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Webcasting and the DMCA
nknouf writes: "A recent article on Salon talks about how college radio stations that webcast could face fee increases from $623/year to $10,000 to $20,000 per year. What's more interesting is information that Congress is considering a bill called the Music On-Line Competition Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. The bill aims to "break the hammerlock the recording industry has over music distribution." My favorite quote, from Rep. Cannon: Napster is "one of the coolest inventions of modern times.""
More permanent link to the Music Online Competition Act
HR 2724.
Mmmmmmm
Too bad the link to the bill is already broken, I would have liked to have read it.
OK I did a search and found a PDF copy of the bill HERE. Also found a site to organize support for the bill, it has a form to send your representative an email. Since Cannon is mine, I guess I'm already OK on that one. However, I have been pretty unhappy on his stance on several issues in the past, hopefully he won't drop the ball on this one under the intense politial pressure of the RIAA.
Enigma
Some of my favorite stations have been college radio stations. My personal example is WSOU, Seton Hall University's station in NJ. There's no way I can hear them w/o webcasting anymore because I've moved across the country.
Poor record companies - no one sympathizes with their "dilemma". The Internet has revolutionized music and it's about time they realized that the more they make access to music difficult, the less people want to buy their music, and the more people will find other ways to get it.
Some of the more interesting music I've heard has been on college radio. Treat an academic institution's radio station like an enterprise is beyond disgusting. The best part of college stations is that their playlists are often less strict, and much of what gets played wouldn't fit into the "mainstream", or even a format, for that matter. It's way better than having a radio station pump their "Heavy rotation" down my throat.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/12/13/colle ge_webcast/print.html
And it is a bit easier to read as well.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
if you like internet radio, take a look at this. Damn sweet:
http://www.beosradio.com/tunetracker/
The version 2 is in devellopment and should be released soon.
Slashdorks can agree with any politician as on as they support the theft of intellectual property
The U.S. Constitution recognizes it not as a birthright but as a tool "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8) "Copyright" is a misnomer; it really should be "copyprivilege". The law doesn't recognize intellectual "property" as property at all, especially considering how it treats transfer of exclusive rights. Copying another's work isn't termed "theft" but merely "infringement" on a government-granted privilege. Besides, with enough storage space, I could generate and store every melody in the book or at least a melody confusingly similar to every melody in the book (thus killing practical trademark law).
Will I retire or break 10K?
This isn't just about fees, it's about performer fees, as opposed to songwriter fees that are already paid.
Under long-standing U.S. copyright law, broadcasters pay a coalition of songwriters' groups to air music over the Internet and the airwaves. But until the DMCA, performers and record companies did not have the rights to royalties when stations played their music. As part of the 1998 law, Congress allowed performers and record companies to start collecting fees on songs sent over the web, said Joel Willer, a mass communications professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. There are still no performer fees for regular airwave broadcasts.
If airwave broadcasters don't have to pay, why should webcasters? How many people do you know are converting their audio stream to mp3s?
The RIAA wants as much as they can grab with both hands, and if we could pass some decent campaign finance reform, maybe some of the corporate suck-ups in Washington would have the balls to stand up to them.