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Day of Silence On the Internet
A number of readers sent in stories about Net radio going dark for a day. Not all of it, but according to the Globe and Mail at least 45 stations representing thousands of channels. The stations are protesting a ruling establishing royalty rates that will put most of them out of business on July 15. "The ruling... is expected to cost large webcasters such as Yahoo and Real Networks millions of dollars, drive smaller websites like Pandora.com and Live365.com out of business and leave a large chunk of the 72 million Net radio listeners in the dark." SaveNetRadio has a page where US residents can locate their senators and representatives to call them today.
silence.. sees here, sees there
chirp
...am having a day of silence on the net.
It's not going so well so far... argg... must... stop... posting...
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Is this the result of a ruling, a law, or a company decision? Who exactly has to pay and who doesn't? What do they have to pay? Why do they have to pay it? To whom do they pay it, and why them? Where they paying before? Is it a matter of amount or are they challenging having to pay at all?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/23/19 8224
Perhaps Slashdot can hold its own protest and only publish dupes on that day?
Ya know, this sucks so bad that I had to torrent some music at work to listen to since I didn't have my streams. :(
Can all fish swim?
Is there anything we can do if we live outside of the USA? Will our voice/concerns even matter? We want to help in any way we can if it's all at possible.
Thanks.
And to think that Yahoo's music service (Launch) is working just as well as always, today. I had no idea that there was any kind of boycott going on. I have Launchcast streaming all day, every day. Too bad Yahoo wasn't involved.
I don't respond to AC's.
Why not forever until the right people get the message?
I dont really use online radio, but if I did I wouldn't miss it for a day.
What gets me really worked up is that this really isn't that big of a deal to most people. They don't even notice it. Yes, hundreds of thousands of people listen to net radio, but they don't have any idea that it is going to stop. I totally expected to hear about this on the news this morning, but I couldn't seem to find anything about it between the Wrestler and the War in Error (sic).
Is there any way we could contact our regular Radio & Local News stations and raise awareness of this issue?
Brad
... and that is why I listent to internet radio from Europe. I guess not everyone will have to. Sux. I loved the great responsiveness of their stations up until now...?
Stupid American law makers.
... because my porn is downloading so much faster today!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
You're not in the first class. You don't count.
The problem is that the radio servers which will be affected by raised royalty rates are largely located within the US; thus, their operation is subject to US law (and individual State laws, depending upon which state the servers physically reside in and which state the company running the servers lists as its main office).
Wait, I know - you non-US types can set up radio servers outside the United States, (somewhat) avoiding the pitfalls of US law. YMMV.
A boycott is usually a dumb move that proves little. If they really want to make a difference they should seek out and play music by artists that are not requiring royalty payments.
The stations should just become number stations for the day.
How is shutting down for one day going to do ANYTHING?
They can simply tunnel their broadcasts to a serrver outside the US and broadcast from there. This is a non issue caused by a lack of imagination.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
As you can see at KUOW, they are also participating, as I believe RainyDawg and KNHC in Seattle are as well.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't see why people get so upset about this. It really isn't a big deal. If the radio stations don't want pay the extortion rates (or shutdown because they can't afford them) all they have to do is move to another country. IANAL, but its not that hard to incorporate in another country. All they have to do is start a Canadian corporation or something and run it from there. If they can afford the old rates they can afford the few thousand to incorporate in another country. There is no reason this should have any effect other than hurting the US economy a bit since they will now be getting no royalties instead of the smaller ones.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
WE need some pirate radio mates!
Personally I don't listen to net radio. So far haven't listened to a station yet that didn't have such poor audio quality that my ears were left feeling raped. But in principle it seems the gov'ment is overstepping its mandate big time here which is always bad. So power to the pirates and may anarchy rein till we get a new less corrupt government.
US NetCasters will either move to a country without those laws
OR
use an SSL tunnel to a server in a country without those laws.
I wonder what they do to Net radio stations with "ALL TALK" or ALL News" format?
Damned stupid over-bribed politicians.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Is that you Bobby Fischer?
Okay, here's what I understand of it.
In the beginning. Prior to 1995, you could 'perform' music in public, via digital broadcasting, without paying any royalties on it. I'm a little fuzzy on exactly what you used to have to pay royalties for (Wikipedia says there was "no performance right" for artists, but that doesn't make a lot of sense, I remember performance-rights cases prior to '95; I think it was just a digital thing), but anyway, in 1995 Congress passed a law granting rightsholders control over the digital 'performance' of their works. The upshot of this was that anyone distributing music digitally now had to pay 'performance' royalties for it.
