If the royalties have a minimum payment and a maximum payment then they favour the big guys over the little guys.
They don't. Either you read wrong or I didn't explain clearly. The "maximum" is the amount of money you can make to be categorized in the small webcaster fee schedule.
Here's the actual law:
`(iv)(I) Subject to subclause (II), an `eligible small webcaster' is a
webcaster (as defined in section 261.2 of title 37, Code of Federal
Regulations, as published in the Federal Register on July 8, 2002) that--
`(aa) for the period beginning on October 28, 1998, and ending on
December 31, 2002, has gross revenues during the period beginning on
November 1, 1998, and ending on June 30, 2002, of not more than $1,000,000;
`(bb) for 2003, together with its affiliates, has gross revenues
during 2003 of not more than $500,000; and
`(cc) for 2004, together with its affiliates, has gross revenues,
third party participation revenues, and revenues from the operation of new
subscription services during 2004 of not more than $1,250,000.
And the part on the percentages:
For eligible nonsubscription transmissions made by an eligible
small webcaster during the period beginning on October 28, 1998, and ending
on December 31, 2002, the royalty rate shall be 8 percent of the webcaster's
gross revenues during such period, or 5 percent of the webcaster's expenses
during such period, whichever is greater... [it then goes into details on exceptions but you can look that up for yourself, and the royalty goes up in 2003-2004]
So there is no maximum, and that's why netcaster aggregators like Live365 don't like this bill, because it doesn't give them a break... and they had some HUGE expenses back in the dotcom days.
The inclusion of royalties based on expenses actually does a lot of harm to deep-pocketed netcasters, the guys who had lots of venture cap and spent like crazy back in the late 80s. But the people who have been webcasting for a while, and doing it on a shoestring budget, they're the ones that will benefit the most from this.
It does not matter how you count the number of radio stations, all that matters is there will be many more big guys than little guys in the years to come.
No, there will be fewer mid-sized guys. The big guys are few and far between and don't care. They're happy to pay per song per listener because they see radio as an add-on to their existing internet offerings. Yahoo and AOL don't want to pay 10% of their revenue when they could pay per song per listener. The whole reason the CARP fees are so high is because when the fees were being set, the big guys wanted a barrier to small competition.
Everyone is acting like the RIAA $500 minimum is the only fee that a hobby broadcaster would have, but it's not. And I don't see all the complaints about the minimum $700 a year internet radio stations legally have to pay to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC. You know why you don't? Because the smallest broadcasters are off everyone's radar. By the time that ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and even the RIAA come looking for you, you've established a good sized audience.
One this this bill confirms is that multiple hobbyists can get together and stream multiple streams from a group web site. Why isn't anyone talking about doing this? Congress gave you a loophole, take advantage of it. Hell, take it a step further. Create a non-profit version of Live365. HR5469 even expands the definition of non-commercials to include any non-commercial organization, not just FCC-licensed non-commercial stations, and they can qualify for the lower per song per listener rates from the original CARP ruling.
Next, this was a bait and switch move. Nothing you said changes that. They put one bill forward, got public approval for it, then switched it for another.
Hi. That's how politics works.
Bills change. Every special interest is trying to get something put in the bill to make them happy. It's all about compromise. The original version of HR5469 was tabled. There was not enough support in congress to pass it. So the sponsoring congressmen made changes to it, shopped it around to all the other congressmen, and finally they all came up with something they could settle on.
Why am I suddenly the bad guy? Am I not a little guy too? Just because I spent a lot of time and effort working to create a radio station that people could enjoy? Because we established a small but decent sized audience? I wish I made some money from the "selling out" I'm accused of doing, at least I would have something to show for it!
But all I'm doing is trying to get SomaFM back on the air. It's still going to cost me $6500 in retroactive fees if HR5460 passes (and $2000 a year after that). Do you think I'm happy about that? But compared to $200,000 or more if HR5469 is not approved.
All for a glorified hobby.
All because I want to expose more people to the music that I love, the music that I can't find anywhere else on the radio in the US.
The DMCA/CARP royalties apply to all listeners in the United States. LISTENERS. It doesn't matter where your transmission originates, or where your servers are.
Which also means, US-based internet stations can broadcast only outside of the US with no fees. But the RIAA never mentions that.
Legally, it doesn't matter where the broadcaster gets the material from. Unless they have explicit waivers from the copyright owners - they are required to pay the CARP fees to SoundExchange (part of the RIAA). The DMCA authorizes SoundExchange to colelct royalties on behalf of ALL COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
So unless you have explicit permission (waivers) to play music ovr internet radio, you're breaking the law.
