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Small Webcasters get Powerful New Ally
An anonymous reader writes "On, Sunday, October 20, 2002, the RIAA's subsidiary, SoundExchange, was set to introduce draconian new fees on small internet webcasters - fees that were designed to drive those webcasters out of business and preserve the RIAA's monopoly on the distribution of music in North America. One of those small webcasters is the Triangle's classical music station, WCPE - quite possibly the finest classical music station in the world. Now it turns out that WCPE has an 800 lb gorilla in their corner, and he's set his sights on the RIAA."
If you read the full article, you'll notice that Helms' office mentions that they heard from Religious broadcasters in the area that felt that the burden would still be too great on them.
Nevertheless, nice to see that even the Religious Right is "getting the idea" in terms of dealing with the RIAA...
Jesse Helms? I never would have thought a High Ranking Republican would get involved like this- and on the side of the smaller guy.
I am glad the legislation is 'dead' for a few weeks. I hope when they reconviene, it stays dead.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
2002-10-19 06:00:31 Jesse Helms Freezes Bill, Saves Small Webcasters (articles,news) (rejected)
That was rejected instantly, by the way.
Jesse Helms? I never would have thought that he was 800lbs...
www.christopherlewis.com
"Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican, on Thursday night blocked legislation designed to ease the financial impact on small Webcasters."
Does someone "in the know" want to clarify? Please?
This is gunna get good. Looks like our fav technoish stations will be around forever. Woots!
Politics makes strange bedfellows.
The best trance stations on the internet went down because of this law, and my music selection has hurt since. The only one left is Digitally Imported, which is ok but I like Tag's Trance and XTC radio better. A "dance" radio station started broadcasting in dallas recently, it is ok but is very repetitive. And I did buy two or three cds of artists I had heard on tag's or xtc, but now I buy none. Well, those were import CDs anyway and RIAA probably didnt get anything from them.
How does this hurt the RIAA. This bill was going to forcibly reduce the royalties that these stations would have to pay. Now, with the bill blocked, they have to pay the higher rate or opt for the RIAA's "reduced" flat rate.
I'm not seeing how Helms, the 800 pound gorilla?, is benefitting the small broadcasters.
Really when it comes down to brass tacks ... when the rubber meets the road ... Does it truly mater why he did it? Politics makes strange bedfellows. This is evident. You don't have to like them to have them help your cause. US and Soviet Union in WW2 had the same enemy and worked together. Just need to watch people that you ally with in on situation in case they swig opposite on others that you are for.
It says he stopped it because smaller webcasters said the new 'lower' rates would be worse than the 'higher' ones after a certain amount of time and would drive them out of business. Even the new 'lower' rates were too high for some of them.. So im guessing it'll go from .07 per listener to maybe .01 which would still be too much IMO.. RIAA doesn't deserve squat for free advertising. RIAA should be paying webcasters to play the music.
at least he's good for something. Seriously though, this will get other people to see whats going on... it'll be a good start for things down the road.
Oleg
After all, he specializes in MP3s, and his songs are streamed from his site and mp3.com, but then again, one of his song is called "Why won't Jesse Helms just hury up and die"
I guess we now know why, he's meant to save the webcasters.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
"In case it gets slashdotted?" The article is hosted on Yahoo News. You can't slashdot yahoo. Yahoo slashdots you.
The last time someone managed to make a network of hacked computers big enough that they could DDOS yahoo to a crawl, it made the national news. Slashdot isn't going to come near to that.
duh? hi. hello.
Well, you can bet the RIAA won't make the mistake of overlooking his campaign funding again! ;)
"...the Triangle's classical music station..."
What the hell is "the Triangle"? And why do they have a classical music station. Now I can understand a square might have a classical station, or maybe a pentagram would have an acid rock station.
Maybe it's because they use triangles in symphonies. What kind of station would a circle have, I wonder?
Best Windows Freeware
From a Senator like Helmes, this is a old school shakedown of the Copyright industry. Once, he gets enough money his "objections" will disappear.
I have a low opinion of Helmes not because of his purported politics, but because of the crassness of his behavior as a politician/campaigner.
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
Beethoven and Mozart will compose more symphonies if they can put bread on their table.
Folks, if you dislike the RIAA's tactics and would like to listen to some alternative music, please give classical music a try...there's nothing like listening to some good ol' music.
The best trance stations on the internet went down because of this law, and my music selection has hurt since.
Fuck internet radio stations. Make your own playlist. They may have killed mp3.com's personal jukebox, but they haven't yet killed fair use (completely).
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
1. A 128 kbps MP3 stream of WPCE
2. A Jessie Helms toilet paper cover
--- What?
What is the role of the government in all of this and why is there a need to regulate these prices?
If I am an independent musician, can't I just make a deal with a local webcaster at a rate that we negotiate?
Does anybody know?
Tor
Chemlab
Philosomatika
FlareSound
Link it
Love it
Don't forget to email your congressmen
Who obvious has a filter set up to delete emails from constituents.
*DrugCheese rants*
Better read it again. Payments are most definitely needed, starting yesterday. Furthermore, the payments are significantly higher than they would have been, had the bill passed.
