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Opponents of the proposed rules fear that, taken together, they ultimately could lead to a few powerful conglomerates controlling the flow of electronic information, from programming of television and radio news and entertainment to owning the pipes that connect people to the Internet.

This is already happening with Radio. Proof? Two words: Clear Channel.

Do you have a KISS-FM in your town? That's Clear Channel. They're putting cookie-cutter pop radio stations (all called KISS-FM) in major markets. In addition to owning KISS-FM in nearly every market, they own TV stations, billboards, concert venues, etc.

Check out this link.
Click here and search for 'kiss' -- you'll find 51 stations, all the same format, all the same manufactured pop stars, all the same type of dopey deejays.

Its radio like this that keeps me listening to CDs.

Opponents of the proposed rules fear that, taken together, they ultimately could lead to a few powerful conglomerates controlling the flow of electronic information, from programming of television and radio news and entertainment to owning the pipes that connect people to the Internet.

This is already happening with Radio. Proof? Two words: Clear Channel.

Do you have a KISS-FM in your town? That's Clear Channel. They're putting cookie-cutter pop radio stations (all called KISS-FM) in major markets. In addition to owning KISS-FM in nearly every market, they own TV stations, billboards, concert venues, etc.

Check out this link.
Click here and search for 'kiss' -- you'll find 51 stations, all the same format, all the same manufactured pop stars, all the same type of dopey deejays.

Its radio like this that keeps me listening to CDs.

Not to mention the TV stations all being administered by a sinister few....

IANALBIPOOTV

It seems to me that these companies might be wandinging into a bit of a legal gray area by trying to offer pay services based on spectrum that has been set aside for free public use. I can't imagine the FCC allowing Clear Channel to throw up a stick and start broadcasting a commercial signal below the 92 MHz mark on your FM dial.

Of course, if the portion of the spectrum used by 802.11 a/b isn't specifically stamped "Non-Commercial Use Only", then I don't see how AT&T et al. can be stopped.

I guess the major question is: "Does the fact that the public has the right to use a given resource for free preclude individuals/corporations from packaging and selling that resource?" I would say as long as Ma Bell's nationwide WiFi network doesn't keep you from using a free WiFi network, then AT&T's in the clear.

Now, will people want to pay for something they could get for free? Of course they would. How else has Micro$oft stayed in business for so long?

I think Hayao Miyazaki didn't notice the problem with the red tint in his movie for obvious reasons. ;-)

Which means that they can market to advertisers nationwide radio coverage. Radio can't say that right now.

That said, you can also reduce the number of royalties you must pay by getting in touch with a company called Clear Channel--they dictate what is played on most US radio stations.

Further, your little Mandrake box can do it, using shoutcast, an icecast-server, and a microphone, but that would give you an "Internet radio station" as many of the shoutcast servers you can listen to with winamp or Windows Media Player are called.

Finally, a local station I listen to was discovered to be transmitting a syndicated Internet radio stream--you can hear a bit of "tinniness" to the audio when doing this (because many stations use a very low bitrate to accomodate dialup users) but it seemed to work rather well for them. That would be a way to allow people to listen when you're not manning the studio...

HTH. HAND.

... That market has it's own monopoly... There is even a community site or two about that...

You've never heard of my band.

We are unsigned and produce all our material in a small, albeit sophisticated home studio. I've spent the last 15 years (off and on and in between tech jobs) playing with various bands. some of these bands were on major labels (none of them are anymore) some of them were on minors. This new band is totally independent.

(feel free to ignore the following shameless hyperlinked plugs)

We started off on mp3.com about 3 years ago and have since racked up a pretty impressive 100,000 or so downloads for which mp3.com has paid us a total of around 1300 bucks (yes, they actually paid). We produced our own CD and sell it at CD baby as well as amazon.com and we are almost at the break-even point.

for us, the unsigned masses of musicians - P2P is a godsend. It's an enormous window into the hard-drives and mp3 players of potential fans worldwide. If i sell a CD to a tiny tiny percentage of these downloaders, i'm doing great. To do this, I purposely stack my own band's mp3's in my shared folders of my P2P clients. It's amazing when i do a search for us on the networks and we pop up on someone elses machine. I have no idea why someone downloaded us - maybe they thought that someone who was sharing - (some band i downloaded for free) - must have other good selections - i have no idea.

