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Internet Radio Will Go Silent on June 26th
Spamicles writes "Thousands of U.S. webcasters plan to turn off the music and go silent this Tuesday, June 26th, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that, if implemented, would lead to the virtual shutdown of this country's Internet radio industry. In March, the Copyright Royalty Board announced that it would raise royalties for Internet broadcasters, moving them from a per-song rate to a per-listener rate. The increase would be made retroactive to the beginning of 2006 and would double over the next five years. Internet radio sites would be charged per performance of a song. A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays."
... internet radio stations that weren't running for profit, but simply for the enjoyment of broadcasting? How does soundexchange propose to get blood from a stone? Or would that be disallowed completely, even if the person wasn't broadcasting any music that they might have say over?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
because, like the radio, it broadcasts a stream, users 'tune in' to the stream. The stream does not reposition for new connections that have 'tuned in' with the exception of an obligatory "THANKS FOR LISTENING TO THIS STATION" or whatever. There is no interactivity, the user can not choose where in the history of the stream to begin listening. This is a bunch of crap. =(
This is an interesting notion. Voluntarily shutting down blogs, podcast sites and others can maybe help bring some attention to the general public about how seriously worried content creators are about this.
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Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
The fact that this price increase is retroactive absolutely blows my mind, especially when you consider how large of a price increase this will be. Retroactive changes to the law is one of the hallmarks of a failed legal system. How many radio broadcasters will even have the kind of money that is now being demanded of them?
Exactly what do they think they've won here?
Distribution Control.
Ok well here's talking yourself into the jaws of the lion on Slashdot and IANFRWW (I am no &*@!ing Right Wing Wan&#&!) but I struggle to see why this is inappropriate. The content of these stations is the music. The value of the station to advertisers is the number of people who are going to listen to it AND those stations use those stats to price their ads with the ad providers. Paying pay-per-track rather than pay-per-listener is clearly inequitable when the stations themselves earn money on a per listener basis. Hopefully they could create a carve-out for amateurish for-fun operations but let's not bleat for full blown commercial operations - there's no inequity here. /me puts on my flame-retardant helmet
I've been wondering the same thing myself. How are they going to enforce those payments, exactly? The most they MIGHT be able to do is shut the radio station down, but that sure isn't the same thing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
.... five users wonder what happened to their favorite web site.
I'm sure those that listen to Internet radio will know ahead of time and are outraged by this decision. The rest of those that surf the Internet, those that make the laws, and just about everyone else (minus those that will see a financial gain from this ruling) don't know or care to know about what will happen to Internet radio.
And unfortunately it's not +1 Funny either.
This issue is emblematic of a much larger phenomenon that is only going to increase over time. That phenomenon is the increasing gap between modern society and what the bureaucracy perceives it to be. The government had enough trouble when change was slow. Now as the speed of change gets quicker by the week, the out-of-touch nature of government becomes not just an issue to laugh about, but one to be of great concern. Political ideology combined with an insularity from change will stifle those who are the best and the brightest at the expense of those that are the most powerful.
I don't think you're getting the point of this law. The corporations who support it don't run internet radio and they don't want it to continue. This is the easiest way for terrestrial radio companies to make "Internet Radio" illegal. If it's too expensive for your to create and run "myradio.com" then everyone will be forced back to 97.9 FM and they can continue their monopoly of the airwaves.
If that were indeed the plan, it would be by far the most stupid plan ever devised in the history of the world. After all, even if the terrestrial radio companies got every single radio station in the United States to shut down, the rest of the entire planet, which is still hooked up to the internet, would be able to easily fill in the void.
It's simply not possible for "internet radio" to die at this point. Only for the US to further drive its own companies into irrelevance.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
He didn't say royalty payments for over-the-air stations will increase, he was just making a point. If the most popular station in LA couldn't afford these payments (if they were to be given the same rates), how is it expected that a internet radio station could.
They're not interested in actually getting these royalties. They're interested in protecting their already established FM and AM radio models. Where they choose what gets played and how many times.
Internet radio is screwing that up.
This law wasn't made to make them more money, this law was made to shut down Pandora, Last.fm and Live365.
Old school radio and royalty payment markets don't want you listening to streaming music on the internet. You might make an artist they don't control popular and rich and cheat them out of the millions they make when they can hold you captive listening to Britney Spears and Creed on the thousands of over-the-air stations that the big three broadcast corporations control.
Oy yeah, and they want to end competition to their new Satellite subscription radio model which is tanking badly.
The real goal should be to have the RIAA go silent for a day.
Hasn't the music industry realized yet that without radio (in any form) they would have zero distribution for new music and fall flat on their faces? If anything, these radio stations should be paid by the record labels for playing their songs for free and getting them much needed exposure, especially when it comes to the next big pop artist. Unbelievable.
17 USC 114(d)(1)(A) exempts "a nonsubscription broadcast transmission" from the exclusive right under section 106(6). I would assume that "broadcast" is defined as a radio transmission licensed by the FCC, not a packet stream sent to IPv4 address x.x.x.255.
Bullshit. It was still sprung on them. Even if they knew that new rates would be
determined whenever enough palms had been greased, they had no way of knowing to
what extent people were going to fuck them over. So, once the term of the old rates
lapsed, what were they supposed to do? Shut down, because Amazing Kreskin^WAC
says they should have known they'd be screwed? Or keep on going, expecting things
not to be too different?
Compare, for instance, a renter and a landlord. If I have a lease with my landlord
to rent for $500 per month for a year and I make those payments everythings fine.
If at the end of the year I continue on as a tenant at will, and still pay $500 per
month, then everything's fine. The landlord cannot come back in three months and tell
me that the new rent is $750 per month and I owe him $750 in back rent; regardless
of whether or not he told me when the lease lapsed that he'd be raising the rent but
hadn't decided how hard he wanted to screw me yet.
Were that I say, pancakes?
This law only kills internet radio in the United States, it doesn't affect internet radio stations outside the US. I already listen to stations outside the US, and I'm sure there will be a heckuva lot more if this legislation passes.
So, in effect, this law will only serve to outsource these stations to other countries -- places where the RIAA can't extract any royalties at all. Brilliant, RIAA, brilliant...
Rather than writing you representive, in this case it might be better to write your favorite band. Tell them which albums you have and the concerts you went to, and then tell them you can't buy any more of their CDs because their music is covered by SoundExchange. Ask when they will release an album under creative commons.
We are all just people.
That's exactly the point. To get the attention of selfish people like you who will only take action when their daily routine is affected.
Maybe instead of complaining to us, or to pandora, you should complain to Congress. Make the need for such outages unnecessary, and we'll stop promoting them.
You assumed that the elected representative looked at your letter. Bad assumption. That is the job of a staffer, who compiles a list of opinions each way for the Rep/Sen. They don't physically have time to read all of thier mail. Bulk e-mail just gets bulk deleted. Unread. Even staffers don't have time to read all the botnet sent letters they get. There are only occasional letters actually read by your elected representative. The best of the best, or one from an identified large donor, or one from someone who needs help that can make the elected official look or feel good.
You can figure it out, at 3 minutes per letter, 10,000 letters means they would need about 30,000 minutes per week just to read the mail. that's 500 hours per week. A full time job for about 12 people. This is assuming the letters actually get read. the staffer using a form letter to answer will not have that much time. More like 20 seconds really. Do the math.
Still, your opinion will be entered into the matrix, what's done will usually be where the majority opinion lies on that matrix.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.