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U.S. Court Denies Webcasters' Stay Petition
Michael Manoochehri writes "Reuters reports that a "federal appeals court has denied a petition by U.S. Internet radio stations seeking to delay a royalty rate hike due July 15 they say could kill the fledgling industry." This royalty rate hike, put forth by the US Copyright Royalty Board, will increase royalty rates for webcast music tremendously, in some cases to more per year than many webcasters bring in from revenue. Save Net Radio, a coalition of webcasters, is telling listeners that "We are appealing to the millions of Internet radio listeners out there, the webcasters they support and the artists and labels we treasure to rise up and make your voices heard again before this vibrant medium is silenced.""
Whoever has deeper pockets wins.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Does Taps require any kind of royalty fee to be payed? Perhaps web radio stations should play it all day, every day, until their final day.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
I subscribe to Pandora, which has really helped me find new bands and music, and they send out a message every so often about this, asking for our help. They give phone numbers for local congressmen, as well as some places to find half-canned scripts to mail in. I would like to see Pandora stick around, even if it meant I did a paid subscription (which I am willing to do, if they can move it into its own client), but I really can't see any action I could take affecting it.
This kind of issue seems too "localized" and small scale for any Congressman to give a shit about, not that know what the hell is going on in the first place. I could call or mail, only to have some intern glance over or listen to what I said, and in return give me the closest canned script that works for this situation. Then of course are those Congressman who are being paid off, and would turn a cold shoulder to it, anyway.
If I believed in market forces more, I would say that this is something that the market would take care of; sadly, the greed and conspiring of large companies coupled with the stupidity of most consumers guarantees that this would stay in effect for quite a long time without a high-level intervention. So what, exactly, could I do without a complete hopeless feeling? I'm sure common answers would be to donate to the EFF, UCLA, or some other activist group, which is not a bad idea at all, but I lack funds.
More aside from the point, even more sad is that it seems that I would have about the same effect on any issue with a congressman, from internet radio fees to the use of taxpayer money in regards to education. Perhaps it's a current bout of depression talking, but I can feel nothing but a sense of hopelessness for this country in the future, looking at the way things are turning now.
What's their collective over-all general take on this? Do they care that they won't be played much on the internet now, or what? Do they honestly think all these little stations can pay those exorbitant rates? It's certainly quite a strange situation.
Second point, won't this just mean that a lot of stations will switch to outside the US hosting?
Third point-good luck generation x and y. Now is the time to show if you have any actual political muscle or not. I'm a boomer, thinking back, last time I had anything to do with music and the radio and politics was an incident where a local college decided to censor their online little micro fm radio djs (girlfriend I had then was one of them) back during the viet nam war period. With one days notice we shut that school down, I mean a complete halt. No one went to class, buildings occupied, we just sat and said no censorship, free the station, etc. It worked, the authorities caved. I guess times change, so much is done online now that "in your face" brand last ditch activism type protesting has become passe or something.
Now I don't listen to online music streams, no huge interest, grew out of my nonstop music addiction years ago, I prefer talk radio now so this doesn't affect that, but for those who do, may I suggest you get on the stick and actually do some work beyond sending an email if this really is an important issue for you.
Congresspeople and assorted business folk just dump negative email like you would delete spam, they just don't care all that much. Real phone calls, snail mail, faxes, and personal visits get more attention, especially if you are cogent and to the point and show that you have a good grasp of the situation. Remember to keep it simple and to the point, overly emotional or complexities will get you ignored and dismissed out of hand as just a kook or something.
Back to the musicians, and their assorted parasitical business partners.. this is directed to you. Are you guys just crazy, or what? I follow this entire copyright and electronics thing a little bit, and it just seems you are bound and determined to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs without fail every single time you have a chance to prove otherwise.. You never miss, every single time, shoot yourself in the foot. Classical definition of insanity, keep doing the same thing expecting a different result..
To *you* folks I suggest getting with the technological program. this is the 21st century, not the medieval period with hand scribing by monks, get it? Digital bits are very, very, VERY fucking cheap-don't be so greedy. Think super high volume, not high net profit per digital bits copy, and you'll do a lot better overall long term.
Now, all of you punks, get off my damn lawn!
Although, I reckon if anything kills internet TV and radio, it will be ISP's (poorly implemented) traffic shaping systems. Ever since my ISP increased the bandwidth to 3mbit/s, but introduced traffic shaping, the performance of even low bitrate streaming media has turned to crap. It's because every packet gets inspected (apparently) which causes all kinds of lag. Speed tests show I'm getting the full download speed at most times.
Either way, it's way too effing long, that something created around the time my great-great-grandparents were born should only come into the public domain during my lifetime.
