Small Webcasters Sue RIAA

killthiskid writes "The Webcaster Alliance, a small group of 198 webcasters has sued the RIAA. CNET has the news, along with a growing number of other sites (google news). As many /.'ers know, in 2002 the Library of Congress decided on .07 cents per song (retroactive to '98). After that another bill was passed to protect smaller webcasters. Aparently, many webcasters are still not happy." Their complaint is online.

Comments

Better world through litigation

[Angry White Guy]

Keep the conglomerates and lawyers tied up forever. The rest of us can be free and happy.

Re:Better world through litigation

[Lord Custos]

Yes...we need to protect multinational megaloconglomerate zaibatsu against the hordes of tiny individuals and their attempts at free market commerce.
I mean, if we were to allow such microbusinesses to continue, taking business away from the megalocorporations, we might become...free market capitolists or democratically free individuals...
and we know we don't want that...

Wow

[Mephie]

Congress passed new copyright rules in 1998 that created a new royalty structure, unknown in traditional radio, under which Internet radio stations would pay record labels and artists a fee for playing their music online. Lawmakers didn't specify how much this fee would be, kicking off years of battles.

Now that's quality legislation.

Re:Excuse me for asking, but

[Lxy]

Wait for the RIAA to mandate DRM for your brain. Then the confusion will be cleared up.

Re:Excuse me for asking, but

[Frymaster]

how do you determine when you are listening to somone's intellectual property and when you are listening to someone's free speech?

that free speech is free as in, uh, speech... not free as in beer. you can speak freely and charge for it. there is no mutual exclusivity. that'll be two dollars, please.

Re:Excuse me for asking, but

[gmag3]

It's the broadcaster's/webcaster's responsibility to determine this, not the listener's.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Michael

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess where the Offtopic mods are coming from. Hint, the name starts with M and ends with ichael.

Hopefully we'll find out soon

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Text of an email I sent to Speakeasy:

These comments are taken off of the front page of www.slashdot.org and were made by michael@slashdot.org This seems to be very bad publicity for your company. Will you be posting a response? You may want to have your public relations dept take a look at this website and these comments.

(in order)

> *from the speakeasy-dsl-sucks dept.*

> *from the speakeasy-has-spent-two-weeks-without-placing-my-o rder dept.*

> *from the i-thought-premium-price-meant-premium-service dept.*

> *from the not-in-speakeasy's-case-certainly dept.*

*from the even-writing-to-speakeasy's-ceo-gets-no-results dept.*