Court Ruling Is Music To Ears Of Yahoo Launchcast Users

Score one for Webcasting: A New York federal appeals court has ruled in favor of Yahoo's Launchcast site, defeating "big music's" claim that it was owed copyright fees in addition to royalties.

Two years ago, a jury ruled that Launchcast, a webcasting service run by Yahoo's Launch Media Inc unit, did not provide listeners with enough control to be an "interactive service" that would mandate the copyright fees. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with that finding in this latest ruling, noting that Launchcast, "does not provide copyrighted sound recordings on request, nor does it transmit a program specially created for the user."

Yahoo's Launchcast is an internet radio website or "webcasting" service that lets users create "stations" that play songs that are within a particular genre or similar to a particular artist or song the user selects. Sony Music (which includes BMG, Arista and other recording companies) holds the copyrights in the sound recordings of some of the songs Launchcast plays for users, and brought the original suit against Yahoo.

In fact, the level of the user's ability to control what he or she hears is so low, ruled the court, that there is very little predictability associated with the songs heard over these individual stations.

According to the decision, "It appears the only thing a user can predict with certainty " the only thing the user can control " is that by rating a song at zero the user will not hear that song on that station again. But the ability not to listen to a particular song is certainly not a violation of a copyright holder's right to be compensated when the sound recording is played."

In effect, the degree of control is no different from a traditional (also known as a "terrestrial") radio listener preferring one music station over another.

Had Launchcast been found to be an interactive service, it would have been required to pay individual licensing fees to the copyright holders of the songs the webcasting service plays for its users. Because the court held Launchcast is not an interactive service, the webcasting service only required to pay a statutory licensing fee set by the Copyright Royalty Board.

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