I'm not a big fan of Jesse Helms, but it appears
that he is doing exactly what he should do as a
senator for North Carolina. He's representing the
interests of the state's residents in the Senate,
vs. representing the interests of an out of state
campaign donor.
How many states stand to gain under the webcasting
rates as approved in the House? Will there be a lot
of new jobs pursuing small webcasters who haven't
paid up? Will there be a lot of new technical skills
dispersed through the population by reducing the
number of webcasters through expensive licensing
and/or royalies fees? Will there be a boom in artisic
expression thanks to reduced chances for artists to
gain exposure?
Helms is right on this one. I wish more legislators
were looking out for their own constituencies on
matters like this, DMCA, etc.
Damin that Helms! I've released 3 albums of really killer sermons, and I haven't gotten a dime from these stations yet.
The article says that the bill was DESIGNED to ease the financial burden on small webcasters, but in all reality, it probably would not have.
.07 per person per song in royalties. Instead, at this point they can pay $500/yr (from 1998 to present, IIRC) to cover their costs.
.07/per song+person could raise some HEFTY fees.
They were to be charged
The small webcasters themselves had not been consulted when the original law was drafted and therefore felt that they would be put out of business by these "small" fees.
I thought surely my stance of thinking both the RIAA and the Religious Right were both wrong about everything would never be problematic.
But, no! Now, I might owe my ability to listen to all my favorite death metal, synth-pop, and hard house/trance webcasts to a group of people who generally only support things I vehemently oppose.
So. . . confused. . . cannot pick. . . side. . .
So, Jesse Helms has not held onto his Senate seat for as long as he has by not taking care of his constituents. However, he's retiring this year, which means that he's not going to be able to do this for much longer. It's unclear whether either of the folks running for his seat (Elizabeth Dole and Erskine Bowles) will take the same position.
The real question is... Why are Rep. Howard Coble (Also North Carolina - R) and Sen. Ernest Hollings (South Carolina - D) not doing the same thing?
Let's just hope that interest in the bill doesn't disappear. It would be too bad, now that they are paying a higher rate, if this got shoved aside by more pressing issues. Like, umm, ah... an Iraqi war?
He's an 800 year old gorilla.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I'd call Senator Jesse Helms at least a 2 ton gorilla myself.... ;>
It is nice to see that Jesse Helms isn't taking a vacation in his last few months in office. (He's a short-timer -- he retires at teh end of the year.)
Catherine
The Religious Right, incredible as it may seem, can be the killer ally of the digital freedom movement, just like Stalin was in WWII. Remember that morality vs. copyright case? (the right to edit movies to the customer's content)
When talking to any individual with such orientation, we have to stress that the current copyright fundamentalism is made to favor Hollywood - you know, that big, unholy, pornography-peddling anti-God collective in California. Mentioning Scientology might help too. YMMV.
Now THAT is an 800-lb. gorilla.
I heard awhile back that Jesse Helms was threatening awhile back to throw his weight to get the DMCA repealed if the big corps didn't stop abusing it. Seems he thought the bill was a good idea when it was passed, but believes the ways its being used are not the ways it was intended.
Now this is happening. But this article is so poorly written-- it starts out saying that jesse helms blocked a bill providing netcaster relief, but then later seems to be saying he only did this becuase he was holding out for a bill that gave even more netcaster relief.
So, is the idea that he actually believes the copyright laws should be in the public benefit? If so, okay, it's always good when "conservatives" actually attempt to uphold the principles the country was founded on as opposed to trying to disassemble them, but if that's the case why hasn't he actually done anything against the DMCA except for some public whining about it? And what does he think about the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is one of the biggest sources of food for corporate abuse of copyright? Has he just not read it?
damp cloth, to use the Streisand-style Shakespearian. The point is that some of Senator Helms' constituents had an issue with a bill and so Senator Helms held it up. That's the way it's supposed to work. This does not reflect upon any large political quadron.
... GOP "family values" folks have hated the entertainment industry for AGES.. Talk about strange bedfellows, though the libertarian streak thru geekdom (with which I sympathize, though not always agree) is definitely in line with old-school conservatism..
I'm from N.C. and I'm shocked. I'm used to Jesse always being on the side of evil, but here he is casting a vote for the little guy. Has the world gone mad?
Now they have to pay the higher rate and gamble on whether they get any deal at all. Had Helms allowed the bill to pass, the small broadcasters would be paying a smaller fee and could follow up with another bill to gamble on.
A bird in hand....
Helms is NOT RUNNING FOR REELECTION
his term expires in january, he is not soliciting any contributions
It's good that more time will be spent in examination of this issue. Time is crucial for all of these issues of regulation of technology. Legislation and regulation of technology happens so quickly that people read about the decisions after they have been made and only after it is too late to give any input. Where is the public debate about these issues? It is often limited to places like /. where only a small portion of people can/will take part.
It's not just hanging chads that disenfranchise voters.
A large chunk of classical music manuscripts are out of copyright. That means that if you can find someone to perform it, you can create free music. How are musicians paid? Recordings of concerts, where the costs are already met by selling tickets, might be one way. The quality won't be as high as a specially-made recording but it might be good enough. Whether the performers would agree depends on how much money they would get from enforcing copyright on the recording and trying to sell it commercially (not much I suspect).
