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A Reprieve For Net Radio?
Porsupah writes "The Register reports that "Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL) have headed the 'Internet Radio Equality Act,' which aims to stop the controversial March 2 decision which puts royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio," as imposed by a recent decision from the Copyright Royalty Board. "If passed, today's bill would set new rates at 7.5 percent of the webcaster's revenue — the same rate paid by satellite radio.""
Well that's a result! Hopefully these guys will make good progress. In the end though with net radio streams getting higher and higher quality how long will it be before people use net radio as a content distribution mechanism with an excuse to get around copyright?
your government representatives do you proud. Way to be Jay. Good deeds don't go unnoticed when I'm bubbling in my absentee ballot. Way to be.
I wish them luck, but with the apparant stupidity reigning on the board for the trouble to have been passed in the first place, this may very well have trouble getting passed.
I wrote a "short" letter about how our congress is mishandling a number of Internet issues. I highly suggest that our fellow Slashdotters do the same. =) http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Demented But Determined.
How about someone who adopts a feeble DRM scheme, just as a ploy to satisfy the letter of the law? In the end, ALL DRM schemes are defeated eventually. Anyone who complains about the insufficiency of a particular webcaster's DRM could be confronted with a list of current workarounds for all of the supposedly current forms of DRM, thus illustrating the foolishness of the concept.
Does any one know how much airwave radio pays to play a song? Is it also by estimated listener? Or coverage of population of signal?
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
The new rates go into effect May 15 and are expected to instantly bankrupt most small web broadcasters (because they're retroactive to January, 2006).
In the mean time, this bill has to get out of committee, be voted on and passed by the house, get to the president's desk either on its own or tacked on to another bill, and then get signed.
That's a lot to get right fast. And the bill will no doubt face fierce lobbying opposition from the music industry suits trying to get internet radio shut down.
Props to these congressmen for setting up a bill on this, but...we're not there yet.
When little Nancy wanted a dog, she went to her father and said "daddy, I want a pony". Her father looked at Nancy and smiled and said "Nancy, horses cost a lot of money". But Nancy persisted "DADDY,I WANT A PONY". Her father frowned a bit "Nancy, besides costing so much, we'd need a stable and the horse would have to be trained and cared for".
So Nancy threw herself on the ground started crying, screaming and kicking "DADDY, I WANT A PONY. WAAAH".
In desperation, the father said "Nancy, how about a nice dog instead?".
And with that, Nancy smiled and went back to her room. She got the dog she wanted in the first place.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
This would be a wonderful change for public, non-profit, and college radio stations who broadcast on the airwaves as well as maintain a web stream. While the current web rate per song is pretty bad, it is the requirement that all songs need to be logged that is really making it difficult for these stations to keep their web streams up, since they don't often have the all-digital systems / small libraries of commercial ventures. It is almost as if the current legislation was drafted to prevent these types of stations from (legally) offering their content online.
This would blow away the reporting requirement and most of the fees for these stations. Fees could be easily calculated based on the small amount of revenue the stations generate. My only worry is that this amount might be higher than the per-song rate for commercial stations, and government loves business...
--- a snip from savenetradio.org----
On March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio's royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry's future.
At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, the CRB ignored the fact that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio pays, and multiplied the royalties even further. The 2005 royalty rate was 7/100 of a penny per song streamed; the 2010 rate will be 19/100 of a penny per song streamed. And for small webcasters that were able to calculate royalties as a percentage of revenue in 2005 - that option was quashed by the CRB, so small webcasters' royalties will grow exponentially!
Before this ruling was handed down, the vast majority of webcasters were barely making ends meet as Internet radio advertising revenue is just beginning to develop. Without a doubt most Internet radio services will go bankrupt and cease webcasting if this royalty rate is not reversed by the Congress,
----- end snip-----
well, lemme give you an idea, ok ?
Say that you got a small internet radio channel that handles on average 150-200 users per hours ( approx user count for all 24 hours... peaks at 500ish, 10-15 users in the wee hours... so say, for all practical purposes you ot a constant 175 users, k?) . Because you're barely making any money off this thing ( say you're "making" $100-200ish a month after paying for equipment, band, coffee, ramen, etc etc) you had the exemption that made it you paid a fraction of your revenues to the RIAA. But hey, you're still making peanuts here, so it's all good.
Suddenly the rules change. Let's run a quick and dirty calculation on what you suddenly owe the RIAA here...
175 users * 8 songs and hour * 0.0018 $ ( that's per song streamed) = 2.52$ So that's 2 bucks fifty an hour.
multiply by 24 hours, times the number of days in a month ( say 30) and you get.... 1814,40$ that you owe to the RIAA... PER MONTH.
Can you say ouch ? for a guy that was barely making ends meet, and making just enough to take out his girlfriend to a fancy dinner once in a while ( if nothing breaks) you went down to actually owning money for running a small net radio station.
Now you understand why the "percentage of revenues" is something small webcasters want.
Peace and happyness to you, by LullySing
Unfortunately, this is the US federal government we're dealing with.
Nancy asked for a pony, and probably got all the kings horses(and all his men).
Having worked for a federal department in the past, the GP is absolutely correct.
Every budget is padded by 15-20% with the expectation that it would be slashed by 15-20%, leaving them with close to what they wanted in the first place. I'd guess that higher-profile departments (DHS, Defense), get what they want by just asking.