P2P is massive advertising and distribution on an unprecedented scale. The record companies remind me of the russian oligarchs who grabbed everything they could during the soviet collapse amassing enormous monopolies. But, once in place they demanded new and strict laws to maintain the stats quo and keep their ill-gotten wealth.

The question of what musicians feel about P2P is misguided and assumes that 'musicians' are all the same. For countless thousands of bands and DJ's P2P is an integral part of their distribution strategy. Personally speaking, when someone decides to 'steal' my music to the tune of millions and millions of downloads - I have a very high-class problem.

The bar to entry to record and produce your own CD's is so low and the amount of new music that is being created is so astonishingly high it's no wonder the record companies are losing money. music is literally everywhere - it (especially dance music) has become a commodity that should be sold by the pound.

This flood of new music requires record companies to pay more money to keep above the madding crowd of 'amateurs' and, in turn, decreases their profits. Also, the radio and live venue monopoly has squeezed all the 'alternative' avenues of promotion out of the reach of mortal bands. P2P and mp3 sharing is all there is left.

musicians and record companies need to understand that music is now shareware whether they like it or not. when i download something i like - i often buy it. what we need now more than ever is not restrictions on music - it's editorial.

File sharing and Internet radio may start to look like an attractive promotional channel to the music industry, as Clear Channel slowly tightens the screws.

Does anybody else remember the "CC" commercials on the radio, emploring people to register internet domains that end in .cc? Guess what "CC" stands for! That's right! Clear Channel. That was their bid to get into the internet business, and from what I hear, it failed. But just think about that... Every radio station that your heard those commercials on was controlled by Clear Channel.

These people are worse than the RIAA and MPAA combined.

I think that the above is an old list. There are several stations that I know are Clear Channel stations in Dallas that are not on this list. Clear channel's own station search is probably better:

I have heard so many evil things about Clear Channel and I think that thier stations suck; I refuse to listen to them. If I'm listening to the radio it is going to be NPR.

Clear Channel's motto is "How many ways has Clear Channel reached you today". And you thought Microsoft was obnoxious. Their corporate creed is "We believe the ultimate measure of our success is to provide a superior value to our stockholders.".

Clear Channel even owns Rush Limbaugh. He was a big help in getting Congress to remove all limitations on one company owning all the radio stations.

Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.

When elephants dance, its best to get out of the way. Thats exactly whats happening now as the entertainment industrythe recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainlyattempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isnt it?

Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective minds eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.

Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the toolscomputers mostlythat allow customers to practice their piracy.

Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. Thats all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.

To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturersthe companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD playershave aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.

Unfortunately for usboth authors and customerswere likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; theyre too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.

Copy-protected CDs

The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that cant be copied to or even played on some customers equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it cant guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.

Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that theyve released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.

And its only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content, Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, shouldnt technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use. Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being finessed by the technology industry, whatever that means.

Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal useand more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted materialis exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.

It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to .mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, its usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.

Ironically, or probably not, .mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to space shift music they have purchased.

Moral rights

Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artists moral rights in the work they create.

Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:

• The right of integrity;
• The right of attribution;
• The right of disclosure;
• The right to withdraw or retract; and
• The right to reply to criticism.

These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the authors personality and character and non-transferable.

The first two moral rightsthe right of integrity and the right of attributionare especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesnt.

The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an authors work from being distorted in any way that would harm the authors reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of droit au respect de l'oeuvre. Its a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.

Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.

In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works theyve licensed, the copyright owner industryincluding the recording industryis attempting to exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work.