Note: over the air radio stations are of course, exempt from this law, it only applies to internet radio and other "non interactive" digital transmissions.
Oh, and digital broadcasts by FCC licensed stations are exempt too. The NAB (national assoc of broadcasters) is slightly more powerful than the RIAA when it comes to lobbying.
The CARP fees are in addition to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC fees.
Webcasters are required to pay ASCAP/BMI (and SESAC if they use SESAC music). Most do. As I recall, the minimums are about $700 a year for ASCAP and BMI combined. SESAC has this cofusing royalty structure based on web page views and not listeners to your streams... but SESAC has a very limited catalog of music, and most modern music is not licensed through SESAC... so if you're not playing their music, you don't need to licence through them.
ASCAP/BMI/SESAC represent the composer of the music. SoundExchange (RIAA) represents the owner of the copyright of the recording of the music.
Most public performances of sound recordings are exempted by the copyright law.
However, the DMCA specifically requires internet radio broadcasts to pay the sound recording royalty, and authorized SoundExchange (a division of the RIAA) to collect those fees on behalf of ALL copyright holders.
More FUD. This bill does NOT INCREASE MINIMUM PAYMENTS. Webcasters have the option to use the original CARP finding, with a $500 minimum. So you can do it the old way, or the new way. No one gets screwed any worse than were initially screwed.
Because of the limitation on revenues ClearChannel webcasters can not take advantage of this. (That limitation is also why Live365 can't take advantage of this.)
If this bill doesn't pass, do you really think any other bills to help webcasters will pass?
As for this being the final nail in the coffin for Hobby broadcasters - you're wrong. There are all sorts of loopholes that hobbyists can take advantage of. For example, this allows multiple channels - so several hobbyists could get together, develop a web "portal" that featurs all their broadcasts, and SHARE THE ROYALTY FEES!
There is also no reason why you couldn't start a small version of Live365 with a group of people. As long as your annual revenues and costs are below the threshold you could have 20 or more broadcasters share paying the royalties. It's all about how you structure your hobby.
1. Live365 had chosen to work with DiMA, whose other members are at odds with what Live365 wants as a deal. Other DiMA members (Yahoo, AOL) do not want a percent of revenue deals like Live365 wants, so DiMA isn't pushing for a precentage of revenue deal, and hence Live365 is screwed.
1a. The RIAA refused to include Live365 in a "small webcaster" deal. Because even though the broadcasters on Live365 are small, Live365 is one of the largest webcasters in terms of their aggregate.
2. The original version of the bill was just a delay for 6 months, to see how the courts dealt with the appeals that have been filed. It just postponed things, it didn't solve problems.
3. The original version of the bill was tabled. That is, it was dead in its original form. The bill's sponsors (e.g. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner's legislative team.)
4. The gang of bigwigs isn't a gang of bigwigs at all if you're talking about the webcasters who are supporting this bill. It's a gang of despearate webcasters who have a lot to personally lose. Actually, the rewrite of the bill was crafted by the bills original sponsors in conjunction with the RIAA. David Oxenford, a lawyer/lobbyist representing small webcasters, was also involved trying to make the best deal for webcasters. (Like, getting the retroactives down to $2000 a year from $5000 a year.)
Here is a list of the people who support HR5469 and have publicly signed a letter to the Senate in support of it:
3WK L.L.C. - Jim and Wanda Atkinson, Owners http://www.3wk.com - St. Louis, Missouri
Boomer Radio , Ron Rubin, President and CEO www.boomerradio.com - Boalsburg, Pennsylvania
Classical Music Detroit, L.L.C - Robert F. Ottaway, Founder www.ClassicalMusicDetroit.com, Detroit, Michigan
Carol Hess, Chatmasters Streaming Network Lewisville, TX
Freshwater Radio, Michael Anderson http://www.freshwater-radio.com, Great Falls, MT 59404
Houndogradio, Frank Coon, Owner http://www.houndogradio.com, Stone Mountain, Georgia
KPIG, Bill Goldsmith, Online Operations Manager Santa Cruz County, California
Montpelier Communications L.L.C., Onion River Radio Frank R. Schliemann/Founder http://www.onionriverradio.com - Montpelier, Vermont
Radioio, Mike Roe, Owner http://www.radioio.com , Jacksonville, Florida
RadioParadise, Bill Goldsmith, Owner http://www.radioparadise.com, Butte County, California
Radiostorm.com, Inc., Michael Donahue http://www.radiostorm.com , Sudbury, Massachusetts
SomaFM, LLC, Rusty Hodge http://www.SomaFM.com - San Francisco, CA 94110
Ultimate 80s - Dave Landis, Founder http://www.ultimate-80s.com - Los Angeles, California
WebMedia Consulting, Inc. (Digitally Imported Radio) http://www.digitallyimported.com - Staten Island, New York
Wolf FM - Steve Wolf, Owner http://www.wolffm.com - Nashville, Tennessee
It's a little more complicated than that- Congress granted SoundExchange- a little division of the RIAA- the right to collect royalties FOR ALL COPYRIGHTED RECORDINGS. I won't go into what a big scam this is, and how the RIAA is allowed to recoup 15 million dollars in the expenses they've had setting up SoundExchange (and Hillary and Simson and Marks reputed half million dollar a year salaries).
