Online Radio: Pandora’s Box?
Online radio is rife with Web 2.0 listeners. According to Techcrunch, content demand for two French-based online music entities, BlogMusik and RadioBlogClub, was so intense that both elected to go off-line this week in search of more robust and secure server space.
But What Right Do They Have?
Unfortunately Techcrunch was mislead by messages on both sites. Turns out the French Government organization SACEM—a regulating body representing original music composers, authors and publishers—mandated both companies go offline over usage fee disputes and copyright infringements.
The Irony of It All
Ironically, one commenter requested that Techcrunch remove a RadioBlogClub widget embedded in the article claiming it was illegally streaming a Prince tune.
Odder yet, Techcrunch France got the SACEM angle of the story correct (If you don’t read French, consider using the FireFox translator add-on we featured).
Pandora’s Box
Online radio is a burgeoning marketplace as suggested in our recent article about online radio sites Last.FM and Pandora.
But pressure to satiate the socially-driven, “I want it my way and I want it now” appetites of online listeners often leads to purveying ill-gotten content. And resolving Napster-like licensing and jurisdiction issues on the global stage remains an elusive task.
For now, I’m content to don my headphones, order up an up-tempo set on Last.FM and watch the drama unfold.
Image source: Patrick Q
March 16th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
On a related note, there’s a big risk that a lot of Internet radio stations will have to shut down because of royalty rates being imposed by the U.S. government. See http://www.savethestreams.org and http://www.di.fm/ for more information.