And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalons royalty calculator to figure it out.

A DMCA rewrite?

Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulateand maybe outright bancopy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players.

Boucher isnt talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.

Internet radio

Under the U.S. Copyright Offices interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.

Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industrys safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesnt nauseate you, itll damn sure hypnotize you.

Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Lets be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.

KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:

Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, ormore likelyits just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.

Doc Searls, in his article Bizarre vs. Bazaar, eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of content (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).

A brief history of copyright

Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicatemaybe even precariousbalance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.

The Constitution granted Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the limited times of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.

Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the fair use provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.

The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted wok as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide , provides an interpretation for working writers:

As a general rule a critic or reporter should not quote at any one point more than two or three paragraphs of a book or journal article, a stanza of a poem, or a solitary chart or graph from a technical treatise.

The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.

While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.

Digital TV

According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry todaywhen in doubt blame those dang customers.

Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, its unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.

The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think thats the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included thats capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.

Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.

Digital rights management

Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. Theyre just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just dont want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.

And then there are the schizoids, the companieslike AOL Time Warner and Sonythat are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.

SSSCA > CBDTPA

The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.

According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act its really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.

Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the certified security technologies fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.

Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they cant come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.

Should we be surprised that four of Hollings top campaign donors are media conglomerates?

Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.

In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital deviceseverything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.

Whats most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:

Senator

2002

2000

1998

1996

Total

Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)

$19,000

$32,750

$215,284

$43,300

$310,334

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

$39,621

$69,900

$109,521

Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)

$49,852

$49,852

John Breaux (D-Louisiana)

$120,920

$120,920

Bill Nelson (D-Florida)

$47,550

N/A

N/A

$47,550

Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

$211,638

$211,638

$849,815

Theres no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isnt over yet. Not hardly.

So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like itll come in right around US$1 million.

Enter DigitalConsumer.org

The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the fair use rights of customers in digital media. The groups principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:

1. Users have the right to time-shift content that they have legally acquired.
2. Users have the right to space-shift content that they have legally acquired.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.

A solution

The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:

1. Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
2. Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
3. Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; theyre consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I dont know about you, but Im not much pleased any more.

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a natural person under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. Its not too late to fix it.

Perhaps, but what's supposed to happen is that new companies are supposed to enter the field when they see others making a profit, driving the supply up and moving the total profit/loss towards equilibrium.

In the United States, the FCC's monopoly on broadcasting prevents this. It's hard for a new independent radio station to get a broadcasting license in the consumer FM band (88.1 to 107.9 MHz), and without a sizable number of independent radio stations, radio listeners hear what Clear Channel wants them to hear, and the RIAA member labels pay a puppet promoter to pay Clear Channel to play RIAA music and only RIAA music. These bribes come most often not in the form of cold hard cash but in free non-conforming promotional discs and free tickets to live performances.

Why can't you just buy studio time yourself? Theoretically you can

But practically, it's hard to come up with the initial capital, and most VCs won't fund upstart self-publishing recording artists.

and if you can market your music successfully, cool.

Good luck. The major labels already effectively control the so-called "independent promotion agencies" that control what the radio monopoly plays.

[heh heh... riaa.org is slashdotted]

I live in Cincinnati for one. This is being marketed to people who cannot currently get cable internet or DSL.

They are holding beta testing now, although I've tried to 'refind' the website before for another /. post I can't find one now. No.. I found the FAQ. From there you can surf through the other parts of the site to find more.

They've advertised this as a new way to get broadband in area's where there is none and claim download speeds of 250K, which would make me sign up for $39.95 a month.

The target here around Cincinnati would be the homes that aren't even close to the city but carry the WKRC station [Channel 12, "The new Generation of News!"-which is the same old people.]. This is a huge untapped market in plenty of area around Cincinnati.

As I've said earlier there will be many implementations of 'last mile' solutions. This may actually take off.

Considering Clear Channel 0wns this town's airwaves [thus politics and more!] I expect this service to take off somewhat. It isn't ideal anywhere but beats the similar 'Dish' technology.

Here is a PDF from 12/18/01 about the service... although it's been on TV for almost a year.

Sometimes we here in the 'Nati get things faster. We had HBO-On Demand first, and our Cincinnati Bell was featured as the first to offer 'Internet Call Manager' services. We were putting in Digital [two way] cable years before anyone had Cable Modems [about the time Time Warner bought out both cable services] and DSL was here pretty quick.

Maybe Mark Twain was wrong when he said: "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times."

Street Cents, a show on CBC (yeah, I know, 90% of you don't get CBC) had a show a while back about these high school kids in Halifax who set up a recording studio business in their basement. It was pretty impressive.

Unfortunately, as parent poster proficiently pointed out, marketing is the problem. Specifically, radio. Radio is what sells records, and payola is as much alive today as it was way back before "New Year's Rockin' Eve" was even a twinkle in Dick Clarks' eye. His eyes were too busy being used along with his fingers to count all his "investment income". The only difference between then and now is that it's not DJ's who see the big bucks, but the executives who run the gigantic media conglomerates. :(

HERE is a link. Type in your city and it will give you a list of stations controlled by clearchannel.

Here's a url [clearchannel.com] off their website that lets you find out which stations in your area are owned by them, so you know who to complain to/not listen to.

If you want to know if there is a Clear Channel station in your area head over to Clear Channel's Radio Page and use their slightly working search utility. It appears my area (Kansas City) doesn't have any stations owned by them. How about you?

Randy Palmer is CC's VP of Investor Relations, and can be "reached" Here

Perhaps some potential investors should let him know what they think. With the financial markets in the shape they're in right now, I'll bet the're in need of investors right about now.

They ban all those perfectly good thongs, but when you go to their own web page, they prominently display a banner saying United we stand. Scroll down to section 5) for the meat...

See what stations belong to Clear Channel in your town. Boycott/Call/Email them about the list if you disagree.

Maybe music is a minor issue compared to everything else, but it's happening none theless, Clear Channel, one of the largest radio networks in the world, has issued a list of 150 songs that would be "inappropriate" for airing. I looked at this list, expecting to see a bunch of marilyn manson(suprisingly none were listed) and other death/metal the like. While there was some, there were also inexplicably a lot of songs that were simply put on the list solely based on their song titles. It seemed they just listed the songs simply because they had the words "War", "blood", or "destroys" in the titles. It listed songs that were anti-war("war pigs", "sunday bloody sunday"). Some of these songs actually helped me get through that horrible tuesday(particularly songs like "under the bridge" and "black hole sun"), and now Clear Channel thinks the songs are "inappropriate"? Maybe I am overreacting. I hope I am.

As one involved with a noncommercial streaming project motivated by the desire to disseminate points of view that don't make it in the commercial media I have to say this is good news. That capitalism's "warring brothers" shackle themselves in this new medium with licensing agreements and industry consortia that get a percentage demonstrates the value to society of information that is licensed for use by civil society (ie GPL, Open Content) or in the public domain.

So if the RIAA wants to get all its slaves ... umm artist's songs off of Napster, I say let them cut their own throat, the independent music industry will flourish. If Clearchannel (which controls 25% of the nation's radio advertising revenue thus can control the airwaves) can't webcast their thousands of carbon copy RIAA bitch radio stations, I say great, this is an opening for independents and noncommercials to take advantage of.

This is of course only a temporary window of opportunity. No one believes that Clearchannel will not be able to get on the web. Ultimately this will probably speed consolidation in the radio industry, as the big players like Clearchannel will be able to leverage deals that small independently owned stations can't.

Well, perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement, but, for how much longer?

From their website:

"One out of every ten radio stations across the United States broadcasts under the Clear Channel's banner and the company's approximate 1,170 stations bill a full 20% of total industry revenue. No one is bigger, better or more intense than Clear Channel Radio"

These guys mean to take it all.