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
the difference between that "reduced flat rate" and the 70 cents per 1000 listeners per song can really be quite huge (even to very small stations).
lets say a station reaches 100 people on average and at 4 minutes per track averages 15 songs an hour. that's 360 songs a day, or 131,400 a year... at the other rate of 7 cents per 100 listeners it works out to a fee of $9,198 a year. to someone like this a flat rate of $500 seems like a pretty huge difference... heck this flat rate would come to almost half as much even if you only averaged 10 listeners (500 vs 918).
too bad the flat rate is only good till congress acts on the pending legislation, because this deal would probably actually be fairly viable for quite a few webcasters
Someone mentioned this before, but he got modded to 0 for some reason. Sen Helms is not running for reelection. His term is up in January. There is no "shakedown".
say what? Helms blocked the bill which would have *lowered* fees for small webcasters. (Read the article!) The only reason the webcasters got a reprieve is that SoundExchange (the company that collects the royalties) decided to not collect payments until the legislation is passed.
So under the law currently on the books, if I sit down with my buds every week and record some songs and then stream a random mix of them off the server in the closet in my dorm room for other students to listen to, the government expects me to pay $0.07 per song to the RIAA?
Or do I only have to pay $0.07 per Britney Spears track? If that's the case, why don't all the webcasters just play independent music? Doesn't Britney Spears' CD explicity prohibit public exhibition anyway?
Erik
Umm...I really doubt Hilary Rosen would work AGAINST the RIAA.
he is very very responsive to his constituents. Every story I've ever heard about people contacting him for help (not necessarily positions on issues, but help) has had results.
I only hope that the senator who replaces him will be so responsive, and not just pretend to be from North Carolina...
I can't believe I just said that. This must be proof positive that all politics are local. I will continue to believe that the RIAA/MPAA/TCPA scheme will fail until Jack Valenti personally shows up to collect my bootleg VHS copies of "Hello Larry".
I'm the decider.
What if my stream ONLY plays content that I created and that I hold copyright on? I have a stream that plays a three hour loop of the Best of my radio show, so I own the copyright on that and it's all that's on the stream... Why should I pay the RIAA for this? I'm not signed, and I'm just doing it in an effort to get more listeners for my show (which is webcast by my University, which does/will pay royalities for all music it streams).
Any insights would be greatly appreciated...
When your life is no longer your own...
This is great and all that the bill was held up, but Jesse Helms? The man has 9 toes in the grave, and will be lucky if he lives long enough to retire at the end of this year.
It hurts when I pee.
For some insight into the bill and why it's bad, read this slashdot story.
I agree that the Yahoo story is confusing, and it gives one pause to wonder why they're spinning it as bad for webcasters. Is there some hidden agenda?
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Why do webcasters have ANY say in what the RIAA charges for allowing them to broadcast their music? If they think it is too much, then why not play music from another group that is more affordable?
How is this any different than somebody deciding to sell Ford cars and then complaining that Ford won't give them the cars to sell for $1 each?
If somebody owns something, then they can charge whatever they want to allow other people to use it. If you think that the charge is too much for the product, then DON'T BUY IT!
(It's possible that I'm completely missing some pertinent facts about this issue. If so please reply.)
Talk to us again once they get to censoring everything Hollywood puts out for sexual content and violence.
I have lived in NC for 13 years now. I have always detested Senator Helms. I have always voted against him. Now, just as he's about to retire, he actually starts to do the right thing.
A question that I still haven't been able to get answered, is do all these fees apply for streaming your own content - like you talking, your friends garage band music, etc?
If they do, is this not a complete violation of free speech? What justification could their possibly be for paying fees for distributing content an metaphorically unlimited bandwidth? Even if this is a clearly greedy move on the part of the RIAA, there are always at least rhetorically sane reasons for it. I can understand if was THEIR content you have to pay to stream, but what about your own??
www.enthea.org
I live in Chapel Hill, NC so we are all too aware of Helme's politics. After all, when questioned about a new state zoo, Helmes replied "We already have one, just put a fence around Chapel Hill." Yeah, we love Helmes here. My question is this. Is Senator Helmes running, able to run, for re-election again? I wonder if he is trying to paint a better public picture to us caged gorillas here in CH? What would the public zoo of Chapel Hill do if he were to have a significant influence over these issues such as webcasting royalties? I could never vote for him, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out. After all, Chapel Hill is home to WXYC, the first radio station to broadcast it's signal over the internet; I believe they used CuSeeMe (sp?). WXYC is an excellent open format station that has a lot of listeners not only in this area, but all over the world.
I think this comes, on one level, as no surprise to a great many people. You cannot continue to step on the toes of the little person without working up some "bad karma" (as a student of eastern religion, not a /. geek, might say), and sooner or later it's going to catch up with you. The only factors are time and luck.
:)
And... it's about god damned time Jesse Helms did something useful.
The same day that this story is posted, Whitney Houston's new album is leaked to the internet a full month before its release date. Awesome. Die RIAA, DIE!
~ now you know
That's short term thinking. What are you trying to do? Make next quarter's numbers look good so your stock will go up? Now we all know where that leads. Think longer term, at least past next Tuesday. This is like accepting points on your mortgage in exchange for a significant rate reduction.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The legislation that Helms blocked would have charged small webcasters a fee that, frankly, seems pretty trivial. If your margins are so thin that $500 per year makes the difference between making money or losing it, well, what you're running is not a business, it's a hobby. And, for that matter, I can easily see even hobbyists being willing to pay that much money. Heck, it's going to cost them more than that just for the data connection capable of supporting a half-dozen streams.