Maybe they could just require the station to broadcast at a really low quality. That would discourage most from recording and burning it on a CD or transferring it to their mp3 players.
Actually, I read the entire ruling. The _only_ thing the content owners asked for and didn't get was a 25% premium for any content streamed to a mobile device.
Using your analogy:
The content owners asked for a pony. With a new barn, and tack, and a nice new trailer. Because, you see, they said that's really what they deserve. The webcasters said they could do a dog, as that's about what every other little girl on the block had, and they just didn't make enough money to buy a pony and everything that went with it.
The CRB told the webcasters that they were to by the content owners their pony, along with the barn and tack they'd picked out, but they should get a used trailer.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I run one of the more popular net electronic stations out there and I am of course glad to see this. I am also an artist and I have no problems with equality on the internet. It's clearly the way to go and I think people will becoming more creative with out to make money out of net radio. Right now I am not profitable at all. I split the cost with 3 guys and I carry most of the load of maintenance.
But they also fought for (and won) a royalty on blank cassettes, resulting in fair compensation for the millions upon millions of mixtapes and such that WERE recorded off the radio. I'm not positive if there's a similar royalty on blank CD media (I seem to remember hearing that there is...) but nowadays, to be analogous (pun?) to the advent of FM and royalties on cassettes, the content companies should get (small) royalty fees for each GB of hard-disk sold. After all, that is the predominant storage mechanism for digital music and internet radio streams.
The whole idea of changing the rules then penalizing you from actions in the past should be banned.
How the hell are you supposed to predict when congress will get a burr up its butt add that to your future business plan so you don't get put out of business ( or goto jail )?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You make it sound so negative! We do the same thing. We oppose every single abridgement to our freedoms with much gusto, yet we know, deep down, that we will have to reach a compromise. We can't specify a reasonable compromise that we'd be happy with, because it would be whittled down to something we would not accept.
Not to mention, it's simply wrong to say the RIAA only wanted what they got. They wanted what they asked for in the first place. They just knew they wouldn't get it.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You know, this got me thinking... from what I understand, you must pay a portion of your revenue (7.5%) to the RIAA. So, what pray tell would happen if you streamed something for free... ie sans revenue? And what constitutes braodcasting? Does a torrent of my songs? What about files to individually download? Most would say that no, that isn't it, because the content must be streamed (i.e. in real time with buffering) but we all know that streamed content still has to be stored locally somewhere. So, what exactly is the diff? And how can they make a law that basically shoots themselves in the foot?
it's .0018 cents per song per listener retroactive.
It's NOT 7.5% like you assume, the article was just using that as a typical example. The problem is that most small webcasters have NO income and barely pay the bandwidth as it is. So in reality this "7.5%" is really 100-140% of their "income"
"I'd like to hear Lucinda William's "Righteously." The version from "Live at the Filmore", not the studio release. Right now. Where do I tune in to hear that?"
Dial up IAM-INA-HELL. Should be there along with all the other country music....
No income = $0
Royalty rate = 7.5% income
7.5% * $0 = $0
It's nearly unthinkable that an agreement will be reached with these terms and no other provisions, but these are the terms the article provides. I'm sure there will be a separate provision for non-profits. But if passed in this form, it would be a GREAT thing for non-profit / no income webcasters.
Communications and rhetoric courses talk about this -- and they have a specific name for the tactic, but I can't remember it right now. Anyway, they invariably discuss the most famous case of this: Watergate, where the initial proposal by Liddy and Haldeman sounded, to them, likely to be shot down, so instead they came up with an elaborate proposal that involved ferrying people around in helicopters and speedboats, and when they presented it, Nixon argued that it was stupid, and they ended up compromising on a simple burglary. It's a good argumentation technique for people who cheat at rhetoric (and are prepared.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I think it is banned, at least in the context of criminal law. I can't remember the legal term but there is a legal concept in the US that "new" laws can not punish you for past behavior that WAS legal.
It's where the term "grandfathered in" came from back in the slave days. Once slavery was abolished, slave owners could not be prosecuted for violations in the past (that were legal when they were committed).
Can someone help fill in the rest?
7.5% of 0.
Err, as I recall, grandfather clauses were once (originally?) used to keep black people from voting.
Once blacks became free men (I say 'men' because women weren't exactly 'free' then), they wanted to keep them from voting, so they passed a law saying that you couldn't vote unless your grandfather had been able to.
I don't remember how they were eventually ended, but I know that at some point, all sorts of quizzes, poll taxes and the like were abolished, because all of them had been used to keep "undesirables" from voting (mind you, the quizzes and taxes were quite unfair; they'd make them more difficult and higher depending on how much they didn't want you to vote).
You can also combine it with an usb FM tuner to record local programs. I used to record our local college hoops games from the radio when I couldn't watch or listen and then import them to my ipod and listen later.
I actually wrote a custom petition and sent it to all of my congressmen.
No response from them but it was worth a few minutes of my time. This is a serious issue.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
savenetradio.org has a form up to call your congressperson to get them to co-sponsor the bill.
B5 71 ED FB 55 D6 4E 68 07 25 E2 FA CA 93 F0 2F, is mine! All mine!
The search took longer than the download.
I consider myself pretty open musically. My only dislike is Rap, but I really wanted to stick my soldering iron in my ear after listening to that.
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.