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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.""
I don't think congress is going to fix this tomorrow ... so the RIAA should get what they deserve and lose all their royalties altogether.
Fuck 'em. I expect everyone has had enough of their shit.
It's just too bad that all the honest people in this new business are going to have to suffer for it.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
"Whoever has deeper pockets wins."
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Not true. (Let's call your argument the "neo con" argument.)
The people who actually win are the people who can't be controlled.
(We'll call that the "Iraqi" argument.)
Internet Radio will morph into P2P streaming and offshore stations. It's not going anywhere.
The only thing that's going away is the last hopes the record labels had to profit from it.
Foot, meet bullet. Information wants to be free.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
> There's a few, shall we say... urgent matters that need to be holding their attention right now.
a merica/contact-information-for-50-politicians-who- take-campaign-money-from-the-riaa-264638.php
Let's see.
Senate's recent accomplishments:
* Voted not to Vote on the Immigration Reform Bill
* Voted not to Vote on firing Alberto "I don't recall" Gonzales
Congress' recent accomplishments:
* Passed another 'Get out of Iraq' Bill that the President has already said he'll veto.
No, they've got time to do this. Congress may have received half a million messages. I'd suggest the Webcasters get their audience to donate to a fund that will in turn donate to these politicians who accepted money from the RIAA. It would make the point beautifully. http://consumerist.com/consumer/worst-company-in-
This makes me believe that Congress is serious about (and the RIAA is reacting to) ratifying the Internet Radio Equality Act. Otherwise, there is no way SoundExchange would consider this change of heart. Perhaps they underestimated the amount of lobbying from actual constituents regarding the issue.
NPR and the CPB, though considered non-commercial broadcasters, were still required to pay the same fees as commercial webcasters. They decided co-operatively to only pay part of the fees due, until the whole matter was straightened out. In regards to this, a poster to the College Broadcaster's mailing list stated "...so cpb is paying for all of its stations base fees? a government funded corporation is paying the fee set by another government board and enforced by a government recognized distributor of said fees? I think the framers of the US had a different idea of the future in mind."... I couldn't have said it any better myself. I think everyone (even out-of-tech-loop representatives and senators) is figuring out the royalty scheme makes no sense, and needs to be fixed.
Politicians have NOT killed the golden goose. They have made it safe for large business and only for them. Look, the last time this came up, I suggested that these stations play groups that are not associated with the RIAA. Apparently, the RIAA gets to collect it wether the group is signed up or not. Amazingly, the group gets to KEEP that money until the music group signs up with them. And they do not have to pay interest. That means that congress has given RIAA a monopoly. In addition, they have eliminated the competition for the broadcasters, by pricing it too much for the little guy to pay. But where are you going to go? Streams from another nation? W. is running around trying to kill them all off.
The only way that I can see this happening is if the muscian's OWN the stream site that plays them. Imagine a site that is devoted to the 90's, might get 10 groups (from the 90's) to BUY into them. 1 share each. They pay the musicians the old rate. As time progresses, they would get more groups to buy into them. I think that it is possible that the company could even allow other groups to own them or perhaps buy into them. Just 1 share. I think that is all it would take. Any lawyers out there? Tear this apart.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Such a cache would obviously be illegal. But convenient for the users, and it would mean that most listeners on any channel/playlist/tag would have a large selection of the typical songs. There is some synergy, so I would not discard the possibility of someone coming up with a clever protocol for doing something like this.
Hm... Such a program would actually download and share music without you telling it which songs to download. Nasty.
I lost my sig.
First did anyone even watch the Congressional hearin on this matter? Its up on you tube to see what what stated. Second has anyone even looked at Sound Exchanges website? They have offered for any webcaster making under 1.2 Million a year to cap the rates for small webcasters http://www.soundexchange.com/documents/07_06_29%20 Fee%20Cap%20June%2029%20release%20FINAL%20_2_.pdf
They are trying to hit the Big webcasters (Yahoo, AOL etc) with this rate increase and are trying to work with the smaller ones and Public Radio.
Do I agree with any of the increase, not really, but in the same respect, I can understand why they want to do it. I would much rather see them use the 7.5% of revenues like they do with satellite. Add on that any webcaster can make individual agreements with any label/artist that will allow then to play their songs without touching Sound Exchange.
Why are the smaller artists who don't want internet radio to be shut down going to the big stations at least if not the smaller ones and promoting this fact?
The one sided look at it all really make me disappointed in a community that has a lot of intelligent people on it.
*puts on flame retardant underwear* Go head, flame away, Oh and yes I do DJ for an internet Radio Station that is extremely small (average of about 35 listeners) So I have been watching all of this very closely.
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
Simple answer, the Copyright Royalty Board gave SoundExchange a legal monopoly which prevents it, so I understand. The broadcasters, in order to avoid paying standard royalties to SoundExchange for some unsigned indie band or artist, must obtain an individual license from each band or artist.
