Fair Play Fair Pay Act 'Politically Challenging' But Policy 'No-Brainer,' AEI Fellow Says

A serious push to enact the Fair Play Fair Pay Act (HR-1836) “will be politically challenging,” said Tom Sydnor, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute's Center for Internet, Communications and Technology, in a Tuesday blog post. “Nevertheless, from international, national, and economic perspectives, it remains what it has always been -- a 'public-policy no-brainer.'” HR-1836, refiled in March (see 1703300064), would require most terrestrial radio stations to begin to pay performance royalties. Attempts to enact a terrestrial performance right have been lightning rods for broadcaster criticism (see 1702020064 and 1703030059). The “principle of technological neutrality” created in the 1976 Copyright Act “strongly suggests the propriety of eliminating the analog-broadcast-radio exception to [U.S.] public performance rights,” Sydnor said. “It makes no sense for [U.S.] copyright laws to give -- for free -- to radio broadcasters who use old, analog technologies public-performance rights that providers of satellite or internet-based radio-like services must pay for under existing [U.S.] compulsory licenses.” U.S. copyright laws should be “just as applicable and broadly construed as applied to later-developed 21st-century distribution technologies as they were to distribution technologies developed and deployed well before 1976,” Sydnor said.