In a blow to the broadcasting industry, a federal circuit court in Pennsylvania has thrown out a challenge against the U.S. Copyright Office, which ruled late last year that radio stations must pay extra royalties to broadcast over the Internet. If the court ruling for National Association of Broadcasters v. Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. stands, the broadcasters must pay additional licensing fees to songwriters, music publishers and record companies. Thus, radio stations that have been employing "webcasts" may now face substantial additional fees to keep doing so.
The Copyright Office, in an earlier decision, kept the broadcasters from airing copyrighted material over the Internet under the existing licenses the broadcasting companies use to broadcast the same material over the "real" airwaves. Earlier this week U.S. District Judge Berle M. Schiller ruled that although it might make sense for Congress to treat Internet broadcasts in the same manner as traditional