HOWEVER- If you get "waivers" from the bands you want to play that give you the right to play their copyrighted recordings. The band in question must OWN their recordings. Ideally, they should own their compositions as well or else you 'll have to pay ASCAP and BMI.
The current administration - in addition to working hard to eliminate all ownership caps on commercial stations, to make it easier for the giant corporations to control more of the media - the FCC has put a new emphasis on finding and shutting down pirate FM stations. In the old days, you'd get one or two warnings first. Now they come in and immediatly confiscate all your equipment.
Of course, a few activist stations have been successful at staying on the air - Radio Free Berkeley and San Francisco Liberation Radio have been using the legal system to keep the FCC from forcing them off the air. Luckily they have some lawyer friends.:-)
But your timeframe of going on the air to getting a knock at the door by FCC agents has gotten drastically shorter in the last 2 years.
Sorry, this post is really incorrect. Why do so many people post to/. without knowing the facts?
Let me get you started in the right direction:
You don't need to "buy the rights to rebroadcast the songs from the record companies, song writers, and publishers". You merely need to pay royalties for the public performances of copyrighted compositions to ASCAP, BMI and possibly SESAC. The total of all these will be around 5-6% of your stations gross revenue.
Copyright law specifically exempts FCC-licensed radio stations from any fees for public performance of the "Sound Recording" (that is, the copyrights owned by the record companies).
As for the power you will need to cover a decent sized metro area - you sure don't need 50-100,000 watts. The FCC breaks the license classes down into 3 main groups, Class A, B and C. Class A are typically around 5kw, Class B, 50kw, and Class C, 100kw. But an important distinction here is that these amounts are not transmitter power, but ERP (effective radiated power). Also, depending upon your transmitter's HAAT (Height above average terrain), you may be authorized for a lower power than the class of license's maximum.
You would be surprised how well 1000 watts ERP on a hill into a good circular-polarized antenna system will cover a metro area. In fact, in Los Angeles, one station transmits a mere 600 watts from Mt. Wilson and covers all of the greater Los Angeles metro area. In their case, it's the height that gives them the coverage, not so much the power.
You can learn more about station coverage contours, power and classes from the FCC.
But before you get into all that, you should read the FCC's Broadcast Station Application Process. Did I forget to mention that you need to either buy an existing license or apply for a new one? And before you can even apply for a new license, you'll need to prove that you have the financial resources to complete the station and do a technical feasibility study - usually a spacing study for commercial FM (to make sure you can fit your station into the band without causing interference to existing stations) or a Interference study for noncommercial/educational stations (in the 88.1-91.9 part of the band. You can't do these yourself, you'll need to hire a company who specializes in this and has access to the FCCs databases. Dataworld is a company that has been doing this for over 25 years.
Before you get started on this, you should do a lot of background reading. An FCC licensed station is not a toy o hobby and there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with it. Fortunately, the FCC has a How to Apply for a Broadcast Station section of their site. Unfortunately, it starts off like this:
Potential applicants for radio and television services should be aware that frequencies for these services are always in heavy demand. For example, the Commission received approximately 30,000 inquiries from persons seeking to start radio broadcast stations last year. Where broadcast frequencies remain available, competing applications are routinely received. Thus, you are cautioned at the outset that the filing of an application does not guarantee that you will receive a broadcast station construction permit. You should also be aware that in many areas of the country, no frequencies may be available on which a new station could commence operating without causing interference to existing stations, which would violate FCC rules.
