Is Digital Radio a Goldmine for the Recording Industry? More on the RIAA quest for royalties.

In my previous post I reported that the RIAA has been trying to collect royalties from broadcast radio stations for over 26 years now. It’s been unsuccessful except in getting Congress to agree that Internet broadcasters should have to pay these royalties. And yet, it seems like there’s still hope for the RIAA to get their royalties from broadcast stations after all.

There’s an article on News.com today about digital radio, which is being rolled out in the UK. The article also offers up a quick overview of digital radio in the US, including satellite radio and IBOC.

Down towards the end the article notes the onging conversion of the US radio dial to digital, and brings up some of the possible consequences, especially:

“Digital conversion will put radio under the purview of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial 1998 law that some believe has greatly expanded the powers of copyright holders. “

In short, this means that when broadcasting in digital a traditional brodcast station indeed may have to pay royalties to the recording industry, just like an Internet webcaster. If the whole radio dial goes digital, then the royalties paid to record companies could skyrocket, as each broadcaster becomes liable for thousands to millions of dollars in royalty payments.

Of course, this is still speculation, and the article notes that the RIAA did not provide a representative to answer to this possibility, and a radio industry lawyer claimed that “there would be no significant changes between over-the-air analog and digital broadcasts.”

Nevertheless, it’s clear how the RIAA’s drive to control has many ramifications, several of which weren’t necessarily obvious to most observers. Although many have said that the recording industry has flubbed the transition to digital–especially by refusing to sell downloadable music–they sure as hell appear to have foreseen the transition of radio to digital, and therefore saw the need to ensure their control in that arena before it came to pass.

The question is: “Is it too late to stem the tide of control?”