Umm... you *do* realize that your second statement kinda contradicts your first, right? As you say yourself, nothing "prevents" a broadcaster from securing rights with a copyright holder. Yeah, it can be costly and time consuming, but it certainly can be done. And if SoundExchange comes after a broadcaster, just wave the license in their face... they have no legal authority to prosecute (that's up to the copyright holder, who's already agreed to a license), so I fail to see the risk, there.
As such, I'm not at all convinced that the independant artists couldn't form their own NPO to act as a licensing clearinghouse. The problem is it costs money, both in initial startup and long-term administration, and independant artists are, by definition, not what I would call rich.
If the artist and broadcaster doesn't file (hmm..filing fees?) a license, the broadcaster must pay standard royalty to SoundExchange, and the artist or band may collect it, *if* they pay a fee and join SoundExchange.
Umm, no... membership to SoundExchange is free and open to all **sound recording copyright owners (SRCOs) and featured recording artists." Honestly, where the hell is this misinformation coming from? I keep seeing it parotted over and over, but the truth lies a mere Google search away. Are people just that fucking lazy?
> Such a cache would obviously be illegal.
I don't think this is any different than my set top box recording the last two hours of whatever is on TV. It's called time-shifting, and it is fair use and protected AFAIK. Two hours, four hours, 80 hours, it's just a function of how much storage you want to throw at it. This article is really about who gave you that material in the first place, not your right to cache it or time shift it.
Stupid thing is I specifically listen to net radio because all the licensed stuff on the radio rather sucks. By eliminating the hyped big label garbage, they are improving my listening experience.
Yeah... they really are that crazy.
So you have to ask the question "why?"
Soundexchange and the RIAA both know that this will kill off 99% of net radio, so why are they doing it? IMHO the reason is that they want to keep independent bands in check. if indies had a good place to be heard and become known without going through their slimy hands then that's scary thing for them. If you can limit the amount of stations that play music then you can limit everyone's choices to a few classically popular bands that are already signed to the big labels.
That's the same behavior you get from radio broadcasting now a days. Time is valuable and so you can only play the bands that are "popular". if you can't aim at a niche audience then you have to be broad and boring. I'm sure the through of democratizing our listening habits scares the crap out of the big labels. This is just a means of using ancient laws to prop up the current paradigm that much longer.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Not the case. Back in the early days record-making equipment was quite cheap. There were myriad small, local labels across the country, tied to local music scenes. This continued through the mid-50s, when the business started to consolidate due to better national promotion and distribution of former local stars like Elvis Presley, including payola to the formerly-locally-oriented radio stations to induce them to favor the nationally-marketed stars. Radio in the early era had been based largely on live broadcasts, since the fidelity was better (and live music has other virtues), out of the major cities and big regional stations (shows like the King Biscuit Flour Hour down in the Delta).
As recording studio technology developed from the late 50s onward, studio time became expensive, leading to the current system where artists get signed to labels which then lend them money for their time in the studio to record. It usually turns out that the seemingly generous offers get totally absorbed by studio costs, and the musicians get nothing. That's not too different from back in the early days, when musicians got a small fee per song recorded, and nothing at all no matter how many records sold. Musicians made most all their money from live performance - just like today.
What the record industry is trying to control here is the ability of small, independent musicians to gain any audience at all - the kind of musicians the commercial radio stations and even satellite radio will never play. They're trying to assure that real art doesn't distract from their marketing of sex and violence dressed up as music. Any politician concerned with the state of our mass culture should recognize that the degeneracy is largely a corporate product. So anything that decreases the power of these corporations by allowing more real art to flourish in spaces they can't control is key to restoring health to popular (and less-popular) culture.
Politicians - bewailing the media while furthering its monopoly. In terms of the longer-term success of our nation, this is worse than Iraq - indeed without this, Iraq could never have been sold.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
There's a difference between "being cheap" and "not wanting to be ripped off." Let's use a metaphor:
Let's say the RIAA has decided that we've all been paying too little for our music on CD. (Oh, excuse me, THEIR music that they've decided to let us listen to.) They pay off enough lawmakers to get some sort of subsidy on the CDs that suddenly makes them $100 a pop, retroactively. Then they start suing people who own legitimately purchased CDs, as they haven't paid enough for them.
Another: The MPAA decides that the movie theater chains haven't been paying enough for the right to show the films they control. They hike the rates to the point where the chains would have to charge $50 a ticket to stay afloat. Nobody's going to stand for that, so the chains go out of business. (This example is considerably more suicidal than what's happening to net radio, but otherwise, it fits.)
The RIAA hates what it can't control. It hates P2P (despite all the free promotion), barely tolerates iTunes (even though they've made hundreds of millions of dollars from ITMS sales), and has even sought to stop public libraries from lending out music (communists!) This move isn't about revenue, it's about killing net radio. The RIAA knows that it's impractical (if not outright impossible) to strongarm every net radio station out there like they do with terrestrial or satellite radio, so they destroy what they can't control.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.