Obviously, trying to pay royalties directly to the owner of each piece of music that you might play on a radio station would be problematic. It would require negotiating a license with each rightsholder, for each work, for every station. The paperwork and negotiations would be crippling. So a provision was made for so-called 'statutory licenses,' basically blanket licenses that you buy from an organization who takes the proceeds and divides them up among artists. (Blanket broadcast licenses like this aren't a new thing, but this extended them to digital broadcasting.) In return, you can play whatever you want, without worrying about negotiating individual contracts. The cost and rate structure of these licenses is set, theoretically, by the U.S. Copyright Office.
Enter SoundExchange. The RIAA [1] has a division/subsidiary/department-of-evil called "SoundExchange", which is designated, by the U.S. Copyright Office, as the sole supplier of "statutory licenses" for digital music. So if you wanted to run an internet radio station or other digital broadcast, and weren't going to stick to just playing independent artists who have relinquished some of their rights to public performance, you needed to go to SoundExchange and buy a license. While philosophically objectionable to many (including many artists!) because of the metrics they use to distribute the fees, SoundExchange had licensing terms that weren't horrific, including some that were based on a percentage-of-revenue (I've heard 10-13% quoted). So if you were running a small-time internet radio station, the fees wouldn't break the bank. This has been the status quo for a while now.
The Rubber Stamp. The current controversy started a while back, when SoundExchange proposed, and the Copyright Office approved, a dramatic rate hike. Among other things, the new rates eliminated the percent-of-revenue model, replacing it instead with a per-song-per-listener model, combined with a minimum per-channel fee, and a bunch of other onerous terms (including making the fees retroactive to some point in the past, which would instantly force any station without large cash reserves out of existence). The bottom line was that under the new fees, most small internet radio stations -- particularly those who have lots of channels tailored to particular musical tastes or genres -- just wouldn't be able to pay the bills. The effect as far as I can tell, would be to make Internet radio much like terrestrial broadcast radio: dominated by a few corporate-backed players (e.g., Last.fm), with a small number of channels playing basically the same thing. The new rates, if nothing happens to forestall them, go into effect around the middle of next month.
[1] Okay, allegedly it's "independent" now. Riiight...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
-What about live music?
-What if the artist says on "air" that he/she expect no compensation for their live performance?
-What if it's a parody?
I could go on, but how anal is this law?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The reverse is true. You don't get a say until you start paying taxes....
That being said, why not start working in your own country with respect to streaming audio, if it means something to you?
I am a friend of a terrestial FM station's president. He also streams his content, for free. Him and I were discussing this issue just last week.
/AC for a reason.
He can afford paying the royalties, if he must. The smaller shops will pay about the same.
Here are the issues as he pointed out.
1. He is going to have to pay 10x what he would have in the past.
2. The artists don't even know the cut they are going to get.
2a. The artists are beginning to catch on.
any digital performance on the web, contract or not with any riaa company, is subject to the fees.
Why can't these companies move somewhere outside the US? It's not like US law is applicable elsewhere in the world.
Radio silences YOU!
I know I know, I can't believe I just posted that, I also can't believe it's not butter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It was Jimmy Carter.
The guy who has been illegally extradited from the UK to the USA (illegal because America kills people, and no country can extradite to a country that murders people in order to claim revenge for crimes as put in law by the Geneva convection which the UK is meant to adhere to) for hacking an American site whilst he was in the UK and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the USA (he could have been prosecuted by the UK police) and is now going to serve up to (cant remember exactly) 70 years in prison, he may disagree with you.
Pandora could offload its site to The Pirate Bay???
Pandora's Bay.com
Is there any way we could contact our regular Radio & Local News stations and raise awareness of this issue?
Yeah. Contact your local radio stations
I don't respond to AC's.
... and replaced it with a page linking to Google News's coverage of the day.
In solidarity, I won't download any illegal music torrents for 24 hours. I'll keep my uploads going, though.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How about all the myspace music pages where artists post their own songs? Does myspace have to pay, do the individual artists have to pay to post their own songs? This is just a huge can of worms.
this will drive more people to pirate music!!! Good job US goverment!!
I left a Pandora window open overnight and it's still playing today. Is that cheating?
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
What effect will this legislation have on shoutcast? That is the main internet radio that I listen to.
Server error 500: User should stop being so retarded and try it right for once.
