When thousands of Internet radio stations simultaneously cease streaming music Wednesday in protest over the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) recommendations on royalty rates, Alexandra, Va.-based Lightningcast, Inc., will be speaking up for the webcasters who claim the CARP recommendations threaten the financial viability of Internet radio.

Lightningcast, an advertising technology and services provider for interactive broadcasters, has been supporting the anti-CARP efforts by serving millions of in-stream commercials that allow individual listeners to contact their congressperson in the first- ever partnership effort of Internet broadcasting and grassroots lobbying. Streaming these commercials on the Lightningcast network, which represents approximately 40 percent of the interactive broadcasting audience, will reach an estimated 20 million listeners.

The 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) dictates that webcasters must pay royalties to record labels for the music they play. However, the DMCA guaranteed that webcasters could receive an automatic license to those copyrighted works -- known in the broadcasting industry as a statutory license -- at a rate to be determined later by the U.S. Copyright Office but to be retroactive to October, 1988, if they followed certain rules (called the "performance compliment" -- e.g., no more than three songs by the same artist within two hours).

The Copyright office first gave the record companies and webcasters a chance to negotiate an agreement among themselves. Record companies asked for 15 percent of revenues while webcasters wanted to pay something closer to the 3 percent of revenues that they pay composers. They could not come to terms. Last year, the Copyright Office established CARP to resolve the issue and held six months of hearings.

The CARP issued its ruling on Feb. 20, recommending a royalty rate of .14 cents per song per listener for Internet-only webcasters, with royalties, as per the DMCA, due retroactively to October 1998. If Copyright Office accepts the CARP's recommendation, many observers believe that the decision will effectively kill Internet radio, as the retroactively-owed fees would bankrupt all but the three or four largest Internet-only webcasters.

Since then, in part prompted by the Lightningcast advertising efforts, individual listeners have sent more than 20,000 letters to Congress. This grassroots effort has resulted in joint letters from more than 20 Congressional representatives being delivered to the Librarian of Congress that question the recommended royalty rate. Lightningcast has also made its technology available to interactive broadcasters anywhere so that their audiences can send messages to Congress that express their viewpoints on the CARP ruling.

"This is not a use we originally envisioned for our technology; yet, with such a critical issue facing Internet broadcasters and threatening our industry, I'm delighted we could be of service to affiliates and non- affiliates alike," said Lightningcast's Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Tom Des Jardins.

Using Lightningcast's technology, a listener will hear a commercial on a favorite Internet station that explains the "punitive aspects" of the CARP recommendation for Internet broadcasters. The message contains a call to action encouraging the listener to click and fax a message to their congressperson. Then, with Lightningcast's MediaThunder advanced targeting and the listener's profile data, Lightningcast creates and sends a personalized fax to the listener's two U.S. Senators and their Congressional Representatives.

LATEST NEWS

UCSD Plans First Flash-Based Supercomputer
Digging Into N.Y.'s Antitrust Suit Against Intel
Analyst: Sony-Ericsson's Android Bid Is Late
Coupon Site Targets Black Friday, Cyber Monday
Microsoft Sites Up Big in Time Spent Online

Des Jardins also visited Capitol Hill to raise awareness and offer support to the grassroots opposition. Lightningcast will visit the Hill again on May 9 as a precursor to the CARP Roundtable on Capitol Hill later in May.