There are so many other things you're going to have to think about before you apply for a license as well.
Is the transmitter going to be at the same location as the studio? If not, how are you going to get the signal to the transmitter? (A STL, microwave band studio transmitter link, is a popular way - but you'll need a license for this too...
If your studio is going to be co-located with your transmitter, you have to pay a lot of concern to keeping RF interference from your transmiter out of your audio signals. This means 600 ohm balanced audio feeds, not the typical RCA or miniplug consumer unbalanced audio lines.
You may be required to provide the FCC with a "Proof of Performance" - going out with a GPS and signal strenght meter, and proving that your transmitter and antenna system are operating as planned.
You'll also need some monitoring instruments to make sure that your station isn't putting out too much power, or transmitting with too high of deviation (overmodulation).
Last you'll need a way to feed audio. A Linux box playing MP3s probably won't cut it. At a minimum, you need to schedule the "legal IDs" at the top of the hour. There are commercial broadcast automation packages out there that cost under $2000, alas they all run under Windoze. There is no reason you couldn't write one for Linux.
And I think you need at least a small mixer and a microphone so that when you need to, you can address the audience. (And aternatively play music when you're doing upgrades to the automation system.)
I suggest you subscribe or read online Radio Shopper, a radio tech centric newsletter that also covers things that small operators need to do to fufill their oblications to the FCC and the community. And of corse, it's a great place to find used transmitters and antenna systems.
Here's a great pictorial of the installation of a new FM antenna system and 60kw transmitter for KPFK in Los Angeles. Just to give you an idea of what is required. KPFK is a non-profit.
I also suggest reading Bob Gonsett's CGC Communicator, a really great technical newsletter for broadcasters in the Southern California area. There are hundreds of his past newsletters online, and you can read about the saga of new stations in SoCal, as well as issues with construction permits (station upgrades). Lots of good info here.
I hope this has helped give you some good background on what all is involved in starting a radio station. I've worked at a couple small commercial broadcast stations in the past. I assisted in some upgrades to the transmitters and antenna systems, so I got to see all that was involved with just the construction permit with the FCC. I even got to assist in a proof of performance once, back in the days before GPS. We had to do it all using topo and street maps.
So don't give up hope - you CAN start your own radio station. But it's really hard to do with just one person. And it will take a bunch of money. Get a critical mass of people together in your town, form a non-profit, there is a really good chance that it you're not in one of the top 100 radio markets that you can get a license and start a station.
no.valid.email@worldnic.com is the standard contact info that many domains get when registered through NSI's Worldnic service. This is my biggest complaint.
Copying a CD, making a mix disc for your girlfriend, having a group of people watch one copy of a videotape, loaning CDs to friends, these are all legally fuzzy.
Not too fuzzy. Fair use allows this. The founding fathers back in the old days, when the politicians represented the people not the corporations - they explicitly made many exceptions in the copyright rules. They knew it was not in the public interest to give a copyright holder a monopoly in the marketplace, and they strove to strike a balance between the rights of the creator, and the rights of the public.
Only unsigned bands that suck will be played on US radio stations. Because if they're any good at all, they'll get a deal right away, and sell their copyrights to a label affiliated with SoundExchange (the RIAA's division that collects the royalties on behalf of all copyright holders - as granted by law). And then the net station can't play them anymore.
The problem is that independent labels aren't granting broadcast permission to webcasters. They've been told by SoundExchange / RIAA that they'll make tons of money on the royalties. So of course the business people at the small labels aren't going to give their product away if they think they'll make money from the CARP fees.
Paul previously ran f.root-servers.net (which I believe was the successor to ns.isc.org) which was also a GTLD server before the GTLD's were split onto their own servers around the end of 2000.
So he can and has done it. Here's some background from some messages posted to NANOG-L over the years.
A letter on 8/8/2000 from Network Solutions:
On 8 August, 2000, Network Solutions took actions in compliance with the cooperative agreement with the Department of Commerce to discontinue use of the 'InterNIC' name. One specific aspect of this change involves the server named rs0.internic.net, which had been the primary name server for the root-servers.net domain name along with secondary servers ns.ripe.net, ns.isi.edu and ns-ext.vix.com.
All four of these servers were removed from the root-servers.net domain name and replaced with the following servers which were already functioning as root servers:
At 1730 EDT, the new suite of name servers began acting authoritatively for the root-servers.net domain.