I was actually wondering how this would effect personal streams. Lets say I want to broadcast a stream of my playlist for my friends. Granted, most of it would be chiptunes and other tracker styled music, would I be violating the law if I threw some Jazz and 80's music in the mix?
What about in Virtual Worlds? Second Life allows you to stream music from your playlist on your land. How would this effect users in that game?
So far, only streaming radio businesses have been mentioned, but I'd like to know if this effects the individual with about 10 unique listeners.
Its one day all the evil websites won't be stealing money from the starving artists!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Calling your senator may be totally useless.
Chances are s/he has been tuned to a very different music for quite some time now. The tune s/he prefers is played by RIAA, not some nobody Internet radio guy, that pops up by the dozen every minute, with no cash for political campaign financing contribution. Who the hell these jobberwockies think they are?
I got through to two of my three representatives listed on SaveNetRadio.org. The first in the list had a busy signal, so maybe he's getting flooded with calls *crosses his fingers*
The two offices I did get a hold of stated that the representatives had not taken a stance on the issue yet, but that they would be happy to pass my message along. To be honest, this is the first time I've called. Feels like a meager effort, but at least I did something. Just wish I could do more... like vote on the issue myself.
"which is designated, by the U.S. Copyright Office, as the sole supplier of" There's the issue. "designated" by some assholes in DC "as the sole supplier" = government mandated monopoly. Also, I'm damned certain this particular bit of regulation could be turned over fairly easily as ex post facto legislation which is expressly forbidden by our constitution. The want to keep squeezing tighter, fuck 'em, more will slip through their grasp.
So, I called my people in Congress. Levin hasn't taken a position and wouldn't say when he would (I'll take that as "no"). Stabenow put me on voicemail and promised to call back (funny, "no" again). Dingell, ah there's the funny part. I talk to the aide, he hasn't heard about the bill. I tell him H.R.2060 and he's able to look it up. Then says they are not familiar with the bill. I ask when it'll be voted on and the aide says the bill is still in committee. I ask, "how can I find out who is on the committee?" His reply, "Dingell is chair of the committee." Sounds like the bill is doomed.
"Won't work. The issue is that SoundExchange, which is the 'collections agency', has gotten the right to collect money "on behalf of" ALL artists, even those not registered with it."
Slashdot already covered this issue.
Silence... something about silence makes me sick...
"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - M.J. A
Is me, Borat Sagdiyev! High five!
Ron Paul, presidential candidate that CNET considers the top person in all of Congress on Internet issues, is cosponsoring HR 2060 to nullify this disaster. Run Ron Run!
"Is there anything we can do if we live outside of the USA? "
Invade!
As I understand it moving out of the country won't keep these companies in bussiness. Even if they did, they would still owe the back funds to january of 2006.
I've noticed that every time we see an article about this issue we always get a plethora of people stating to the effect of "pfft, theres still the rest of the world out there to host servers on". Given that this is the case, and the recording industry is most likely aware of this fact, isnt it likely that this is what they would WANT?
It seems to me that they do not care about sustaining the revenues from these small operators, merely getting them hit out of the market completely. Not because they think its logical and valid but because these small stations allow for a lot more EXPOSURE to different musics. The Recording industry seems to be heart-set on controlling the united states listener market, indoctrinating them into their current "top 40 for your genre of choice" way of thinking. By keeping the royalties as a per-channel issue, the more styles people try to put out there, they have a direct incentive not to diversify. This allows the usual gang (CC, etc) to keep control of what music people are being exposed to.
How often to people buy cd's of bands they dont know? and if they manage to kill Fair-Use by the end of the day, they'll have it enforceably illegal to share with friends (in a MAFIAA perfect world).
Then all thats left is to mass produce more of the same crap, ensure its all the target market is exposed to, and guaranteeing revenue without need for unimportant points like "taste" or "quality". Seems to me the RIAA is slowly giving up on affecting the world and are instead trying to create a fortress out of the USA.
Ice Cream has no bones.
pretty funny man!1 -> "composters of the music"
that is so true on so many levels...
As to the FCC and RIAA and sound exchange, etc, this is the united corporate states of america, never expect anything that doesn't benefit the large corporations from here on out.
Government isn't for sale, it's already been sold. All of it, a long time ago. What is going on now is just the ongoing maintenance and service contract.
Errr. Perhaps you can explain yourself.
