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Internet Radio's 'Second Chance' Bogging Down in House
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is reporting that the Internet Radio Equality Act is failing fast in the House, with negotiations breaking down over fair pricing for internet radio broadcasters. 'A legislative setback could make it harder to dislodge the new fees, which took effect last month after a federal appeals court refused to postpone the payment deadline. With the threat of congressional backlash fading, SoundExchange could find little incentive to budge from its current position ... SoundExchange has already proposed changes that could relieve small and custom-streaming sites from charges they could not possibly afford to pay, at least in the short term. Many expect a small-webcaster deal to be done by early September, when Congress goes back into session. But the deal on the table hasn't changed since SoundExchange extended an offer in May to charge them 10 percent of gross revenue under $250,000, or 12 percent of gross revenues over $250,000, with a revenue cap at $1.25 million.'" All very cushy for SoundExchange. Wired also points out that this is the same organization illegally lobbying for terrestrial radio royalties through 'third party' shell groups.
Wired also points out that this is the same organization illegally lobbying for terrestrial radio royalties through 'third party' shell groups.
Huh. Congress making deals with a known criminal organization. Who would have even thought that was possible?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Look, this issue is not going to go away unless either all musicans promise to go only through RIAA approved labels or the internet is killed. This is the time to take them on. Basically, musicians need to recognize that they have the opportunity to break free of the bonds that hold them. How? By getting paid directly by forming their own set of none-riaa labels. This monster price will force the network companies to no longer broadcast groups that support RIAA. That will of course cut the netplay to those groups/labels. Once they realize that this is hurting themselves, they will push for much lower prices. Hopefully, the network broadcasters AND their listeners will chose to let RIAA supported labels die.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder if eMusic would be in any position to collect/distribute royalties for the non-RIAA bands, sidestepping the RIAA and making it easier to get all the indie labels on at once.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
FTA:
"Whether or not SoundExchange's lobbying efforts prove to be illegal, its presence as an advocate in this debate undercuts its role as neutral administrator of royalty fees set and approved by the Copyright Royalty Board."
The summary makes a *statement* that SoundExchange committed an illegal act. The article is less adamant concluding the SoundExchange should 'do the right thing'.
Huh?
Okay, this is slahsdot and summaries are not always concise about the cited article, but I would feel that given a case of braking the law, the Law, be that the US Attorneys General, a member of congress, or some other representative of the Law would take action. I personally feel that what is happening to online music is disgusting and agree that artists over time need to use the internet to get closer to their fans and potential audiences. That will not happen if bodies that control the money are not held accountable when they stray from the law.
Did they? Did they not?
It would seem, since no one is being taken to court on an illegal act, that they did not. That it were a civil issue why are music stations not suing for redress. Herer's a thought, if Wired thinks SoundExchange is breaking the law, report them to the law. Is that not what we do if we see a crime taking place? A lady is breaking into a car as I watch. I go over and ask, is this your car? "Um, I do own a car and this is a nice car" is the reply. I am suspicious so I what?
Write an article on how wrong it is to steal cars citing this lady as prime suspect...
or
report her ass to the law and let them figure it out.
For crying out loud...maybe journalism cannot file the report and instead they use the power of the pen to bring the issue to light. But if NO ONE takes action, either report on that (and ask why) or walk into a DA's office and demand that they be investigated.
(sigh)...I think I may make my sig "I hear the fiddle in the distance, and it is getting closer".
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
People listening to internet radio will not simply stop to do that and turn back to old fashion radio if internet radio is being made impossible in the US. Rather, they'll tune in to other stations abroad. With internet radio, this is hardly a problem.
The difference is that this makes it quite a bit harder for Congress (or any organisation within the US) to take influence in the broadcast and avoid or at least monitor less desired broadcasts to happen. I mean, think of the propaganda ability of a net based radio that plays what its listeners want to hear. All you have to do is call your spin news and broadcast it once an hour, and between those news, just broadcast the latest and greatest hits.
Now imagine this radio station somewhere in the middle east.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As if the U.S. Congress, arguably the most powerful legislative body in the world, didn't have enough stuff to do, now they're actually hearing the whining from the MAFIAA! Only in America my friends...
The game.