The net zone will be updated to reflect the root-servers.net nameserver entries in serial #2000080801.
The four hosts rs0.internic.net, ns.isi.edu, ns.ripe.net, and ns-ext.vix.com will continue to serve the root-servers.net zone with the new list of name servers. These hosts will continue to remain active until the time of the new name server suite exceeds the Time To Live (TTL), as defined in the root-servers.net zone. That TTL is currently set to 3,600,000 seconds, or about 42 days.
This is an operational change that transferred very smoothly. You will NOT need to make any configuration changes on your machines. You will NOT need a new root.cache file.
Effective zone serial number 2000080101, g.root-servers.net (192.112.36.4) will no longer be authoritatively answering for com, net, org. In its place g.gtld-servers.net (198.41.3.101) will be added as an authoritative server for com, net, org.
The new set of servers authoritative for these TLDs will be: A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.4 G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.101 E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 207.200.81.69 F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.17.208.67 F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 192.5.5.241 J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.21 K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 195.8.99.11 A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.38 M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 210.176.152.18 C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 205.188.185.18 I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 192.36.144.133 B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 203.181.106.5
G.root-servers.net will continue to answer for the gov, mil, arpa, in-addr.arpa and root zones.
Effective zone serial number 2000091901, f.root-servers.net (192.5.5.241) will no longer be in the list as authoritative for com, net, org. In its place d.gtld-servers.net (208.206.240.5) will be added as an authoritative server for com, net, org.
The new set of servers authoritative for these TLDs will be: A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.4 G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.101 E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 207.200.81.69 F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.17.208.67 D.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 208.206.240.5 J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.21 K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 195.8.99.11 A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.38 M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 210.176.152.18 C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 205.188.185.18 I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 192.36.144.133 B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 203.181.106.5
This will not require any change to the root.cache file and f.root-servers.net will provide answers for com, net, and org in parallel for enough time to accommodate the zone's TTLs.
And finally, this message talks about Bind 8.2.2. running on f.root-servers.net (which as I recall was still serving com/net/org/mil/edu.
Subject: BIND 8.2.2 (T3B; RC0) is available for general testing Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 00:01:59 -0700 From: Paul A Vixie
Confidence: moderate. This is running on part of F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET and on all of our local production servers. The only reasons it's not a full release candidate are that IXFR is still disabled and we're still tinkering with the NT support.
I worked for a company who was using this type of technology to provide a service to financal services companies. That company is no longer in business, even after demonstrating a working product. The problem is that financial institutions move far too slowly, and want proof that things will work for a year or more before they will commit to them.
We thought our sales cycles would be 6-9 months.. it turned out to be 18-24 months.
We eventually sold our technology to E*Trade and some other large financial companies. As far as I know, it is still not deployed into production.
Or just jam CC properties, if you don't feel like you'd make a good air personality... Tuning your 50 watt transmitter to +-.05 mhz of their frequency and driving circles around their transmitter should give their engineer a nice Excedrin headache...
Sorry, ain't gonna work. Maybe driving around in circles around their monitoring system (probably back at the studios). But the capture effect of FM you'll probably not even hear your 50 watt transmitter 50 feet away if you're right next to their 20,000+ watt transmitter.
The nice thing about FM is the way that a stronger signal "captures" a weaker one and the receiver hardly notices the weaker one. (Yes, you can hear a little additional noise in the background, but the signal strenghts need to be in the same order of magnitude for that to even be noticable.
Case in point: most stations if not all have backup transmitters. They test these into "dummy loads", big resister banks that absorbe most of the output power so they can test without putting the transmitter on the air, or coupling it to the antenna. However, these "leak" RF, and a 5kw signal going into one of these is going to appear like a low wattage transmitter into a normal antenna. Still, the signal isn't strong enough to capture the main signal more than 10 feet from the transmitter.
So I don't think your idea is going to work.
If you're really tricky, and really want to do some damage - try capturing their STL - the studio to transmitter link. Lots of them are still analog, in the 900mHz range. Just bring up your own transmitter on their frequency, right in front of their STL receive antenna... and well, that would be illegal.:-)
The recording industry is complaining that the recording industry is paying to have certain songs played on the radio. They why don't they just stop paying?
I guess because they're afraid that if they don't pay, then their records won't get played.
And then, they're trying to kill all web radio stations, the few stations that will play new music without expecting huge cash payments. Go figure.
NOTE TO RECORD COMPANIES: start servicing web radio. They still listen to all the music they get.
