Press Releases

Contact:
Deborah Proctor, General Manager
William Woltz, Media Liaison
phone:
(919) 556-5178
fax:
(919) 556-9273
e-mail:
will@wcpe.org

November 15, 2002

For Immediate Release:

Helms bill to protect webcasters

A bill co-sponsored by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina will grant webcasters, including classical radio station WCPE, some breathing room in the matter of royalty payments for music streamed on the Internet.

The Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002, a bi-partisan bill sponsored by Helms and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, grants small webcasters a stay on paying the new fees pending the negotiation of rate agreements between the webcasters and the Recording Industry Association of America, the agency representing musical performers. Further, the bill authorizes those negotiations to take place, a step that had been precluded in July when the Librarian of Congress issued a schedule of rates for webcasters who had not already negotiated those agreements.

Deborah S. Proctor, station manager WCPE in Raleigh, NC, was one of a number a webcasters who pressed Washington for relief from the payments. She praised the measure and vowed to continue to work for fair regulations.

"We are committed to Internet broadcasting," she said Friday. "It is our mission. We will not give up on getting regulations enacted to guarantee that WCPE's webcasts can be open and accessible to everybody."

The bill gives small commercial webcasters until Dec. 15 to negotiate copyright agreements. Non-commercial webcasters, such as WCPE, have until May 31, 2003, to negotiate agreements. Payment of the fees, which were to have come due last month, is stayed through those respective periods.

The new royalties stem from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, a measure that governs the digital transmission of sound recordings.

Broadcasters have long payed royalties to songwriters and composers for playing their works on the air. However, broadcasters have been exempt from paying royalties to the performers on the recordings, under the belief that airplay promotes record sales.

The DMCA requires webcasters to pay royalties to peformers as well, and an arbitration panel set rates for those payments that would be more than 100 times the rates typically paid to composers and songwriters. The bill also created complicated reporting requirements for webcasters.

Some webcasters, facing annual payments in the five- to six-figure range, stopped streaming music on the Internet altogether.

Helms' bill passed both houses of Congress overnight Thursday. It is one of the final pieces of legislation involving Helms, a former broadcaster who is retiring after 30 years in the Senate.

WCPE thanks Senator Helms and other members of Congress that have worked to ensure fair regulations for webcasters, including Reps. David Price, Bob Etheridge, Cass Ballenger and Mike McIntyre, all of North Carolina, and Maruice Hinchey of New York and James Leach of Iowa.

89.7 FM WCPE is a l00% listener-supported non-profit radio station dedicated to bringing Great Classical Music to everyone 24 hours a day. You can hear our beautiful music on the Internet in RealAudio, Windows Media., QuickTime, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 streaming technologies. Our programming is also available on the Galaxy 5 Satellite, transponder 15, at 5.58 and 6.12 MHz. Owners of 4DTV receivers can listen on G5 958. For more information, call 800-556-5178, or visit us online at TheClassicalStation.org.

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