If you don't care, why did you post a comment? Anyway, I'll bite on the troll fishing line here...
It's important because those who enjoy music are getting less and less of a choice. Whether its DRM, radio industry consolidation, or music industry consolidation, it seems that if we just want to listen to music and other content using the technologies that have been invented and developed, there is something or someone getting in the way.
It's not just a flawed business model. A lot of people do it as a hobby. A lot of webstreams are "microcasts" of programming that we can't get over the airwaves because there isn't a market for it, or because the commercial broadcasters don't care about it (or isn't profitable enough). It's also about the uncompetitive edge that over-the-air broadcasters have in not having to pay SoundExchange royalties for their broadcasts, yet webcasters having to pay them because the RIAA believes listening to web streams encourages piracy (because everyone rips streams off their computer and doesn't buy a CD instead).
Most of all, its because this was all pretty much free to do until a few years ago. Personally, I was grandfathered in on Live365, and had a free, unlimited streaming account because I beta tested for them when they first started up their streaming services. All "hobby" accounts were free for several years. It wasn't until the RIAA thought that they should be paid royalties for these songs did it become a problem, for both the hobbiest and for the for-profit broadcaster.
So that's why you should care. If you don't, well, don't antagonize the rest of us with your elitist bullshit attitude. Just move on to the next article.
End rant...
ago I decide to tell the RIAA to screw off and have not bought one single album. Don't feed the beast.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The major record label's business models are all based on controlling the bottleneck -- when record-making equipment was expensive, they used that; now, they control the promotion.
The internet; in this case, internet radio, represents a promotional channel outside their control. Especially the smaller stations, how can they get them under a "paid promotion" contract? All of them? Hence the minumum fees of 500$
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
And the reasoning you have is that musicians so enjoy their work, that not only will they spend all day and night writing, recording, and touring, but they will also work full time jobs in order to barely squeak by financially, because hey, "artists never get paid properly anyway"? You've *got* to be shitting me.
I'm not a musician, but I'm animator. Though the RIAA doesn't deal with my work, it's otherwise quite similar to being a musician. I worked hard to be able to do what I do, I continue to work hard at it, I get paid for what I produce and nothing extra, and my work is stolen on a regular basis via p2p, torrents, etc. I love what I do, but if you think for one second that the above scenario is in anyway a good idea for the artist, you are very seriously misinformed.
When artists don't get paid properly, they cannot spend the amount of time they need to to make great work. Not only that, it's insulting to suggest that some artists shouldn't be paid a great deal of money when their work is in great demand. Can you imagine mastering your chosen field, going to a job interview, and being told that you'll be paid with beer money because your work is so much fun? You'd probably be about as angry at that suggestion as I am.
I don't play anymore, but I used to and I still know guys in their 40's playing, so I'll chime in. Yes. Most musicians don't play so they'll get "discovered" and rich. They love to play. They make CDs to sell at their gigs. They play their gigs for money, but not much, so they almost all work full-time jobs and get off work on Friday only to grab all their gear and run to the bar. They practice incessantly because they love it. They are artists in the true sense, who just want to play. Playing for people is good, but just getting some guys together and playing can be almost as good. Having people enjoy their art makes them happy, and they don't often think about "making it big." They enjoy what they do. They would (and sometimes do) do it for free.
Put identity in the browser.
The oddity about the music industry, is that the period when the copy write would make the artist the most money, almost always coincides with the artist collecting the least capital from the signing label. It's not just that we're cheap, there's a great devide between the haves and the have nots, and they're screwing up a good thing so they can keep that divide as wide and unfair as possible.
C opyright_Royalty_Changes
a boutus_members
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_radio#2007_
According to a report released in March 2007, under the newly proposed rates, annual fees for all station owners are projected to reach $2.3 billion by 2008. This figure is more than four times that for terrestrial radio broadcasters who, due to terms set forth in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are exempt from the additional royalties imposed on digital broadcasting outlets, which compensate the performers of recorded works. .
Watts are far cheaper than Megabytes, radio stations currently run over 20 minutes of ads per hour to stay profitable. The RIAA is peeing in their own pool. sooner or later, everone's gonna get out, it's not going to be pretty.
http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=
What really needs to happen is for everone to recognise who is an RIAA member and chastise them for it. The RIAA does everthing without recourse under a percieved cloak of anonymity. If people realized that Garth Brooks Record label is suing 12 yr olds and 80 year olds without computers with no remorse, they might have a different perspective on it.
Hah. As if downloading a bunch of shit from Pirate Bay makes it somehow culturally significant. Thousands of crappy McDonalds burgers are sold every day, but that doesn't make it *cuisine*.