You may have read today that the Librarian of Congress, based upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, issued an Order rejecting the Panel's determination proposing rates and terms for these licenses. In such cases, the law provides that the Librarian shall issue his final determination within 30 days of his decision to reject the Panel's proposed rates and terms. The final determination is due on June 20, 2002.
We hope this means that the Librarian has realized that not all current parties were properly represented at the CARP hearings, and the proposed rates and reporting requirements were unreasonable and did not represent a market rate.
Webcasters want a royalty rate that is fair and equitable to all sides - a rate based on revenues, in the 3% range, much like the royalties paid to the composers of the songs now through ASCAP and BMI. The rejected proposal would have killed the market by wiping out most if not all of the industry.
Webcasters also want reduced reporting requirements - Song Name, Artist, Album and Label where available. Not the 25 or so data points asked for by the RIAA.
We do not know what will happen next. This ruling may even mean that another CARP hearing will be held, this time we hope it will be more accessible to small internet broadcasters. (Previous CARPs required all participants to share the costs associated with it, which came out to about $300,000 for each participant.)
But internet broadcasters are happy that we can stay on the air for another 30 days. If the decision went the other way, many stations would have started shutting down this week.
Re:Artistic and Theft are not mutually exclusive
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Mashed-Up Music
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I guess all great collage artists are thieves too.
I guess the classical composers who "payed homage" to each other by including parts of each others compositions in their own songs were theives too.
I guess Disney is the biggest thief of all, stealing all those classic fairy tales and creating there own derivitives of them as well.
BMI, ASCAP, SESAC fees are reasoble and are not the problem. But under the DMCA, you legally have to either (1) negotiate a deal with all the copyright owners of the musical recordings you play - which is not necessarily the artist or (2) use the DMCA "compulsory license" with all its restrictions and the costs imposed by CARP. Which are about 100 times higher than your ascap/bmi/sesac fees.
You just think you're safe now... but the RIAA (through it's DMCA authorized division SoundExchange) is coming to get you soon.
Fine. Take my net away, and I'll be chatting on the phone all day long. Don't they remember that's how it used to be before the 'net came along? Or take some time off to go down to the travel agency to plan my vacation. And since I can't look up my sickness symptoms on the net, I'll have to go to the doctor more often.
And what the hell, I'll go back to playing arcade games instead of net games.
I've lived in San Francisco since 1994. I grew up in white bred (and bread) Orange County. When I was 5, my conservative parents took me to San Francisco (they had never been there, and fisherman's warf sounded fun to them). I remember driving with them through the city, the tenderloin, south of market, and embarcadero (which was really, really different then). I was fascinated by it. I came back once or twice with them while growing up, and every time loved the city. The contrasts, the strangeness, the acceptance. I got it in my head that I would like to live there some day. 8 years ago, I made the move, and I love it here.
Which is not to say that the city is without problems. But one thing about this city - here there is a chance of SOLVING those problems. Unlike southern california - many people (not all) are very accepting of people. It's like the homeless thing. SF has far more homeless than Southern California because we (often reluctantly) tolerate them and even support them. In LA, they're thrown out of town or into jail or whatever it takes to get them off the street. Sometimes, they're confined to one or two blocks in a run down section of downtown that no one except the lost and the adventerous drive through.
Yes, things are more fucked up now, but they're starting to change for the better. Prices are starting to come down again. There is a massive glut of commercial real estate out there and landlords are starting to get desperate to rent it. If you want to live in a warehouse, it's easy to do it now. (Forget the whole live/work space scandal, that was just a way for our corrupt mayor's friends to get rich quick and bypass the planning process.) You can't "live" in your warehouse, but you can have a kitchen, a bathroom, tub/shower. You can have 24 hour access, you can sleep there. Just don't tell anyone you're *living there* and you'll be fine.
This city has cycles, ask old timers and they'll tell you that. Half of my neighbors have lived on our street for 25 years or more. The woman across the street has lived in her house for almost 50 years. Our neighbors talk to each other, we watch out for each other and MOST OF ALL we're tolerant of each other.
Here's where part of the problem lies: in the late 90s, during the dotcom boom, the carpetbaggers arrived looking for the big bucks.
It's getting better. Real estate prices are getting normal. Greedy landlords are thinking twice after seeing lots of their greedy peers get fucked by dead dotcoms. You can go to a nice place to eat now for $10-15 a person. Artists can actually afford to live here agaom. (And some were savvy enough to not piss off the dotcom carpetbaggers but instead turn them into customers. Exploit the evil yuppies! Corrupt them! Drag them to an underground party and dose them and change their worldview.)
