Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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??
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*.