Please respect the copyrights of artists and their licensees. If
you want to distribute mp3 works of art, please get the
permission from the appropriate copyright holders. All
information contained on this site is copyrighted.
Complying with copyright laws
Musical compositions and sound recordings are creative works
that are protected by the copyright laws of the United States
(title 17, U.S. Code) and other countries. Under U.S. law, the
owner of a copyright has the exclusive right to (and to
authorize others to) reproduce the work, use parts of the work
in a new creation, distribute the work in whole or in part, and
to publicly display or perform the work (including on web pages
and through webcasting). With few exceptions, it is illegal to
reproduce, distribute or broadcast a sound recording without the
permission of the copyright owner. It is your responsibility to
comply with the copyright laws when you become a webcaster.
There have been recent amendments to the copyright law regarding
webcasting of sound recordings. These new provisions allow
webcasting under the terms of a statutory license, as a way to
help webcasters get permission without having to go to each
sound recording's owner. The statutory license, however, has
strict requirements that you must follow. Some of these
requirements include the payment of license fees, limitations on
the number of songs from the same album or artist that may be
played in a three hour period (called the sound recording
performance complement); a prohibition on publishing advance
playlists; and a requirement to identify the song, artist and
album on the website. There are other requirements as well. The
Recording Industry Association of America provides quite a bit
of information on copyright law as it applies to webcasting, and
both ASCAP and BMI have created license agreements that they are
willing to grant to webcasters that they believe conform to the
provisions of the new copyright rules for webcasting. For
additional information on the statutory license and other
aspects of webcasting, please visit the following sites:
If you are uncertain about what you can and cannot do, we
suggest you check with the copyright owner or the owner's
representatives (such as through the organizations above), or
consult a lawyer.
(Thanks to ShoutCast.Com for providing this information!)
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