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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."
I'm not even in the music industry, but I'll be shutting down my web site (w/a notice explaining why & a link if someone has one) on that day to bring awareness to this issue.
.... five users wonder what happened to their favorite web site.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
At the bottom of the
If you want to find your local congress critter, and ping them on the subject, Go here. This link takes you to a nice little cgi app that takes your zip code, and gives you the phone numbers for your house and senate rep's, along with a short script of talking points. If the Internet Radio Equality Act, (S. 1353 in the senate, and H.R. 2060 in the house) can get some sponsors, and get passed, we're all in much better shape.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
Or would that be disallowed completely, even if the person wasn't broadcasting any music that they might have say over?
Exactly. Soundexchange gets paid even for non-member music. The law says that if you can't pay them, you don't play the music.
Now, there is one thing though, Soundexchange is required to allow artists and radio stations to contract directly and individually and is required to track all of these individual contracts so that they don't bill for those recordings. As creative commons grows, we might have a bit of a weapon to fight back with, if on our end we set up something more-or-less automatic for creating those contracts, it may turn out that we can swamp Soundexchange with them if they haven't already automated their end of the deal. If we can, and Soundexchange fails to keep up their end of the law, since they are "deputized" to operate the law, their failure might be prosecutable as malfeasance (if you can convince the Department of Justice to care about corporations), especially if it can be shown that at some step of the way they intentionally refused a contract or knowingly billed for a contracted performance.
So, you know those prices we told you to pay last year? We were totally kidding about that, it definitely should have been higher then. So go ahead and fork over the rest of the money you owe us.
Seriously, though, how in the heck can a price increase be retroactive?
You want a politician to respond to you? Snail mail is *still* the best way. Take ideas from a template if you must, but make most of the stuff, if not all of it up yourself. Be concise, but be sure and make your point. Bitching about a situation is obviously easier, but I got a reply back from Senator Boxer about a week ago (with the original letter sent in late May), which stated the following:
Thank you for writing to me regarding proposed changes to the assessment of royalty fees that Internet radio broadcasters pay to musicians and record labels. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.
As you probably know, the federal Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has released its plan for charging online radio broadcasters for royalties. The Internet Radio Equality act of 2007 (S.1353), which was recently introduced in the Senate, would nullify the CRB's proposal and prevent the new royalties assessment plan from taking effect.
S.1353 is currently being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Please be assured that I will take your comments under advisement, should this legislation come before the full Senate.
Again, thank you for writing to me. Please keep in touch with me about this and any other issue of concern to you.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
Last.fm is, at least historically, a UK company. Since their servers (and the music) is broadcast from the UK, I'm not sure this will affect them. The problem now, of course, is that they're now owned by CBS. Still, with Lastfm being a UK branch/division, they should be safe.
But of course, IANAL.
Exactly what do they think they've won here?
Distribution Control.
This current plan to hike royalty rates would be apocalyptic for internet radio. Its retroactive effect alone (back to January 1, 2006) would bankrupt all but the huge players.
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Here are some useful sites where you can find out what you can do. If nothing else, contact your congressional representatives and tell them to save internet radio by sponsoring the Internet Radio Equality Act.
http://www.savenetradio.org/
http://www.savenetradio.org/act_now/index.html
http://www3.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/callaler
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I now know who cares and who doesn't. I got a letter back within about a week from Jim Matheson, our Representative, who seemed very adamant about how wrong this proposed legislation is. He even went on in detail about why he wanted internet radio to stay the way is is (or become free, even). Bob Bennett didn't respond. Orrin Hatch, who is himself a recording artist (in a loose usage of the term), seemed to be sidestepping the issue in the letter he sent back. It was almost as though he agreed with the rate hikes. How someone who gets paid to make music can support the RIAA is beyond me. Though I guess Roarin' Orrin's reply didn't really surprise me, I guess there are things in life you never get used to.
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.
Yeah, but why does this apply to Internet radio and not broadcast radio? The principle you described is the model for broadcast radio, yet broadcast radio does not pay this way. This is about the record industry eliminating internet radio. The record industry controls what is played over broadcast radio, there are too many internet radio stations for them to get that kind of control over. The other problem is that the amount of the pay-per-listener fee exceeds what advertisers are willing to pay per listener.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The US stations could set up SSH tunnels to servers in Canada - 'internet underground railroad radio stations'...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
does this royalty regime apply to the streams from XM and Sirius?
The short answer is "no." In fact, internet radio stations would much rather have it the other way around: they want to pay what satellite radio pays. Right now, they're paying twice the satellite rate, and the new increases would push internet radio rates astronomically higher, retroactive to January 1, 2006.
In effect, the RIAA (through the Copyright Royalty Board) is trying to kill internet radio.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I do listen to a lot of Online Radio, primarily KTRS 550, and KMOX out of my home town of St. louis at work. There are some afternoon shows I like to listen too and now since I live out both of their radio range (I can get KMOX sometimes at night, but now that the Cards games have moved...)
Still I listen to more podcasts of shows that aren't in my market like the Tony Kornheiser show and then some of the ESPN shows like PTI.
I had my own radio show on the college radio back in the day, and I remember we were charged by the song, not the number of listeners, but as a low power system, I'm not sure how all those rates are calculated anymore. If that is still the case, this just seems like a way to cut competition for terrestrial radio stations.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
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.
Shut off the whole freakin' internet for a day in protest.
I'm all for it. Everybody should at least try having a real life for at least one 24-hour period anyway.
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.