Slashdot Mirror
60-Day Reprieve For Internet Royalty Rate Hike
Chickan writes "The Copyright Royalty Board has officially posted its ruling on Internet royalty rates in the Federal Register. However, the organization has pushed back the due date for royalty payments to kick in from May 15 to July 15. The publication of this information also begins the official 30-day period for appeals. NPR is slated to file an appeal in this timeframe."
I work at a volunteer run radio station in CT. One of our DJs also runs an internet radio station with several volunteer DJs as well. He has to shut down due to this rate hike. He said it went from about 700 dollars a year to 15g a year.
Go here to protest this bullcrap.
u-bend
Coln. Mustard in the kitchen with the revolver.
In other news, Congress continues to sluggishly review sluggishly review H.R.2060: Internet Radio Equality Act. If you write a senator (or actually, house member) perhaps one should mention support for this.
While your writing, put in a bad word about this one. Colleges don't need to be wasting time and money trying to stop software piracy on campuse. Oh, and maybe this one, too.
Demented But Determined.
Unfortunately due to the wonder of the compulsory license, that is not an option unless you individually contact every copyright holder and make a deal. This is because the RIAA (or SoundExchange to be more specific) has been given the (questionablly) legal right to collect royalties on any song played on internet radio if the broadcaster does not already have a deal with the copyright holder. Artists then have to contact SoundExchange and pay them an "administrative" fee to collect the royalties conveniently collected by SoundExchange on their behalf. And because the license is compulsory, artists cannot "opt out." So unfortunately, unless someone bands together a large number of independent musicians into a single organization to deal with copyrights, independent music is not a way to get around this steaming pile of bullshit.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Pandora is being forced to block non-US listeners.
From the article:
You have to wonder how much longer the RIAA will get away with its ignorance and greed.
The last time I checked, ex post facto laws were prohibited. It's a bit like the IRS retroactively regulating that you really owed an extra $2000 on your taxes for the past five years, even though at the time you didn't.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
You are not being asked to lobby in favour of just "the RIAA's clients." The "performance royalty" is collected for all songs played, regardless of whether the artist is signed with an RIAA-affiliated label or not. An Internet broadcaster's choice is to either pay royalties at the rates prescribed by the CRB to SoundExchange for each song played times the number of listeners, or to negotiate separate deals with the copyright holder of every song they play.
The rates are so onerous that they threated to make Internet radio unprofitable, and therefore only an option to big companies and terrestrial stations (who don't pay the "performance royalty" for their over-the-air broadcasts, btw) who have other income sources to subsidize the losses they will inevitably suffer from their Internet broadcasts.
So these rates threaten to put out of business the same Internet radio stations who would be likely to play those independent artists you (and a lot of others) enjoy supporting, further entrenching the RIAA-controlled stations and giving listeners fewer choices.
Bill Goldsmith of RadioParadise has a lot of material and links on his site detailing how the rates are applied and what they mean to independent, listener-supported, commercial-free stations like his.
I don't care why you're posting AC
You really don't understand what SoundScan is. It's not RIAA music that's covered by SoundScan. It's *ALL* music. SoundScan is being set up to handle the royalties from a *compulsory* license for music. It doesn't matter if you don't want to be covered by SoundScan. It doesn't matter if you signed up to a major label deal. Your music, if it's covered by copyright in the US, will have its royalties handled by SoundScan.
That's why I find all the complaining about the RIAA in these threads kinda silly: it'll make no difference if you listen to indie music only. It'll make no difference in the prices the stations play if they shift to entirely indie music. *Everything* is covered by SoundScan for US businesses (or companies doing business in the US).