| News Publishers Look to Music Royalty Model |
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The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, June 4, 2009, 1:01 PM
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Newspaper publishers are looking to band together to demand payment from Web sites that use their content, The Wall Street Journal reports, in the same way that music publishers collect a fraction of a cent when their songs are played in public. According to experts, the publishers might be able to achieve this, as long as they're careful about violating antitrust law, which forbids teaming up in ways that drive up prices and limit consumers' options.
The music industry has been able to sidestep antitrust claims by limiting any single entity's control over access to songs. Under that model, media outlets can purchase a yearly license from the organizations that control public performance rights. These are the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and Broadcast Music Incorporated, which together represent the writers of millions of songs. Using a complicated formula, these organizations make sure that a major TV network pays more to use songs than a local bar.
The Journal says that Web sites that rerun whole stories or large portions of them are similar to radio stations and nightclubs. According to a study by tracking service Attributor, for each person who reads a story on an authorized Web site, five people access the same story on an unauthorized Web site. To stop this and demand payment for unauthorized use, news organizations would need an intermediary similar to Ascap and BMI, The Journal says.
Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal.
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