For the porposes of my project, am I gonna get into any trouble for broadcasting copyrighted material such as music, standup comedy or clips of other radio shows? Would it be a problem if I wasnt doing a project, but just running a station from my house?
For the porposes of my project, am I gonna get into any trouble for broadcasting copyrighted material such as music, standup comedy or clips of other radio shows? Would it be a problem if I wasnt doing a project, but just running a station from my house?
Hi!
If you read through the past posts in this forum you'll find a wealth of information about music rights. In some respects it is a gray area. A lot of part 15 stations simply use royalty free material and programs. My opinion is to avoid copyrighted material without consent to use. This is especially important when talking about retransmitting a radio program from another station. The FCC has some very strong restrictions on retransmission...they just may not all apply to part 15 operations.
For our station we have deliberately avoided licensed music. We have permission to rebroadcast some programming and the balance is locally produced.
In my opinion if you are only covering a short distance on your own property music licensing seems silly. However if you are covering a larger area then you'll need to evaluate your specific situation. If you go to what is currently page 5 or so of this forum you'll find some useful information.
If you're going with a large area, your best bet is to go with music licensing (if you're using copyrighted material), this will cover music, not certain as to rebroadcasts of radio shows.
You can go to this page:
http://www.bmi.com/licensing/broadcaster/radio/index.asp
and download the "Part 15 License" and fill itout, send it in...check pricing.