It was just a coincidence that yesterday, the day that may have sealed the fate of Internet broadcasting in the United States, was also the opening of the Copyright Board of Canada hearing to establish fees for music on the Internet.

I was at hearing representing community and campus radio, one of the few non-lawyers in the room. The witnesses presented by Canada's performance rights organization, SOCAN, are being questioned aggressively by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, CBC, CRIA, Apple, and others. The stakes are obviously quite high, as some form of Internet broadcasting may replace terrestrial broadcasting as WiFi bandwidth and availability continues to increase.

Under the current copyright fee structure, radio stations pay a set percentage of their budget to SOCAN for the right to broadcast music. The most significant change to fee structures that SOCAN is proposing is the addition of a minimum fee: anyone who streams music in Canada would be required to pay at least $200 a month.

While the minimum fee won’t be as crippling to small netcasters as similar fees in the United States, it will still drive a great number of them offline.

At the hearing I represent the entire community-oriented radio sector in Canada, which consists of over 140 radio stations. For the past thirty years, campus and community radio has been Canada's incubator for new and emerging musicians. Countless major label and independent artists first received exposure and support from community radio. But this role is endangered by the new minimum fees, and the hearing over the next two weeks will go a long way to determining whether or not small campus and community radio stations, and small music podcasters, will be able to broadcast their programming using the Internet.

Initially I found little logical basis for the charges proposed under Tariff 22. The minimum fee that SOCAN proposed was the same for everyone: small podcasters, campus radio, the CBC, gaming Web sites, and big commercial broadcasters like Standard and CHUM. However, I think SOCAN’s objective is to create an artificial minimum value for the music it represents. Internet streams and podcasts are much less expensive to produce and distribute than terrestrial radio. While I think of the new milieu as allowing more voices into the audio media space, SOCAN no doubt sees only the possibility of higher profits for commercial media as distribution costs fall.

SOCAN’s proposed minimum, $200 (or $90) a month, might not seem like much, but let’s put it in context. The station I work with, CHUO-FM in Ottawa, pays SOCAN 1.9% of gross annual operating costs of about $250,000, resulting in a fee of around $4750 a year. Under Tariff 22, and assuming reasonable Web site expenses, CHUO would pay the minimum fee, which would amount to $2400 a year, increasing total copyright fees to SOCAN by 50%. This seems clearly out of proportion with community radio’s use of music.

And CHUO is actually one of Canada's larger community radio stations. There are very many small campus and community stations in Canada that operate on a yearly budget of only a few thousand dollars. A small station with a $10,000 in annual expenses would pay $190 for terrestrial broadcasting rights, but $2400 a year for Internet broadcasting, a 1200% increase.

For any campus or community station, Internet broadcasting is not a matter of extending offerings or reaching a greater audience. They are simply following their existing audience as their listening habits change. Terrestrial radio listening has, for many years, been slowly declining in Canada. This has been an especially pronounced among youth, the principle listeners to community radio. I’ve had first hand experience with the change in university student listening habits in the past few years as they have moved away from FM radio and embraced the iPod and the PC.

If SOCAN’s fee is approved as is, the result will be the effective silencing of non-commercial Internet music broadcasting in Canada. Most community radio, and probably all music podcasters, will simply stop creating and sharing their programming online. This will mean less Canadian music generally, and much less emerging and alternative music, available not just to Canadians who want to hear it, but to a broader global audience.