But I'm rambling. I'm sick of the "San Francisco Sucks" mentality. What sucked were a bunch of people who came here with a get rich scheme and nothing else. But they're going now. They're chasing the dollar someplace else. Really. Look around, look deep.
I believe the market for this is radio news gathering. Right now, those folks use cassettes or microcassette recorders, quality isn't that important (128k mono will be find thank you for that!). The miniplug is probably because the alternative is a XLR, which is way too big.
Orban makes products for the radio broadcast market. This is not aimed at the taper crowd.
Funny that all these broadband providers are going out of business because they can't afford to pay the bills for the expensive bandwidth... and at the same time, all these telco companies going out of business because they built these huge fiber networks that no one is using.
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They don't. Either you read wrong or I didn't explain clearly. The "maximum" is the amount of money you can make to be categorized in the small webcaster fee schedule.
Here's the actual law:
`(iv)(I) Subject to subclause (II), an `eligible small webcaster' is a webcaster (as defined in section 261.2 of title 37, Code of Federal Regulations, as published in the Federal Register on July 8, 2002) that--
And the part on the percentages:
For eligible nonsubscription transmissions made by an eligible small webcaster during the period beginning on October 28, 1998, and ending on December 31, 2002, the royalty rate shall be 8 percent of the webcaster's gross revenues during such period, or 5 percent of the webcaster's expenses during such period, whichever is greater... [it then goes into details on exceptions but you can look that up for yourself, and the royalty goes up in 2003-2004]
So there is no maximum, and that's why netcaster aggregators like Live365 don't like this bill, because it doesn't give them a break... and they had some HUGE expenses back in the dotcom days.
The inclusion of royalties based on expenses actually does a lot of harm to deep-pocketed netcasters, the guys who had lots of venture cap and spent like crazy back in the late 80s. But the people who have been webcasting for a while, and doing it on a shoestring budget, they're the ones that will benefit the most from this.
It does not matter how you count the number of radio stations, all that matters is there will be many more big guys than little guys in the years to come.
No, there will be fewer mid-sized guys. The big guys are few and far between and don't care. They're happy to pay per song per listener because they see radio as an add-on to their existing internet offerings. Yahoo and AOL don't want to pay 10% of their revenue when they could pay per song per listener. The whole reason the CARP fees are so high is because when the fees were being set, the big guys wanted a barrier to small competition.
Everyone is acting like the RIAA $500 minimum is the only fee that a hobby broadcaster would have, but it's not. And I don't see all the complaints about the minimum $700 a year internet radio stations legally have to pay to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC. You know why you don't? Because the smallest broadcasters are off everyone's radar. By the time that ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and even the RIAA come looking for you, you've established a good sized audience.
One this this bill confirms is that multiple hobbyists can get together and stream multiple streams from a group web site. Why isn't anyone talking about doing this? Congress gave you a loophole, take advantage of it. Hell, take it a step further. Create a non-profit version of Live365. HR5469 even expands the definition of non-commercials to include any non-commercial organization, not just FCC-licensed non-commercial stations, and they can qualify for the lower per song per listener rates from the original CARP ruling.
Next, this was a bait and switch move. Nothing you said changes that. They put one bill forward, got public approval for it, then switched it for another.
Hi. That's how politics works.
Bills change. Every special interest is trying to get something put in the bill to make them happy. It's all about compromise. The original version of HR5469 was tabled. There was not enough support in congress to pass it. So the sponsoring congressmen made changes to it, shopped it around to all the other congressmen, and finally they all came up with something they could settle on.
Why am I suddenly the bad guy? Am I not a little guy too? Just because I spent a lot of time and effort working to create a radio station that people could enjoy? Because we established a small but decent sized audience? I wish I made some money from the "selling out" I'm accused of doing, at least I would have something to show for it!
But all I'm doing is trying to get SomaFM back on the air. It's still going to cost me $6500 in retroactive fees if HR5460 passes (and $2000 a year after that). Do you think I'm happy about that? But compared to $200,000 or more if HR5469 is not approved.
All for a glorified hobby.
All because I want to expose more people to the music that I love, the music that I can't find anywhere else on the radio in the US.
Thanks for listening to my "load of crap".
--Rusty
The DMCA/CARP royalties apply to all listeners in the United States. LISTENERS. It doesn't matter where your transmission originates, or where your servers are.