US law has very limited application outside the US, whether the US government likes it or not. See Jon Johansen as an example of a failed attempt to do so. Other examples are the fact that Canadians can legally download copyrighted works from P2P file sharing networks for their own private use, something that would be illegal in the US.
Another example of a failed attempt to apply US law outside the US is the Helms-Burton Act wherein non-US companies were forbidden to trade with Cuba. The EU promptly passed a law binding in all its member countries declaring the act unenforceable within the EU. The UK passed similar measures. Canada passed the Foreign Extra-territorial Measures Act, forbidding Canadians or Canadian companies from complying with "extra-territorial measures of the United States"; it further requires under penalty of fine that any attempt to enforce such a measure in Canada be reported to the Attorney General of Canada. Further, a measure was passed stating that any loss/damages suffered by Canadians, even those residing in the US, could be recovered under Canadian law. Mexico passed a similar law.
One of the few times US law is applicable outside the US, is when it's applied to US citizens. A US citizen who commits murder in another country may end up (under certain circumstances) being extradited back to the US to face charges under the US justice system. But even in some such cases US law turns out to be, for all practical purposes, unenforceable -- see the Cuban Pyjama Crisis, wherein Wal-Mart Canada, although it is a Canadian subsidiary of a US-headquartered firm ended up putting Cuban goods back on its shelves
I'm a constant listener to [not going to shameless plug].net. It's a small radio station out of Denton, TX using shoutcast to get it's music out there. The group that runs the station caters to a small clientel of about 150 internationally at any moment anime/jrock/jpop listeners. Also they take great strides to make sure all the music they play is correctly licenced and plays accoring to US law. Unfortunatly there is also a significant number of pirate stations who do not take the proper steps to legalize their music.
If [not going to shameless plug].net were to participate in the silence, all it would do is push the listeners to other pirated stations (promoting what the RIAA wants to stop). Instead, they added one more ad that talks about the effort today.
If the laws do change and start gouging the stations [not going to shameless plug].net is going to be forced to shutdown. The station can barely keep up it's $375 a month costs licencing costs now, even with donations, premier service, and advertisements.
From the Cornell Law School Wex:
Ex post facto
Latin for "from a thing done afterward." Ex post facto is most typically used to refer to a law that applies retroactively, thereby criminalizing conduct that was legal when originally performed. Two clauses in the US Constitution prohibit ex post facto laws: Art 1, 9 and Art. 1 10. see, e.g. Collins v. Youngblood, 497 US 37 (1990) and California Dep't of Corrections v. Morales, 514 US 499 (1995).
The distinction between civil and criminal in ex post facto cases was made in Calder v.Bull, 1798.
You can argue The Case Against Civil Ex Post Facto Laws, but the Supreme Court is not in the habit of overturning 200 years of settled law.
Exactly what work *are* you doing?
Trying to pull >10GBps from the Internet2?
I was going to call my representatives and senators, but that's a long distance call.
:\
Sorry, internet radio
If there's money involved and big players (funding) that will be incurring millions of dollars in expense (to say nothing of the medium sized players) why aren't they putting money up instead of the mouth? Create an alternative license and NP organization to manage it. Put a few 100 thousand dollars collectively into lobbying the rights holders directly. We can play cat and mouse with ASCAP/RIAA et al indefinitely, or we can bypass them.
Up to now the problem has been organizing (which takes both time and money) and the hippie stigma (see Creative Commons). I don't see why artists can't protect their rights while allowing limited rights that may be beneficial. Not to sound rude, but divide and conquer.
FTR I am a small broadcaster.
Quack, quack.
Get a "mail" machine. I have one machine used as a gateway to the others. It essentially runs outlook, IM, and web. I terminal into all the other machines I do actual work on from there. Pandora/winamp/whatever run fine since there aren't any hogs on that machine. The added bonus is that I can copy/paste between dev/test/repro machines etc. File sharing is configured at a domain level so I don't have to worry about configuring that. It works well. The answer is ALWAYS more hardware!! :)
Peercast May be the solution. It allows P2P music streaming, and it's hard to find the source. More importantly, the source only has "one" listener, and it can be hard to tell how many total listeners there are.
Hey, they haven't all gone dark! Check out the ones that are still kicking out tunes, YEAH!
::]=- (ooh my personal favorite)
Turn on your Streamtuner and start dancing bitches!
1. Republic of Korea Top Radio. MUKULCAST.COM * KPOP
2. -=[:: HOT 108 JAMZ
3. FREQUENCE3 - www.frequence3.fr
4. HitzRadio.com - #1 for all the hits! (ooh my second personal favorite)
5. PulsRadio - www.pulsradio.com
6. HOT FM - Lebih Hangat Daripada Biasa
7. -=- MPEGRadio.Com -=- tormented radio / djdead
8. SMOOTHJAZZ.COM
9. Kpop [386FM]
10. frisky R a d i o
Okay, I understand the foreign stations not giving a crap, but what's the deal with all the non-shit-giving-hip-hop-ass-clowns????
Signed,
The Cowardly Lion
What if the artist says on "air" that he/she expect no compensation for their live performance?-What if it's a parody? I could go on, but how anal is this law?
The broadcaster doesn't want to deal with "What if?" He wants to cut a single royalty check and let SoundExchange worry about "What if?"
Again nothing new, industrial age economics which support corporate welfare is good for plutocratic corporatist/politicians and FUS citizens. This will provide a catastrophic legal penalty/fine for internet-radio, the SOS for telcos over the last 20 years, IPR for the last 30 years .... The purpose of Corporatist-Government Economics is to provide welfare funding for US/other corporations with customer-hostage holding, price gouging legacy oil infrastructure, heist-priced healthcare, credit-card and loan pillaging of lower income communities .... Well anyway it is a very peaceful nonviolent totalitarian terrorism for US ... we love it ... or we would always vote the incumbent out of office permanently.
The new royalties, as best I understand, are based on the number of times a music/product is broadcast to any customer.
IOW, sort of like: AM/FM/XM... one broadcast to many customers (1*100=100), but internet radio a broadcast/multicast... occurs for each destination IP address (100*100=10,000); So, if my analogy is correct at what ever proportion, then internet radio could not possibly afford the royalties and they are out-of-business.
Unless, internet radio limits their broadcast to open-content and old (no IPR) music and other open-biz concepts, and start looking and booking open-music artist in new creative venues and concerts. Well then maybe eventually the legacy music companies that pirate and pillage music from young and new artist would eventually go out-of-biz. We Can Hope!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
and listen to radio stations that are stationed outside of the US. Lately I've been searching through lists of French radio stations, although I'm sure I'll check out more from England, Germany, and Italy sometime in the next few weeks.
Hi. It's knuckle draggers like you that make good asphalt.
If your 6mbit connection and 2800+ CPU is choking on a 96k or even a 192k mp3 stream, you've obviously clicked YES, PLEASE INSTALL NOW OMGZ0RZZZZ! to every spyware pop-up warning you your computer is infected with some bullshit.
If you have drop outs, maybe you should look at your ancient s/w based borked NIC, or maybe even your upstream provider. Don't blame every else's equipment because you buy AMPTRON all in one motherboards.
Yeah, and I'm sure the "WORK! OMG!" that you do is quite useless.
" Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act. I appreciate hearing from you on this important, and I am pleased to tell you that I am a cosponsor of this bill.
As you know, on March 2, 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) dramatically raised the performance royalty rates for webcasters. The CRB eliminated the percentage of revenue fee that many small webcasters used to determine their performance royalty. The move from a percentage of revenue to a per-song rate hits small webcasters the hardest. Royalty rates would increase over 300% for the largest webcasters and as much as 1200% for the smallest webcasters. This kind of rate hike would mean the end of many Internet radio stations that would not be able to stay in business under the crushing new royalty rates. Therefore, I have cosponsored H.R. 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act. This bill would render the CRB ruling ineffective and would reinstate the percentage of revenue royalty payments. This bill has referred to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Committee on Judiciary.
Thank you for contacting me about this important issue. I will continue to be a strong voice for you in Washington.
Sincerely,
Mike McIntyre
Member of Congress"
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
As I was on the train this morning, three of the newspapers I came across had articles on it.
Look, this is a US ruling, affecting US netcasters. US law doesn't apply in Australia or the UK (yet, anyway), so while I support the netcasters affected, and support their stand, net "radio" will not go silent. In fact, this may just briefly reverse the torrent of cultural steamrollering the rest of the world gets. You yanks may just get to hear a different cultural view to your own ;-)
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
How about a day free of dupes? *runs*
According to Wikipedia, "There is a minimum annual fee of $500 per channel or station, payable in advance, against the above per-play fees." Emphasis mine. I believe "against" in this case implies additional fees only after passing the $500 mark (159,140 hours per month, which is roughly 220 listeners 24/7).
a rd#License_fee_rates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Royalty_Bo
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon