Buma/Stemra wants to see money for links to radio streams

Buma/Stemra wants the website Op.fm, which offers links to radio streams, to pay royalties from now on. Although the site does not embed, linking in this case amounts to the same according to the copyright organization.

Buma/Stemra argues this in proceedings on the merits against Nederland.fm, a sister site of Op.fm, of the same owner. Unlike Op.fm, Nederland.fm does embedding and it has been known for some time that Buma/Stemra wants money from commercial sites that embed radio streams, for example. However, the fact that Buma/Stemra wants money for linking to streams is new. Jim Souren of both sites calls that “ridiculous.” “The radio stations benefit from linking, because they get more listeners,” says Souren. “And Buma/Stemra too.” Buma/Stemra also receives royalties from the radio stations.

According to Buma/Stemra spokesperson Bas Erlings, Op.fm actually does the same as Nederland.fm, even though there is no embedding. “The technology differs, but money is made with other people’s music,” says Erlings, referring to the ads on Op.fm. According to Erlings, it is now not the case that money has to be paid for every link to copyrighted music. “We wanted to have this specific case reviewed by the court, now that proceedings on the merits are ongoing.”

Souren states that it seems that Buma/Stemra thinks that the pop-ups on Op.fm are from the site itself, ‘but that is not the case’. He says Op.fm started as an ‘experiment’, but Nederland.fm would run ‘much better’ than the new site. On Nederland.fm, the user remains on the site itself if he clicks on radio streams.

In 2011, Buma/Stemra was still blunt in summary proceedings against Nederland.fm; the organization was declared inadmissible. As a result, the case was hardly dealt with substantively and the judge did not rule on the question of whether payment should be made for embedding. Buma/Stemra subsequently initiated proceedings on the merits, which are due on 26 July.

In 2009, Buma/Stemra still caused a lot of commotion when it argued for taxes on the embedding of audio content, including in YouTube streams. As a result of that fuss, the collecting society largely abandoned these plans, but embedding of radio streams must still be reimbursed, according to the organization.