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A Commonsense Proposal On Net Radio Rates
quark235 tips us to an open letter to the RIAA, proposing a fairer royalty structure for Net radio, written by Paul A. Gathard. Gathard is president of Barnabus Road Media, a company that provides streaming radio services to commercial and non-commercial stations across the US. He contends that his proposed rate structure, if implemented, would actually result in higher total revenues to SoundExchange than their current proposal would, after it kills off 90% of Net radio stations.
They've already got the net radio groups between a rock and a hard place. They haven't started collecting yet but they're pushing for DRM and baiting with reduced rates for small broadcasters.
I still can't believe SoundExchange has the right to do what they're doing. While you do have a reasonable point when considering independent material which is placed on the internet specifically to be openly available to everyone, there is a distinct problem when dealing with copyrighted material. Additionally I feel that the root of your post deals with SoundExchange making money off of material that isn't specifically theirs which I do agree is a problem. I do feel however, that your post deals with the issue in the incorrect manner.
In the music industry anymore there are so many middlemen and markups that everyone is being charged way too much and it seems like the profits are going to everyone except the artist. I feel that internet radio playing music under copyright shouldn't be free, but the ad revenues should go directly back to the artists and not the scum (like SoundExchange) that are trying to make something from nothing. There are advertisers and such along the way that actually provide a valuable service which increase the overall cost, but other than that the music industry has reached the point of ridiculousness.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
No. The royalties are collected for all songs played, even those from independent labels. Independent artists have the option of registering with SoundExchange so they may receive royalties collected on their behalf, less SoundExchange's fee.
I don't care why you're posting AC
DRM doesn't work, yet
r e_Computing_Base
I corrected that for you.
They don't want it to work yet. While DRM is useless, politicians & the general public wont see the real harm in it. If a politician knows anything about DRM.. he/she will probably just know that most DRM gets broken (you wont see many 'DRM Brand XX is secure' news stories) so they really wont see the problem with laws that mandate DRM. They might have heard of ICT (Image Constraint Token) in HDTV but the broadcasters won't be using it so thats not a problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secu
NGSCB = DRM = TPM
Newer CPUs already contain TPM parts. Soon, hard drives will come with TPM as will motherboards, sound cards and most other computer components. Microsoft will eventually make TPM/DRM hardware mandatory to gain full driver compliance. If 90% of desktop PCs require TPM components and most servers (which could actually benefit from TPM) use TPM, most hardware manufacturers will sell TPM-encumbered hardware. If they sell non-TPM stuff at all it will end up more expensive. They might even get governments to stop sales of non-TPM hardware as it is clearly less secure than TPM-enriched junk.
When 90% of the hardware you can buy if physically incapable of doing anything MS & the content companies doesn't want.. thats when they'll start using proper DRM. If you dont want to buy TPM hardware you'll either have to pay a big premium or use older hardware.
The Digital Performance in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 grant the copyright holder of the "performance" of a song the right to collect a royalty each time that "performance" is played on an Internet webcast. It doesn't matter whether the copyright holder is a member of SoundExchange or not, the royalty is collected regardless.
An artist apparently may choose to negotiate deals with webcasters. I am not sure exactly how this works, but it would require the webcaster to negotiate separate deals with the copyright holders of every "performance" they play. This would likely kill of most small webcasters as surely as the rates proposed by the CRB would.
I don't care why you're posting AC
OK, do you know how much over-the-air commercial radio stations pay to the RIAA for recording royalties? It *is* $0.
It seems to be a little known fact, but regular over-the-airwave radio, since its inception, has only had to pay songwriting royalties (i.e., those collected by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC) for any songs they broadcast, but have never had to pay recording royalties ("mechanicals", in the trade). Why? Because it was always seen as a mutually beneficial arrangement: the radio station gets to sell advertising time over free use of the recordings, the copyright holders of the recording get free exposure which helps them sell records.
The whole point here is that they *do* want different rules for internet radio...that the RIAA thinks internet radio *should* pay mechanical royalties over-the-air broadcasters don't, and they've been doing this for over 12 years now, and it most definitely *has* hurt internet radio.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.