Create a "label" company that the artists get stock in. Then have the streamcasters that are using the OSS, none RIAA stuff give up 1 share of their stock to said company. As such, the "label" company has the right to allow their music to be played since it is part of their company. I have seen several ppl here say that would not work, but I think that it will. In particular, since when do the feds require payments to self from a company that is owned by self? I believe that the only reason why money flows is for tax reasons, not copyright issues. The trick is to get the artists and streamcasters together.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So if I happened to have an internet radio station that does not make any money, then 10% is 0, correct?, now, what if am an artist and I broadcast my own music on this station, do I have to pay this people to transmit my own work?, that sounds like MAFIAA tactics to me.
just about everybody says that. The funny thing is that America is bigger than EU, and most Americans have traveled through the states. Yet in EU, most citizens have NOT traveled beyond their own border (which equal to a small or medium size state here.), and a number have never left their own city. The same is true of just about every other country in the world. Overall, you will find that ppl do not travel because they do not have to, and/or do not have a desire to. The saddest part is when I hear ppl think that all the states are the same just because we speak the same language (which we do not). Nearly all westerners look at the east coast as being just as foreign as any country in EU. In fact, I have an easier time understanding a limey then I do somebody from the bronx, most places of new jersey, and even boston (pak it he == park it here). And the difference between Colorado and California is similar. Now, go to countries where they have not cultural issues, but are on different languages(which is the majority of the large countries; EU, India, China). How much do you learn about each other? Very little unless you make an effort to do so.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sounds like an illegal monopoly to me. Sound exchange would make me pay royalties even if it was my own music that I streamed.....Now that's a crock of shit..... ILLEGAL BUSINESS / MONOPOLY .....
Streaming versions of licensed radio stations are plenty good enough for me. I doubt I'll miss the Christmas Jazz station at live365 all that much.
V O T E F O R M O G
Seems like our options are the Oil Industry Party or the Media Industry Party. Great.
This makes no sense. For this post, I won't actually fight against copyright. Let us all agree that copyright exists, and that there are current penalties for violating it.
First of all, Congress has NO power to set prices for any reason -- none. No government should ever set price caps or minimums. Doing so creates high prices and restricted inventories (or none at all). Let the market set pricing.
If the license-owners of music want to charge a given rate, let them. Those who can pay the rate will, those who can't will either move to different content, or pirate said content.
Here's where it gets exciting: piracy. With the huge number of people who want to transmit online, and the huge amount of countries and provinces to transmit from, it could be more expensive for the license-owners to go after someone streaming to 40 people than they'd get from the outcome. The amount of bandwidth on the web is virtually unlimited versus radio, and the reach is virtually unlimited. This means a virtually unlimited supply of music -- regardless of demand, the price will fall. If the license-owners think they can charge more than the market is willing to pay, they won't last long. The days of the power of copyright are quickly sliding through their fingers, into the open hands and mouths of those who want to spend their time providing a service that others want.
That service is NOT necessarily music, but a specific combination of music (and maybe commentary). It is THIS part of the service that the end users will pay for (either directly, or through advertising sponsorship). One specific song is NOT the important part, in fact it is the least important part. There are virtually unlimited songs to choose from, even in a given genre. There are NOT unlimited people who are talented in packaging these songs together into a format that someone else wants, and spend the same time marketing to the audience at large. The income is generated for the new labor created -- as the market should work. Old labor in the form of an easily copy-able song should fall to nearly zero. The bands who are played on these stations should be excited to get free marketing to promote their future concerts, personal appearances, or other live labor expenditures that they can sell in real time to their fans. Their labors, in real time, are worth way more than a pre-recorded, easily copied song worth zero or close to zero due to oversupply.
Get the tyrants in Congress out. These people have no understanding of the specific powers provided to them, by the People, through the Constitution. Congress does not have unlimited power.
