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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.
..I almost hope they succeed in killing off "legit" Internet Radio. The Internet could really use a nice dose of the good old Pirate Radio culture.
I wandered across a pretty spiffy net radio site.. Ill spare the site from slashdottedness.. and thought to myself, well, theyll be gone soon. They offer low quality free streaming and high quality paid streaming around 15 bucks a year. I decided to see what the EULA said and found it was all based (at least company-wise) in France. If I recall correctly (which is a stretch) I recall France being very liberal with online music and formats and whatnot. I would think more net radio would just wander to more hospitable countries since its not the US internet but in fact World Wide.
Then of course its up to filtering, which I wouldnt put past our government.
When the answer is simple (complex). You either rely on the whims and foresight of another (bad business strategy) or you chose your own route. The RIAA holds its control over the net radio market by a hair. Simply because no-ones really challenged them, on their own ground.
Begging is going to get you very little, but working directly with the very labels and artists in an organized fashion and you'll be able to by-pass the RIAA in this regard (largely) altogether. Setup a foundation to be a industry friendly clearing-house to handle limited blanket licensing in terms the industry finds acceptable. Most labels want protection (from piracy and misuse) but also want exposure. With a little will (and funding) I think there would only be a few majors that would hold out. The same ones that want the market to be smaller in the first place. Which really would be a win-win. RIAA exclusive labels/artists could limit their exposure and practice the same kinds of influence they've become accustomed to. Smaller or more open labels and artists could continue to gain exposure and change the very markets the RIAA is trying to limit.
Quack, quack.
First of all I would never, ever, advocate this.
However, as a talking point:
Consider if the ripping of CDs was not done, as it currently is, in a small casual fashion. What if the entire Internet community made a concerted, extensive, and prolonged effort to copy and post CD tracks?
Not just the few thousand or so which currently do it, but millions?
Do you think that would get anyones attention?
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
From: senator_obama@obama.senate.gov
Date: Aug 11, 2007 5:50 PM
Subject: Message from Senator Barack Obama
To: f@1c0bird@gmail.com
Thank you for conveying your strong feelings about the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) and their contributions to
political candidates.
First, as a candidate for president I do not accept contributions
from any federal lobbyists or political action committees. Thus, I
have not accepted any contribution from the RIAA for this campaign.
Second, I fully understand your point that the RIAA's copyright
initiatives are designed to protect the recording companies rather
than songwriters and artists. That is because RIAA is a trade
association that represents the recording industry. Its members
consist of a large number of private corporate entities such as record
labels and distributors.
Two issues are at stake here: the negative effect of piracy on the
recording industry, including both companies and artists; and the
methods RIAA is employing to combat copyright infringement. As you
note, the RIAA is involved in a series of controversial copyright
infringement legal actions on behalf of its members. I, too, have
heard that innocent parties have been swept up by this aggressive
legal strategy, and I have spoken with RIAA officials about this
concern. They contend that their method of investigation involves
merely logging on to a file-sharing network, as any other user does,
and that the very nature of the file-sharing system allows anyone to
see who is illegally trading copyrighted works. This controversy
merits further investigation.
Intellectual property is an important export for the U.S. Making an
effort to protect these creative works - including copyrighted music -
is important to the thousands of people employed in the entertainment
business, such as songwriters and artists, and to the country's
economy generally. Our challenge is to address this issue in a manner
that is fair to all parties.
Again, thank you for writing. Please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
United States Senator
In other words, "I might have accepted some bribes, but it's in my best interests not to answer the question, since I'm obviously not going to intervene and stop the RIAA madness".