Now, I think small webcasters who broadcast their own material have a legitimate beef if the bill requires them to pay the RIAA, but for webcasters who are broadcasting a significant amount of RIAA music, then, frankly, it seems like a pretty decent deal.
I also think the artists have a legitimate beef, because practically none of this money will make it back to them. Since there's no accounting for individual songs required, there's no way to decided how much of the money should go to which artist. To record labels, that means the artists get none of it.
In summary, there seem to be problems with the way this is being done, but they're the same problems that exist with the Audio CD-R taxes -- the money goes to the Established Labels, regardless of what music is actually webcasted/copied, and the artists don't get any of it. But the amount of money is so trivial that I can't see it causing any real problems, even for semi-serious hobbyists.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Talk to us again once they get to censoring everything Hollywood puts out for sexual content and violence.
That'd be the point. See, the same people that are preventing you from watching DVDs on linux because you might steal them are preventing THEM from buying copies of "The Green Mile" with all the 'damns' changed to 'darns'.
Never confuse volume with power.
Unless of course, Jesse did it. Eat these links, Mods.
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/MJ95/bates .html
http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/helms_note.htm
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=I SO-8859-1&safe=off&q=jesse+helms
Did you even check Google? Are you even old enough to vote? Give me a break.
I honestly don't know why Helms would be doing this, but I sure as hell know it's not for his consituents. If he would have spent half the energy on fighting for people that he spent on 'anti-homo/minority' legisltion, perhaps some good could have come out of his endless term.
Next time you mod, think. Or read. Or kill yourself, and save me the trouble of posting this.
I work in a large CD store on the East Coast (Which one? I'll give you a hint, we've been financially fucked ever since the late 1990s, only partially due to P2P, more due to some really stupid decisions made out in California [that's another hint]). This gives me a unique opportunity to get a mildly decent idea of what people are buying - there's an almost representative sample of college kids, ten year olds, minivan moms, old fogies, hippie burnouts, and Dr. Joe Average in his SUV. Granted, classical music is not the largest seller in this store. But the people who buy classical music buy in BULK. It's not uncommon for one customer to slap down three Benjamins (that's $300 for those of you not 'hip' to my street slang) at a time for his latest classical bonaza. And several "artists" (Charlotte Church, Bocelli, Sarah Vaughn, Diana Krall) have reguarly placed in the top 25 sellers for the store - during weeks when Dave Matthews, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and other mainstream artists came out with new releases. Granted, I'm not a fan of any of these artists (and Ms. Krall is slightly more in the jazz/vocals realm) - but what's important is that these people are selling in big numbers, which means SOMEONE out there is buying the stuff. To say that "people don't like classical music nowadays" is a rather ignorant statement to make. One of the reasons why classical doesn't often make it to the charts is that, let's take an example... Beethoven's 9th symphony. Would you like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Ensemb-- do you understand my point? There's a wealth of different versions to choose from, and so the already merely-moderate consumer base is spread even thinner.
Granted, classical isn't usually that popular with the under-30 crowd (generalization). But it's been constantly popular with the elderly for the past three or four generations - and those aren't the same elderly, because OLD PEOPLE DIE. However, new ones are always cropping up to take their place. You can usually tell them by the Oldsmobiles with the stuffed animals in the back.
I think the difference is that Quarex has never tried to forbid the "churchies" from listening to their music, but the churchies have a history of wanting to censor things that they find objectionable.
Ironically, the last parts of your post did describe the attitude of organized religion, though.
Murphy was an optimist.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
If those midsized webcasters go out of business now, they deserve it frankly for shitting on the small players in order to save their own asses when offered a "compromise" deal by the RIAA. The problem is that the compromise was tailored to the group that was supposedly representing webcasters and happened to be made up entirely (apparently) of midsized to largesized webcasters.
A fundamental rule of business: if you shit on your friends, then get screwed because of it, don't come whining to me.
Jesse Helms as a white hat? I never thought he would be fighting for the rights of individuals and small business, but we'll take the help from wherever it comes from, right?
This is the first sign I have seen of the Republicans using copyright and/or DMCA as an issue against the Democrats. If ever there was an issue that shows an anti-consumer side of the Democrats' agenda, this is it. If the Republicans have any brains at all, they will make sure only Democrats are associated with the ever-more-desperate RIAA/MPAA initiatives. The wackier they get, the better it works!
Aren't liberals usually against the ability of people to listen to death metal?
No, no. Thats *Darned* if you do, damned if you don't...
I mean, really, what would you rather have? Someone who speaks honestly, and offends from time to time, or yet another weasel politician, as embodied in both Bowles or Dole, who will carefully construct words so as not to offend anyone?
I have a stream that plays a three hour loop of the Best of my radio show, so I own the copyright on that and it's all that's on the stream... Why should I pay the RIAA for this?
You shouldn't. What makes you think you should?
Sorry, but your post comes off as an assinine troll. Define "for the people"? North Carolina has a heavily religeous and right tilting population. I'd say he's done plenty for the people, being that they keep putting him into office. If you don't like him, fine. But he got in by winning elections, not by military coup, or trickery, or anything else. More voters selected him than the other guy, period. Unless you're one of the conspiracy crowd that belives in Black Helicopters and the Global Zionist Conspiracy, you have to blame the voters as much as you blame Helms. He's expressing their will. Change the public's mind, and you'll change the politicians as a result.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I thought, what with the classical reference and all, that the 800 lb gorilla was a certain tenor..
Anyhoo, damn the religious right. They're fighting for their right to indoctrinate, not for the right of small webcasters to spew funky beats.
dont know how i managed to bork a simple link
here it is
I submitted this story last Friday afternoon, you know, back when it was news, and it was rejected. WTF?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
...people who listen to Whitney Houston are capable of operating a computer, finding that music and downloading it. I think that's a bad presumption, myself.
If an album is leaked to the Internet, but the Internet doesn't listen to it, does anybody care?
How about this link?
m #B udget_+_Economy
http://www.issues2002.org/Senate/Jesse_Helms.ht
Makes me proud to be a North Carolinian. Helms has always been a pro-American fighter, and will take on the UN and China, when no one else will. Again, this makes me proud. I don't know why this slashdot articles seems so surprising. Incidentally, in reference to your 2nd link, I love the way the author so unbiasedly makes Gant out as a great,great man and of course a democrat while Helms is the great satan. I personally am ecstatic that Harvey Gant didn't win. The whole article's portrayal of Helms is just ludicrous and is SO typical of Democrats--if you don't believe as we do (we who are enlightened) then you are stupid. They've said it about Bush, Helms, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, and many others. Get over yourselves.
Eligible small Webcasters can avoid a per-performance fee and instead may pay a $500 annual fee, starting Oct. 21, for each year or part of a year they have been in operation since 1998, SoundExchange said in a statement.
I don't understand why SoundExchange/RIAA is doing this. From what I can see, this is a much fairer (temporary) deal than what was proposed in the initial piece of legislation which was passed, and states that webcasters must begin paying large royalties on October 20th.
If the RIAA's objective is to kick most of these webcasters into touch, why are they offering them this deal and not simply requiring them to pay the larger royalties which have already been legislated for?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I was under the impression that if you stream, you pay.
Unfortunately, I've found any and all documentation for the fees, etc. to be sparse and confusing, and that's why I never found a decent answer to my question. I've wanted to know for some time, but the documentation never addresses my questions; they just assume that if you stream, then you're streaming stuff covered by the RIAA, and therefore, they should be payed, even though that might not be the case (as in mine).
When your life is no longer your own...
if we didn't have copyright laws at all?
"Even the religious right"
Nice stereotype, esp. on the day that it's disclosed in major headlines that Republicans are more tech friendly than Dems. by an "overwhelming" amount.
Clue to you: Your world view is still small and closed.
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
I've lived in North Carolina pretty much my entire life, and I'm celebrating the fact that Helms will finally be out of office after this election. Great, he made the right call this time, but a broken clock is right twice a day, too.
;) I don't know what the conservative Republicans are making of this year's election, but I'm sure it'll be a lot more interesting than the last few have been...
Helms has stayed on office for this long for ONE very simple reason: He's pro-tobacco, and tobacco farmers in NC are almost "activists" when it comes to keeping their interests represented in the government, around here. If the tobacco market collapses, the ones who can't effectively change to another cash crop will be out of business, and most such farms are family affairs.
Helms' approach wouldn't work, except most other people seem too apathetic to bother voting someone else in; so, while people complain about it, they don't DO anything about it, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I'm looking forward to this year's election: A woman from out of state on one side, and a Democrat on the other -- talk about a dilemma!
The Helms Era is finally ending, and at least some folks are going to celebrate.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
"Ironically, the last parts of your post did describe the attitude of organized religion, though."
What? Explain how this is the attitude of Unitarianism, Orthodox Presbyterianism, or Tibetan Bhuddism.
Or just think before you rant, child.
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
Boy, I ought to check my own facts first; Elizabeth Dole is a North Carolina native, so she's not pulling a Hillary on us, or anything.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
almost as ironic as how RIAA companies (whose artists gleefully trash the Ten Commandments) whine, "thou shalt not steal copyrighted tunes."
How about that big office shooting in Vancouver?
And Canada is a third worls shithole, to boot.
Ha ha ha...good thing you caught the Dole factoid...I was about to call you on it :P
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You might want to try opensecrets.org - he takes plenty of money from Big Tobacco, communications, ect. Unless a company lives in a house on Carolina St, rasing a family of small business owners, I don't see the 'people'. I see corporations.(Admittedly, everyone on the site has dirty hands.. :(
All that is completely beside the point that Helms is a racist and a homophobe. NC has no gay people or black people, so it's ok.
Frankly, Jesse Helms has been a political Juggernaut, and points out many things wrong with the system, such as lack of term limits.
Sure I blame the voters. I blame the non-voters more.
Ugh! I just agreed with Jesse Helms. I feel dirty.
t'nera semordnilap
"I share the disappointment of Webcasters and many content providers that an anonymous hold prevented the Senate from passing this bill before the Oct. 20 deadline," Leahy said in a statement. I am sure we can figure out who Leahy supports.
There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so. -Hamlet
Well, I think a lot more people are likely to hold the "woman" factor against her more than an "out of state" factor, if she had both, which is sad if true, but probably not surprising.
The out-of-state factor sort of depends on how centralized you like your government...
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
This might have been brought up and if so I apologize for the redundancy... But what if the RIAA decided to start backing off on the "pirates" and the average joes doing the downloading and the webcasting? Do you think that would help their current public perception and, concurrently, help their bottom line? From what I can see, they feel that their public perception is pretty far down the crapper, so far, in fact, that they see no other option to continue their harrassment tactics against their market-share. Consider this: If they loosened up, would we start to change our minds about them? Would an RIAA sanctioned repeal of some of these pending-legislation bills improve their public standing and therefore, increase their bottom line? Look at who their battling. We've all spent a decent amount of coin on computers, hardware, etc. so who's to say that if they backed off, some of that cash might head back in their direction. I'd just like to see this whole thing resolved, but maybe if we took a different approach (i.e. writing letters to congressmen that support the RIAA explaining that backing off would increase goodwill and possibly their dollar figures), we might actually start seeing the change were looking for. I for one don't want to make enemies of these guys permanently, just take a look at how many 800 lb gorillas they have in their corner.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
As the thread about Jesse doing this to protect small religious-oriented stations also touches on, the problem that the classical station is facing is that they're a niche market, while the standard music publisher packages are designed to handle the high-volume highly-commercial market. So you're paying the big bucks to broadcast the Top 40, or a couple of other big commercial genres (Country, etc.) even though you're not broadcasting it and you'd pay a lot less for your niche content. This probably affects web radio stations more than the broadcast radio market, because they're much more likely to be niche-content players as well as small players - the costs of getting into non-pirate broadcast radio, especially with the current Gosplan\\\\\FCC licensing rules, and the technical fact that broadcast radio is inherently local unless you burn huge amounts of power, means that you're going to have a mixed-content market, while the Web makes it much easier to find a listener base for your favorite Ukranian fuzz-grunge-collective dance music.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If a webcaster is based outside of the USA and includes a limitation clause that prohibits USA listeners from tuning in, would it be exempt from paying these licenses?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Don't you have a phone call to make in your white van? Just tell me this. Did the UFOnauts tell you to do it or was it something you heard on the Rush Limburger Show? "Asshole" is too good for you. At least assholes have a valuable function.
Look who's ranked at #5 on the political contribution list. Not to mention look at their party majority in regards to those contributions. Aren't the Dems supposed to (historically) work for the little guy?
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
Different strokes for different folks. I hope Jesse has a good one.
I've been awaiting the damage to WCPE for some time. Happy to see that they might not be affected so greatly. WCPE is a great station where they play classical music and DON'T just get money from the government, like PBS. It's a good example of how the market has demonstrated the ability to provide something people think it can't, more efficiently than the government.
No, I'm not.
Karma: Undead.
Ah yes, another fine example of liberal "tolerance" and "compassion".
The Religious Right, incredible as it may seem, can be the killer ally of the digital freedom movement, just like Stalin was in WWII.
:)
And when we are done with you, my libertine geek allies, "we will bury you."
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
im on the side of the little guy, but im also worried about the artists. its not that they dont make enough money but if you think about it, the artist will probably lose the money instead of their record companies. isnt it the artist gets like $.05 for every cd sold (dont quote me). so im sure the companies will screw over the artist instead of losing their few billion dollars.
> ..the libertarian streak thru geekdom (with which I sympathize, though not always agree) is definitely in line with old-school conservatism.
Remembering of course that Helms is no old school conservative... When old school was new school, Helms was a Democrat.
I metamoderate, therefore I am
What the webcasters need to do is somehow convince Congress that it makes more sense to base fees on profits and not revenues. Then, once they've done that, hire the MPAA accountants and - presto - there will suddenly be no profits left (after paying the DJ, the webcasting fees, hardware upgrade, new cars, etc.) to pay the RIAA.
Seems only fair to me...
no cares anymore about the churches, its God's Law's that matter.
the churchies have a history of wanting to censor things that they find objectionable.
Wait a sec... I'm a churchie and my church doesn't censor anything. Please don't put all Christians into a stereotypical and narrowminded little box with a label.
Confucious says: Man who runs behind car gets exhausted.
// jeku.com
I take it by your message that your referring to that fact that he doesn't agree with extending hate-crimes legislation? Well neither do I! The laws we have now should be MORE than enough. If someone does something illegal they should be punished, regardless of their reasons.
I'm also against state sponsored gay marriage--if they want to get married in their faith fine, but I don't think the state can or should legislate morality, I'll leave that to the churches.
Secondly, as long as smoking a joint is a crime, they SHOULD be in jail.
as for the white supremacist bunk...what?
thank you
Jesse Helms?
That's an 800 year-old gorilla.
But as was pointed out in another thread, Mr. Helms' term is up in January, and he is not seeking re-election. I can only pray that this bill continues past Mr. Helms' career, as most bills tend to die once their proponent leaves office - and that's assuming they're lucky to survive the proponent being a lame duck in the first place.
He certainly has a bad reputation (probably deserved), but he's not McCarthy - hopefully he'll be remembered more for this.