From the beginning a legislative solution was unlikely because the issue was under the jurisdiction of the judiciary committee in the house, and the chairman of the subcommittee it was referred to was Howard Berman. Berman is a copyright warrior, with little or no sympathy for the arguments of the internet radio broadcasters. The Inslee bill in the house(Internet Radio Equality Act) has little or no chance of going anywhere, particularly now that Congress has entered its August recess. However, there is a silver lining to all of this, even though legislation cannot come to the aid of the webcasters, many compromises have been made between soundexchange and internet radio. The webcasters only wanted to hold the threat of legislation over the heads of soundexchange in order to secure from them fair terms from their negotiations. The Inslee bill forced soundexchange to come to the table, and sit down face to face with internet radio. So even if the Inslee bill fails, there is still a good chance that a compromise can be achieved. Either way soundexchange realizes that, despite the Copyright Royalty Board decision, it cannot charge fees that would destroy the internet radio industry without destroying itself. So while webcasters may generally see an increase in the fees they pay(mind you the fees have not changed for several years, and though the CRB rates are egregiously high, an increase was over due), it should not be so significantly different as to force them out of business.
What does this have to do with fish in a barrel? I just don't get it, zonk.
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... only play music that is more than five years old. If the music industry wants newer material... (the records they want to sell) played on the radio then charge them the standard ad rate. I have bought 50 CDs in the last two months that I would never have bought if I hadn't heard them on the radio. I don't think the mainstream commercial record industry can exist without radio play.
I wasn't aware that regulating media licensing fees was one of the powers enumerated in Article 1, Section 8.
... is another's excercise of their First Ammendment right. And not only "in spirit" (such as the right to sell porn), but also in letter: "petition the government for redress of grievances".
Doing something illegal (like jaywalking) does not make one a criminal...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A lot of people say, "Oh, if this goes through, allowing the (essential) monopoly, then people will be motivated to go for competitive alternatives - such as independent labels." The difficulty there is the exact same thing that is plaguing the operating system industry - Microsoft and the RIAA both have no incentive to change because they're currently holding (nearly) all the cards. Let me explain:
Artists with successful songs right now, or software with successful followings, are tied to the RIAA/Microsoft; they no longer get money from that legacy work if they go for greener pastures. Yes, they can do *new* work, and get credit/money for that, but they sacrifice their previous work - and the sum of all previous work is greater than all new work will be in the short to medium term; possibly even the long term.
Only in the 'explosive' phases of a new industry is it easy to be 'independent', because the threshold for adopting a new pattern is still low; a smaller percentage of the total body of work in play is affected. Right now, most artists would rather get something from the RIAA than nothing - or at least much less - from being independent. They are looking at many years of getting much less than what they'd get from the RIAA before the monopoly is broken.
And that is rather the issue; the idea of these mega-companies with near-monopolies - only not so through fine tuning of the application of the law to their particular situation. You can't claim that capitalism is going to work in the large unless there is something of a level playing field; we have in many respects institutionalized monopolies in our system of laws. Until there is a greater natural resistance built in to that sort of company, they'll continue to propagate their monopolies - and because they already control much of the industry, they will continue to fight every step of the way against this sort of thing; and largely succeed. Individuals may rebel against it, but it's hard to see how they're benefiting, personally, in the end by doing so. People call it 'selling out', but the fact is that the individual cost-benefit is heavily weighted, and it's irrational to expect individuals to act different based on hard-to-specify morality.
[Ego]out
Congress is involved now because Congress has been involved...well, practically forever. The Copyright Royalty Board, as part of the Library of Congress, and as authorized by the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004, sets the statutory licenses and fees on copyrighted material. So, no, Congress has no power to set prices, but they do have the constitutional power to set fees and royalties. For example, "fair use" of copyrighted material is set by Congress.
what a shame that i will no longer be able to listen to the advert riddled crap of commercial radio.
What? Sorry about my english, but let me explain my ideas. I write a music, I record it, I pay MY internet connection and MY computer, using linux, everything free or made by myself, and I still have to pay SoundExchange? WHY? There is no logic, they just want to steal my money. Again, sorry about my english.
TOR routing, anyone?
An interesting argument here is that it's just a language problem. We have another case of clueless politicians not understanding some new technology, and trying to handle it by treating a faulty metaphor as reality.
Consider: Some months ago, a friend tipped me off to pandora.com, and I experimented with it a bit. What they do is let you generate play mixes by telling that what music tracks you like (or don't like), and they "broadcast" a semi-random program of music that matches your likes. I tweaked it a while, and now I have six such mixtures. The call each personalized mixture a "station".
