DUTCH DEMAND PODCASTING ROYALTIES

Dutch copyright collecting society, Buma/Stemra, is seeing compensation for royalties lost through podcasting according to DMEurope.com. Podcasting enables producers to make audio content available over the internet. Subscribers can then subscribe to feeds that automatically download new programs. Burma/Stemra claims that podcasting should be treated the same as webcasting and that permission must be sought from the copyright owner before use is made of audio material. As an interim measure until January 2006, the society is arguing that professional podcasters should pay 85 euros per month while amateurs should pay up to 35 euros per month.

The IPKat is firmly of the opinion that copyright shouldn’t go out the window just because there’s a new way of infringing it. However, he advises copyright owners to think seriously about how they can work with, rather than hinder, new technology if they want to avoid the sort of problems that they were faced with at the height of illegal music downloading.