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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.
Basically it boils down to the fact that terrestrial broadcasters pay no royalties whatsoever to the recording companies, but the recording industry wants to extort as much money as they can from the internet music business.
One thing I don't understand is why the terrestrial broadcasters don't pay royalties in the US. AFAIK then do in most other counties. They certainly do in the UK. Anyone know?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
How is this even legal? If they are collecting money for bands that aren't even affiliated with them, then they aren't giving these bands any money either, so basically they are just taking money. How do they define a song anyway. If I start up my own internet radio station, and it has no music, then I probably shouldn't have to pay them. However, if I sing "jingle bells" on air, will they now require that I pay them? What about the opening musical jingle to my radio talk show? What about if I'm a band and I let my fans stream my songs from my website for free? Does this count as an internet radio station?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
I have a feeling that the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) that represent terrestrial radio is partially behind this. Recently, they've seen competition increase significantly with MP3 players like the iPod, satellite radio, and Internet radio. The NAB is already trying to limit their competition by lobbying against the merger of the satellite radio companies, Sirius and XM, which are both taking massive losses. I wouldn't be surprised if they're behind an attempt to kill Internet radio.
I don't know about you guys, but I've completely stopped listening to regular radio. To me, regular radio has degenerated into commercials and the same 10 songs in repeat. Now I listen to my iPod on my commute to work. I'm very sure that many people are doing the same.
Basically, SoundExchange collects royalties for everyone, RIAA member or not and no matter what license is used for the song release. So even Creative Commons works get royalties collected. Now, I do not believe they are an RIAA member, but there is a rep from each of the Big 4 on the SEx (I love it already.) board. You have to pay fees to collect your royalties from them, but you can apparently come up with your own deals to bypass them; however, you are still required to inform them I believe.
Now here is my question. If you are not a SEx member, how the hell can they be collecting fees for your copyrighted works if they hold no copyright on your works? Something about this systems seems a bit screwed up.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
" 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..."