The problem here is that the new internet licensing scheme would charge, what is it, $6000 per year per "station". So it would cost pandora $36,000 per year to supply my six "stations". The only way they could do this would be if I paid them $36,000 per year, and that just ain't gonna happen.
But the reason for this exorbitant charge isn't what they're doing; it's that they call each such mixture a "station" that they "broadcast" to me. The US Congress doesn't understand that this is just a weak metaphor for something that really isn't very much like a radio station. Rather than learn about what "net radio" really is, they latch onto the radio metaphor and treat each such personalized mixture as an actual, physical radio station that's really broadcasting to thousands or millions of people.
So the solution is obvious: Change the terminology. If pandora would drop all words that relate them to real radio broadcast stations, the licensing law shouldn't apply to them.
For example, they could switch to the RSS terminology, which is new technology that isn't (yet) covered by any such licensing laws. It's based on the metaphor of news distribution instead, and news "publishers" aren't required to pay a per-customer license to redistribute "news". If pandora or other "radio station" web sites were instead to deliver an RSS-like stream of files with contents tailored to my dislikes and dislikes, and I had a client that would "display" each file in the stream by showing the meta-info in a window and sending the audio portion to the sound card (like a podcast, say), they could supply the same sort of service, but the threat of an exorbitant "broadcast license" wouldn't exist. And it would obviously not be a "broadcast", because it's being sent to only one client.
What are some other metaphors that could be used to do roughly the same thing, without invoking a "broadcast radio station" metaphor?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
While it's very possible that your jurisdiction has very screwed up laws, I should think that jaywalking would be a civil offense, not a criminal one. In other words, no, it would NOT make you a "criminal."
That said, there are plenty of minor laws that are or can be criminal. For example, in some states, going fast enough will allow the cop to charge you with criminal speeding. They can then arrest you, impound your car, and take you to the station for booking. In general, they probably give most people a break and don't do that, though, but it's not a good idea to test that. In my state, criminal speed is 20+ over, over 45 in an unmarked place, or 85+ anywhere (we have highways at 75, so that's not always 20+ over).
If terrestrial radio isn't able to play music due to SoundExchange, all the stations will have to convert to Talk Radio. And the Demoscrats have already proved they can't compete in that space, even with all the money they dumped into "Air America".
For one reason and one reason only. The majority of Dems are in Hollywood's pockets. The corruption in the all 3 branches of Government are unreal at this point. The next President likley to be a democrat will ALSO be in Hollywood's pocket (RIAA, MPAA, etc) Obama and Hillary are one of the likley 2 and both have gotten significant contributions from Hollywood. So expect more of this. Hollywood is getting bold because they know they have the elections bought and paid for it is fairly certain they have also contributed to the front runners of the Republican side as well to cover their bases. If you want to flame me for this go right ahead. You can waste that energy flaming or you can use it to actually find out who donated to whom. To make it easy here is a list. http://consumerist.com/consumer/worst-company-in-a merica/contact-information-for-50-politicians-who- take-campaign-money-from-the-riaa-264638.php
The only real solution is to avoid ALL RIAA Artists and listen CC licensed music. The RIAA and MPAA is looking to control content to whatever end (money, populus manipulation, whatever, ect). Well they cannot control content when the artists are not under contract. This is the fundamental flaw that we need to exploit. The funny thing is we will often find more creative music out there than what is being pumped out of Holywood these days. People seem more motivated by money and far less by the actual art. There are plenty of options out there. I am looking to start a CC music only radio station in the near future after reading this.
There are tonnes more things to care about, like you know CONGRESS passing the new FISA bullshit.
You obviously want a ridiculously large "buffer"!!! Indeed listeners should be able to permanently save music hours after listening. And other stations should be able to piggy back on your listeners. 5-10gig maybe?
You might also create a flexible format which allowed "bit skipping" for mindless bitrate degradation, i.e. you could listen to the low bit rate version of the p2p, but any songs you marked to save are bumped up to the full bitrate torrent, and the data you already have is still useful.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You want to buffer huge amounts of data, obviously. Users could permenently save music hours after downloading. Stations could share torrents to increase availability. etc.
It's essentially one big ever changing torrent for all currently popular music relevant to your tastes, but using auto-deletion if you don't explicity save it and it goes out of style.. plus massive numbers of DJs sending out mixes via mixing instructions.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell