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In case you haven't noticed, nearly every radio station is owned by one organization.

This is unbelievable you know. Not only does ClarChannel fill the airwaves with rubbish music 24/7, now we aren't even entitled to parody or saitirise them anymore. What would happen if someone instead started the site ClearChannelIsAMonopoly.net ? Do they get sued too? I'll bet the DMCA had something to do with this. And since it was a .net domain, were Verisign involved?

RadioAid was taken to arbitration instead of the US Judicial system
This part sickens me the most. Forget a jury of your peers. It would seem that important decisions are now left to private clubs. I wouldn't be surprised if some in the clear channel camp played golf/tennis/handball with some of the 'independant' arbitrators and chatted about the case 'off the record'. "Tsk,tsk. Those RadioAid Hippies. Communists, I tell you Bob. Sheer terrorist sympathisers. FORE!!"

The implications of this could be very far reaching. For instance, if Clear Channel can annex ChealChannelSucks.net, what else can they do? Can they SLAAP Google to stop referencing sites wich critisise them? Can they sue sites that critisise them because they used the ClearChannel name without consent? Will someone come after me for the above paragraph? Will they come after you for reading it? Linking to it? We NEED to be able to say out loud and in public CLEARCHANNELSUCKS!! THEY ARE AN EVIL MONOPOLY!! Without getting our asses sued off for unconformity. If we can't, then the slope just gets slipperier.
Fight the power RadioAid. I've never heard of you but I'm with you 100%.

Is clearchannelsucks.org still about? Or has it been blasted by too many censorware products picking up 'suck' in the url? How long until clearchannel get that one too, having been 'aided' by the decision in the favour on .net?

Here in Dallas, we've lost our last Hard Rock station, Clear Channel's 97.1 The Eagle. They turned it into Sunny 97.1, playing a fully automated mix of 70s and 80s. My 13-year-old daughter and all her friends were devastated, but I told her it's really pretty simple.

It's George W's fault.

Clear Channel vice-head-honcho Tom Hicks made Dubya a rich man indeed when he bought the Texas Rangers from Bush's ownership group. That freed up Bush to run for Governor, and the rest, as they say, is history (though he was a decent governor, as they go). Short story: Hicks and Bush are buds.

Now, you have Janet Jackson's Right Breast suddenly stirring up the bible-thumpers (the ones that give us Christians a bad image). Fired up, they went after an easy target -- the shock jocks that Clear Channel and others put on the air to cover up the fact that their corporate music sucks.

Bush calls Hicks with a proposal: act like they're sorry, pay a little fine, shut down some jocks and stations, so that the bible thumpers will feel like they've won. Bush gets his base energized, and Hicks gets buddy Bush re-elected.

And for the icing on the cake, Clear Channel turns off the last rock station in conservative Dallas.

They'd been letting it rot in the ratings for years (details here), so they had an excuse. So maybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight. But if they'd supported the music, KEGL would have *had* ratings... and top 15 in the Dallas market still isn't anything to sneeze at.

Bottom line: Republican politics killed Rock in Dallas. The Eagle joins Q102 and The Zoo in radio oblivion.

I noticed on the clearchannelsucks webs site, just a bit farther down from their article, this item is siting there.

I wonder if CC is looking at the live disk as a promotional opportunity to sell to advertisers, and that's why they're barring artists use of their own live recordings? I guess they figure that if they have the patent, they can control the use of the technology, and then turn around and lisence advertising on the live CD to Pepsi, or Budweiser, or whomever is willing to pony up the cash to have their ads "inserted" onto the live tracks.

And I doubt there are many artists who would be willing to do that on their own, given the backlash from fans.

Yes it is, but Zoe Lofgren's bill was even better. It took aim at shrinkwrap EULAs as well. I hope she re-introduces it. In addition to asking our congresscritters to suppport such bills, we can boycott big businesses opposing them, such as the recording industry. Clear Channel, and the MPAA.

Right, so this story is currently in the midst of being played out by YOURS TRULY.

Thanks to everyone's FAVOURITE media monopoly, ClearChannel, which is the OWNER of TM, I and a friend were EACH screwed out of $40 because of our dietary restrictions due to our religious/ethical beliefs. Just for the record, I keep Kosher & my friend is a vegan, just like the HEADLINER of the Area2 concert, Moby. We wanted to see the Area2, obviously.

We bought tickets over the web to the Area2 concert when it rolled into Philly. Before purchase there was NO indication of what restrictions would be placed on our tickets. Of course, AFTER we had paid, and our tickets printed on our printer, did we see all the fine print on the ticket that said, "subject to venue rules" or somesuch.

Ok. Fine. We check the website for the venue, the Tweeter Center in Camden, NJ (btw, ALSO owned [or is that 0WN3D?] by ClearChannel), and it seems like we'd be allowed a backpack & a small amount of our own food. Of course, when we GET THERE, they inform us that we cannot bring our own food in. We are REFUSED ENTRY due to our religious beliefs. I and my friend cannot eat the food they have there, and it its a 6 hour+ show. Oh, I also forgot to mention the fact that they were only allowing ONE bottle of water per person. This was on quite possibly the HOTTEST day of the year in a venue that has NO shade.

So, to sum up, I (and my friend) were REFUSED ADMITTANCE based upon our religious beliefs, not to mention the fact that apparently, ClearChannel wants to KILL all of their customers through dehydration. They refuse to refund the ticket price, claiming "all sales are final." However, they did NOT divulge the terms of purchase until AFTER the purchase had been made, and then even CHANGED terms on us!

If that's not a tangible example of someone being harmed by CC's evil monopolistic behavior, I don't know what is.

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

Does this set any sort of precedent (legal or practical) in favor of *sucks.* domain names? Is the owner of ClearChannelSucks.org on better footing now than he was a week ago? (I hope so. :)

-Waldo Jaquith

Remember, kiddies: .cc is wholly-owned by Clear Channel Entertainment. And we all know that they're evil now, don't we?

If not, get thee to ClearChannelSucks.org.

-Waldo Jaquith

ClearChannelSucks.org

brand new website, enjoy it and feel free to comment and read the stories and links...

well at least till ICANN takes the domain name away ;)