| rdfs:comment | - The U.S. Copyright Act allows one who wishes to use copyrighted material, in certain instances, to obtain a statutory license to do so. Ordinarily, royalties and licenses for the use of protected material are the product of direct negotiations between copyright owners and users. When a statutory, or compulsory, license is available, a permitted user need only adhere to statutory requirements, including payment of established royalty rates, to use the work.
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| abstract | - The U.S. Copyright Act allows one who wishes to use copyrighted material, in certain instances, to obtain a statutory license to do so. Ordinarily, royalties and licenses for the use of protected material are the product of direct negotiations between copyright owners and users. When a statutory, or compulsory, license is available, a permitted user need only adhere to statutory requirements, including payment of established royalty rates, to use the work. In 1998, in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Congress amended several statutory licensing statutes to provide for and clarify the treatment of different types of webcasting. Some transmissions of sound recordings are exempt from the public performance right, for example, a nonsubscription transmission; a retransmission of a radio station’s broadcast within 150 miles of its transmitter; and a transmission to a business establishment for use in the ordinary course of its business. In contrast, a digital transmission by an “interactive service” is not exempt from the public performance right, nor does it qualify for a compulsory license. The owner of an interactive service — one that enables a member of the public to request or customize the music that he or she receives — must negotiate a license, including royalty rates, directly with copyright owners. But, a category of webcasting that does qualify for a compulsory license is “an eligible nonsubscription transmission.” A subscription service is one that is limited to paying customers. Hence, webcasters who transmit music over the Internet on a nonsubscription, noninteractive basis may qualify for the statutory license under 17 U.S.C. §114(d). A licensee under Section 114 may also qualify for a statutory license under 17 U.S.C. §112(e) to make multiple “ephemeral” — or temporary — copies of sound recordings solely for the purpose of transmitting the work by an entity legally entitled to publicly perform it.
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