called for a new regime to review the public interest performance of broadcasters - suggesting that license renewal become a more rigorous exercise for radio and television operators. In his address called " Getting Media Right, A Call to Action ", given to the Columbia University School of Journalism, Copps specifically suggested a "Public Value Test" for broadcasters when they file their license renewals.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 2, 2010

A recent FCC decision fining a station $10,000 for having an unattended main studio provides a good explanation of the staffing requirements for the main studio of broadcast stations. While the fine in this case was evident - FCC inspectors having twice visited the main studio of a station to find no one there, and a representative of the licensee admitting to the FCC that the studio was not regularly manned as the licensee did not know that there was such a requirement - the decision explains t

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