This sig no verb.
This situation is very complicated and confusing. It is not clear whether this development (Helms stopping this bill) is a good one or a bad one.
.07 dollars per song-listener fee. Then the house introduced a bill to provide a temporary stay with no fees for 6 months. I think they did this to buy more time.
.07 fee for some small listeners, but to implement a set fee schedule. The house passed this, and it is unclear if the House Rep's actually knew it had been changed or if the people who called in support liked the massively changed bill. Never-the-less the bottom line is that the change reduced the statuory fee.
The Library of Congress set the
Somehow the bill got rewritten at the last second to instead reduce the
Now, thanks to Helms, the bill failed in the Senate and so the LOC's rules take effect. Except that they really don't for RIAA music because the implementing organization has said they will accept less the minimum fees regardless of the actual amount due.
I'm thinking Helms wants next years Congress (which he won't be part of) to get a better long term deal for small webcasters than what the House bill would have done. However, by deciding to hold out, the status quo does change as the LOC rules take effect as a backdrop.
Confused? Skeptical? Me too.
I've said it before and I'll say it again now -- when negotiating with the RIAA and Congress for the use of RIAA music, we will not win. Even if we win, we will lose. The best thing we can do is develop and support channels for non-RIAA music.
Really??
Cool! At least there is 1 non-spoiled place in America.
It seems to be painting Helms as the enemy of small webcasters, blocking legislation that would have given them cheaper rates. But based on a story on /. a few days ago, I believe the law in question is a 30-page RIAA rewrite of a bill that in its original 1-paragraph version would have eliminated the royalty fees entirely.
The Religious Right, incredible as it may seem, can be the killer ally of the digital freedom movement, just like Stalin was in WWII.
Ahh yes, Stalin's 'digital freedom movement' rocked... only it was about the freedom to move one's digit on the trigger when facing hordes of conspirators.....
Perhaps it's worth mentioning that Digitally Imported hit a record high of about 11,000 concurrent listeners tonight... this is great as on friday they didn't even know if they'd still be broadcasting after the weekend.
Beethoven's been dead for a long time, but you seldom listen to a pre-Steamboat-Willie performance of Beethoven's music. Usually what you listen to is some modern orchestra that performed and recorded the music in the late 20th century, either under modern copyright laws or under pre-Berne US copyright laws. So you're buying a Deutsche Grammophon recording of Furtw"angler's 1929 Berlin Philharmonic performance of Beethoven's 5th(that one's listed as "dubious") or EMI's 1954 recording of the same piece with Furtw"angler conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, possibly in a form remastered by somebody else and printed by the El Cheapo Classical CD Society in 1998.
Piracy's not unknown even in classical circles... More dubious recordings
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm also against state sponsored gay marriage--if they want to get married in their faith fine, but I don't think the state can or should legislate morality, I'll leave that to the churches.
To be logically consistent you would then be against state-sponsored straight marriage, too. By giving special priviledges or burdens to a straight couple who want to get married in their faith - isn't that also legislating morality?
Why not be consistent? Either allow gay couples the same rights that het couples get, or don't give couples special rights over people who freely choose to remain unmarried.
God is real unless declared integer
try living in Jacksonville, Florida all your life and it might not be so easy.
ps- Remember many months ago during the Southern Baptist convention when the Baptist Minister claimed that Mohammed was a demonic possessed pedophile? That was Dr. Vines (laugh at his formal title) of First Baptist Church, the most influential, politically charged organization here. I just hope to god your not a hard line republican. The concept of a Christian Republican just boggles the mind until you're numb to the hypocrisy.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Educational stations (eg WCBN) that stream their over-the-air broadcast would have been negatively affected by the passage of this bill. Hopefully, language will be added to give them a break even if they don't get a free ride. See: Save our streams
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha oh I think I hurt myself
Excuse me if I'm thick, but how does this affect the -rest- of the world?
I apoligise if I'm pointing out the obvious, but the Internet is international in nature. Do the actions of the RIAA affect countries other than the US? If so, how?
>"Even the religious right".
>>"...Republicans..." The religious right are all Republican, yes, but most Republicans aren't of the Religious Right. I can still remember the controversy surrounding admitting the religious right to the heart of the GOP.
Behavior has never been the sole determining factor of guilt in our legal system. If someone convinces you that pushing a button will bring the elevator to your floor, and it blows up a building, you aren't the one who blew it up. It matters less "who pushes the button" than what each intended to do. A person who steals bread to feed his starving children is in violation yet shouldn't be punished the same as someone who destroys a loaf of someone else's bread so that children will starve. To ignore intent is just simplistic to an extreme that indicates you've perhaps not considered the matter.
So is state sponsered marriage legislation of morality? Its not for hetrosexual couples? But it is for homosexual couples? Its not legislating morality when the legislation supports your cultural worldview, but it is "morality" when it doesn't support your worldview? I sense a contradiction. As long as its a crime...regardless? Isn't that... wrong?
Love WCPE. Not sure what I think about Helms as a person, but I've always been quite pleased with his NO votes and his public stands against lots of stuff.
Who would get these payments if this legislation is passed? Seems to me, there's no system in place for this money to go where it would be appropriate (i.e. the artists), so basically the RIAA gets money for people using the internet?
Who else will come to the rescue of a free internet besides people who think traditional media has made them look like a bunch of loonies and made them pay dearly for their broadcasts? That's right, back to square one, the religious folks want their voice. Most of them, despite the anti-smutt campains, are friercly anti-government. It's no shocker. Gutenburg printed a bible, you know. What other people did with moveable press was not his business.
Talk to your local bible thumper and tell them about 802.11B today! They've got the resources, political connections and organization to not only build their own free networks, but to make sure they stay leagal.
Take that! All you trolls that accused me of being a zealot or an evangalist - you might have been right.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
listen to this
I agree. If swilldon is so big, perhaps he can pay up your fee for you so the RIAA can continue to protect, mmmm, themselves and you can keep on putting out tunes that nothing to do with them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Note to class: ASCAP and BMI are the two organizations which collect money from current FM/AM/(Cable)TV* broadcasters in exchange for music rights. ASCAP/BMI have set fees based on several standards, namely, listener mass, and the amount of revenue the station pulls in.
This new web-fee hoopla stems from the additional fee for broadcasting, simply because you're using the Internet as a means of transmission. A webcaster would pay a webcasting fee ON TOP OF the already established ASCAP/BMI fee.
It's like saying - hey, we want you to pay 50 extra on this gallon of gasoline for road taxes. Then, you turn around and make anyone with an automatic transmission pay an extra 25/gal, for no reason.
I think the surprising thing is the lack of publicized ClearChannel comment over all of this. I would think that they'd want to be able to run Internet streams for their thousand radio stations, without additional, "web only" fees.
They are the true 800 pound gorilla. Yet, are as quiet as a church mouse.
*MTV can be loose with music, placing whichever songs they choose in their own programming, without an authors consent, because they pay their ASCAP/BMI fees.
Nonsense, heterosexual unnions have nothing to do with marriage. They are biological unions for the procreation of the species. Simple.
Heh, submittied too fast..heterosexual unions/marriages have nothing to do with _morality_ I meant. my mistake.
I disagree. Sometimes the truth inflames people. That doesn't make it a Troll.
Here's an off-topic example: we're currently at war because of the 4,000 who tragically died on 9/11.
This was a tragedy, and does deserve action. I do not dispute this.
Last year, Helms and friends helped kill ~400,000 with tobacco. That's more than 9/11 every four days. We're track to lose ~420,000 this year. More next year. And the next.
The national response is... taxes and public service stops. Something is out of proportion.
Of course, Al Quaeda didn't contribute to Helms' election...
Dude, I know it was just a dorky simile, but please check your history.
Had Stalin not a) aligned with Hitler in the first place, or b) murdered his entire professional general staff in a series of psychotic purges, the Nazis would never have had the success in the West that they did, and the war would have been over much sooner, with many many MANY fewer people dead.
If that's the kind of ally you're looking for, well, uh, good luck and all, I guess.
You have a definite point about intent, I won't deny that. But let's face it, if you beat someone and pistol whip them, and then kill them etc (Matthew Shephard) it shouldn't make a rat's ass difference what your motivation was..you should go to jail if not worse.
To restate, you make the point that if there is NO intent verses ANY intent there should be a distinction drawn..sure, this is in part the difference between a crime of passion and premeditation. On the other hand, if there is intent to kill/beat/whatever, it's completely irrelevant WHY you wanted to do these things (at least in terms of the target's sexual preference). IF you can explain to me why for instance matthew shephard's killers should be treated any differently than anyone else that executed a like crime, I'd love to hear.
Here's my reason for saying that heterosexual marriage isn't a moral issue--it exists because of biology. Marriage (at its core) as an institution exists to formalize breeding relationships, that's all (historically this is the reason for such things as harems as well). If the purpose of the marriage is NOT procreation (which by definition it can't be in a gay marriage) then it enters the realm of morality, and I say the state should have no part here.
I'd like to hear your opinions on this.
Well, someone offed him... if he were that close to death, he wouldn't have been chosen as the compromise candidate he so obviously was, and he seemed quite healthy before he took the job. And JP2 was a lot closer to the Vatican Bank/Propaganda Due mob...
Foster I'd return an open finding on. Easy to believe it was suicide, equally easy to believe it was murder. The problem with Hillary alleging a conspiracy was that there was nothing conspiratorial about the hostility against the Clintons... it was right out in the open, and they were just doing the same shonky things that every President has done (I haven't seen much dirt on Carter, but maybe that just indicates his naivety.)
deus does not exist but if he does
mmmh?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am part of a dying breed!
Anyways, your statement regarding Classical Music is ridiculous. Fans of classical music try to listen as many live performances as they possibly can.
If you want to give the proverbial finger to the RIAA do not buy RIAA produced CDs and go to live music (the gendre does not matter, if people is willing to subject themselves to a painful experience like a concert of Britny Spears or whatever her name is, it is a least in the name of a good cause).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
A lot of people don't know this but Jesse Helms was a broadcaster and definitely a strong believer in the public service obligations of radio. If web broadcasters are not first and foremost public service I don't know what is.
Let him know you support what he is doing. It will probably put his office into shock:
jesse_helms@helms.senate.gov
shut the fuck up please. just shut the fuck up