Broadcasting music in second life LEGALLY!

Record Companies (on behalf of artists and labels) these days are cutting down on broadcasters / streamers who illegally play music without paying royalties or licence fees to do so.. Some ending up with pretty large lawsuits! - The thing people dont realize is just because you have a song, you can freely re-broadcast it for the world to hear.. Sorry to inform you but that is wrong. When you purchase a song it entitles you to listen to it personally in your home or car. but NOT re-broadcast or distribute it to many locations at once (like how playing music over SL works) Therefore licencing fees and royalties are a must!

RadioOZ Entertainment is lucky enough to hold a broadcast licence and LEGALLY give you the best in dance music and top 40 music from around the world. Being covered in over 37 different countries via PPUK and WebRadioWorld.

Today we are here to offer you a pretty incredible offer!

If you contact me in-game and request that you would like to stream RadioOZ, We will give you free advertising on our station advertising your location/club/store.. whatever you have. These adds will be played once per hour. Catch is, You dont stream RadioOZ or stop streaming RadioOZ, we stop playing your add... So essentially its all free!! no $ or L$ being exchanged!

How simple does that sound!

Enquire Today - IM Pomfus Diller

RadioOZ Entertainment is a Registered Station and pays royalties to the artists via PPLUK and WebRadioWorld and is legal and legitimate.

http://www.radiooz.net

Wrong Area.. and I'm not terribly fond of Spam either Live365 here along with using a legit SL streamer.

not trying to spam.. IF i were spamming (which im not) id be doing it in every forum lol.

Live365 is also a great source. and they also do offer broadcasting licences which is good to see

Just trying to get the word out about illegal broadcasting and hoping to save a few $ instead of getting potentially sued!

Well, even if not trying, you succeeded anyway. It's still spam; it's just not cross-posted spam.

Try the Services forum down about 12 or so.

advertising goods and/or services in an inappropriate forum == spam

or better, try reading the damn stickies at the top of the forum... say, the second one from the bottom

I'm not a DJ, nor do I broadcast anything but, just out of curiosity, I have to ask. If in RL it is ok to buy a bunch of CDs and then have your friends come over to listen to them why is it then wrong to do the same thing in SL?

because according to theory the music streamed into sl can be intercepted by anybody thru shoutcast so your not playing it for a limited audience

If you have a radio at work and you share a room with other colleges, in theory your suppose to have a broadcasting license too.

I'm not sure what "share a room with other colleges" means, let alone why it's relevant.

However, the part about having a radio at work isn't quite true, at least in the US. There are explicit exceptions written into the copyright law, based on the square footage of the establishment, the number of speakers being used, and the nature of the establishment. (Restaurants are different from retail stores.)

UK info:

http://www.ppluk.com/en/Music-Users/Playing-Music-and-Videos-In-Public/

According to the PPLUK web site, the United States is not on the list of countries that are covered. That seems like a fairly significant omission.

because if they are in the same room at a home its classed as private use.. where as if its distributed over the net or or a club, you need to hold a licence to broadcast/re-distribute.

Im not from the United States so it does not affect me.
So that quote still stands.

If i was living inside of USA and broadcasting to a server within USA then yes, i would need to get a licence that covers coverage in USA.

I have a significant question about this.

The US copyright law defines a public performance this way:

This only defines what a public performance is, it doesn't say when such performances are infringement. However, the interesting part is in paragraph 2, where it says "to the public". I haven't found any formal definition of that phrase, and I don't know whether it's been addressed by the courts in this context.

In the case of SL, a typical situation doesn't publish the URL of the streaming server. It's easy enough to find out once you have that connection, but only by using tools that are arguably not common, consumer-oriented tools. If you don't use SL at all, there's essentially no way to find that stream other than by accident, lucky random searching of known stream services, or being given the information by someone else.

Without knowing how the courts would interpret "to the public", it's conceivable to me that a simple broadcast within SL, where the parcel media URL is set to hidden, and people are only invited to it by word of mouth (i.e., no advertising), would not be considered "to the public." This is total conjecture on my part, applies only to US law, IANAL, and if anyone has any authoritative references on this, I'd love to see it.

As for the theory described in the quoted post, the real reason is that the recording industry has more successful lobbyists than both the webcasting industry and ordinary consumers. It's an arbitrary theory, inconsistently applied. For years, ordinary radio stations have never had to pay royalties for the performers (only the songwriters), because they were much more powerful than the recording artists until music labels started consolidating. The recording industry is now trying to change that. At least for this debate, the lobbyists are likely to be evenly matched.

As a practical matter, you're probably right for now. But legally, I'm not so sure. If you're located in a different country, streaming up to a Shoutcast server located in that country, but an SL user located in the US connects to that Shoutcast server, then there's a significant question of who has jurisdiction, and whether that's even a case of infringement. You certainly need to assume that the Shoutcast servers you use are broadcasting to the US, unless they actively filter out US IP addresses.

This is another issue currently being debated at international levels. Copyright owners obviously want to get royalties based on the country where they'll make the most profit.

In any event, you're trying to offer this service to anyone in SL, which means you're offering it to people who live in the US and are likely to have listeners in the US. I have no doubt that they're subject to US royalties, in which case advertising that your service is legal or covers royalties without mentioning the lack of US coverage is misleading advertising.

my only issue with this is that things are not as clear as OP claimed. Thus, they are
1. causing conflict and rumors
2.and this would only benefit there pocket

I understand what your saying.

I had PPCA (The australian Division of PPLUK) on the phone about 2 hours ago and they told me that the main problem which they are targeting is "The origin of the music" to the "origin of the server"

So for example

myself (living in Australia) broadcasting the origin of the music (from my house in australia) to the shoutcast server (located in australia) requires the licence for that specific action... once its hit the shoutcast server thats where the issue finishes.

its not who in what country is listening to it, the issue is the actual broadcasting. from the place of dj to the stream server itself and if that person has a licence to do so.

catch my drift?

That may be how things are in Australia. It doesn't mean that US law or US companies agree. But regardless, if a DJ is in the US, the origin will be in the US. Using a Shoutcast server in a different country doesn't change that.

Here's an article, only a couple of years old, that illustrates the issue: http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2007/05/articles/internet-radio/pandora-blocks-international-internet-radio-streams-highlighting-royalty-confusion/ . As near as I can tell, Pandora still limits listeners to the US.

Basically the music industry have a stated goal of getting revenue for every song, every time it is played. Their strategies to fulfil this end including twisting interpretations of existing laws , getting new laws passed and making music media and formats have expiry periods which they can control (DRM). Do not assume anything about what you can do. Playing music industry controlled music these days is a very risky activity it seems.

I agree with everything except the 'twisting interpretations' part. I don't know of any case where there interpretations are unreasonable or twisted. It's just an unfortunate aspect of law that when Congress codified 'fair use', they defined it in such a way that leaves out many things that the average person would consider fair use.

That's OK, you don't have to agree with me, many don't.

dunno what client you're running but I can grab the stream address from any land I happen to be on, from the LL client in exactly two menus. I use it to play good streams through the local software, instead of running it through SL.

as for copyright law... it's a mess that does little to protect artists OR consumers, and mostly acts as territorial pissing ground for large companies.

and lets be honest, the odds of ANYONE coming after you because you stream you private music collection onto your private land for guests to hear in SL is so small and pointless as to be disregarded.... now if AC did it, they might try (and good luck to them, international law is an even bigger mess)