Due to possible legal issues, WSUP has temporarily stopped webcasting.

The radio station had been webcasting music and formatted material since January 2006, Arthur Ranney, former WSUP adviser, said. To start webcasting in 2006, WSUP paid a flat rate of $250 and a $25 filing fee to Sound Exchange.

Sound Exchange is a non-profit organization that collects royalties for recording copyright owners.

WSUP tried to renew their license for webcasting in January 2007, but was not able to receive a license until May 2007, Ranney said. The delay was caused when Sound Exchange raised the flat rate to $500 and also charged WSUP a retroactive charge of $250 for 2006.

In 2008, Sound Exchange wanted specific information of certain albums, artists and titles; how many people listened to those titles and what time they had listened to those titles, David Meinhardt, adviser of WSUP said. The software for the collecting of the information is expansive and WSUP doesn’t have it.

Sound Exchange wanted the information to calculate how much WSUP had to pay for royalties, Meinhardt said. Sound Exchange also wanted information about webcasting from previous years.

This process is usually done for commercial broadcasting entities. WSUP is a non-commercial broadcast entity like Wisconsin Public Radio, and Non Commercial Broadcast Entities usually pay a flat rate, Ranney said.

WSUP was unaware of the information Sound Exchange wanted for 2008, Meinhardt said.

WSUP does not have the software capable of completing such a task and does not have the personnel to complete the task by hand, Nick Henderson station manager for WSUP said.

To take a proactive approach, WSUP has temporarily shut down webcasting, Meinhardt said. WSUP is all for webcasting, but until it is 100 percent legal, webcasting is shut down.

Office of Information Technologies and members of WSUP are going over software options that are inexpensive and would allow WSUP to collect all the information required by Sound Exchange, Meinhardt said.

WSUP hopes to get webcasting back up and running soon, Meinhardt said. They are talking with UW-Platteville lawyers to make sure they are not in violation already.