US challenge to Internet royalties ruling

The Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling would greatly increase the amount of royalties that online music broadcasters would need to pay to record labels and performers as well as put unreasonable demands on them to track how many songs were listened to by exactly how many individuals online, reports The Globe and Mail. Under a previous arrangement, which expired at the end of 2005, broadcasters and online companies such as Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.\'s AOL unit could pay royalties based on estimates of how many songs were played over a given period of time, or a \'tuning hour\', as opposed to counting every single song. Jonathan Potter, the executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents major online companies affected by the decision, asked that the judges specifically allow a per-tuning-hour approximation measure for paying the royalties. National Public Radio said in its filing that it also intended, in due course, to appeal the overall decision by the copyright judges to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. Full report in The Globe and Mail