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[IP] more on McAfee founder returns with 'legal p2p radio'





Begin forwarded message:

From: Rusty Hodge <rusty@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 10, 2004 6:08:12 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] McAfee founder returns with 'legal p2p radio'

The company's reckons it's safe to do so because it has acquired a non-interactive digital audio webcasting licence as mandated by the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). "This license pertains to the digital performance rights of sound recordings and the associated reporting and royalty payments to SoundExchange (the independent non-profit organization that represents over 500 record companies and associated labels)," Mercora says.

Interesting, this license requires them to pay per song, per listener fees of 0.75 cents (or $0.0075).

Sampath's service promises "no ad-ware, spy-ware, or other slimy gimmicks from us". Yet it's unclear where the money's coming from. We calculate Mercora will have paid at least $500 for a year's webcasting license, if it counts as a non-commercial webcaster. The fee rises if it becomes a "small" commercial webcaster or even a commercial organisation.

They'd have to be a 501(c)3 FCC licensed non-commercial broadcast station to get this rate.

The non commercial rate is also limited to the amount of concurrent listeners you can have (it's quite a low number) and the number of different simultaneous programs you can transmit.

Based on their proposal, they would need to get a small commercial webcaster licence which costs a minimum of $2000 a year, or aprox 11% of revenues, and your revenues and costs must be under $500,000 a year. After that point, you have use the per song, per listener costs.


Rusty Hodge
SomaFM.com

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SomaFM / Listener Supported Underground/Alternative Radio

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