Which also means, US-based internet stations can broadcast only outside of the US with no fees. But the RIAA never mentions that.
Legally, it doesn't matter where the broadcaster gets the material from. Unless they have explicit waivers from the copyright owners - they are required to pay the CARP fees to SoundExchange (part of the RIAA). The DMCA authorizes SoundExchange to colelct royalties on behalf of ALL COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
So unless you have explicit permission (waivers) to play music ovr internet radio, you're breaking the law.
Note: over the air radio stations are of course, exempt from this law, it only applies to internet radio and other "non interactive" digital transmissions.
Oh, and digital broadcasts by FCC licensed stations are exempt too. The NAB (national assoc of broadcasters) is slightly more powerful than the RIAA when it comes to lobbying.
The CARP fees are in addition to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC fees.
Webcasters are required to pay ASCAP/BMI (and SESAC if they use SESAC music). Most do. As I recall, the minimums are about $700 a year for ASCAP and BMI combined. SESAC has this cofusing royalty structure based on web page views and not listeners to your streams... but SESAC has a very limited catalog of music, and most modern music is not licensed through SESAC... so if you're not playing their music, you don't need to licence through them.
ASCAP/BMI/SESAC represent the composer of the music.
SoundExchange (RIAA) represents the owner of the copyright of the recording of the music.
Most public performances of sound recordings are exempted by the copyright law.
However, the DMCA specifically requires internet radio broadcasts to pay the sound recording royalty, and authorized SoundExchange (a division of the RIAA) to collect those fees on behalf of ALL copyright holders.
More FUD. This bill does NOT INCREASE MINIMUM PAYMENTS. Webcasters have the option to use the original CARP finding, with a $500 minimum. So you can do it the old way, or the new way. No one gets screwed any worse than were initially screwed.
Because of the limitation on revenues ClearChannel webcasters can not take advantage of this. (That limitation is also why Live365 can't take advantage of this.)
If this bill doesn't pass, do you really think any other bills to help webcasters will pass?
As for this being the final nail in the coffin for Hobby broadcasters - you're wrong. There are all sorts of loopholes that hobbyists can take advantage of. For example, this allows multiple channels - so several hobbyists could get together, develop a web "portal" that featurs all their broadcasts, and SHARE THE ROYALTY FEES!
There is also no reason why you couldn't start a small version of Live365 with a group of people. As long as your annual revenues and costs are below the threshold you could have 20 or more broadcasters share paying the royalties. It's all about how you structure your hobby.
Bit of clarification here:
m - Montpelier, Vermont
1. Live365 had chosen to work with DiMA, whose other members are at odds with what Live365 wants as a deal. Other DiMA members (Yahoo, AOL) do not want a percent of revenue deals like Live365 wants, so DiMA isn't pushing for a precentage of revenue deal, and hence Live365 is screwed.
1a. The RIAA refused to include Live365 in a "small webcaster" deal. Because even though the broadcasters on Live365 are small, Live365 is one of the largest webcasters in terms of their aggregate.
2. The original version of the bill was just a delay for 6 months, to see how the courts dealt with the appeals that have been filed. It just postponed things, it didn't solve problems.
3. The original version of the bill was tabled. That is, it was dead in its original form. The bill's sponsors (e.g. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner's legislative team.)
4. The gang of bigwigs isn't a gang of bigwigs at all if you're talking about the webcasters who are supporting this bill. It's a gang of despearate webcasters who have a lot to personally lose. Actually, the rewrite of the bill was crafted by the bills original sponsors in conjunction with the RIAA. David Oxenford, a lawyer/lobbyist representing small webcasters, was also involved trying to make the best deal for webcasters. (Like, getting the retroactives down to $2000 a year from $5000 a year.)
Here is a list of the people who support HR5469 and have publicly signed a letter to the Senate in support of it:
3WK L.L.C. - Jim and Wanda Atkinson, Owners
http://www.3wk.com - St. Louis, Missouri
Boomer Radio , Ron Rubin, President and CEO
www.boomerradio.com - Boalsburg, Pennsylvania
Classical Music Detroit, L.L.C - Robert F. Ottaway, Founder
www.ClassicalMusicDetroit.com, Detroit, Michigan
Carol Hess, Chatmasters Streaming Network
Lewisville, TX
Freshwater Radio, Michael Anderson
http://www.freshwater-radio.com, Great Falls, MT 59404
Houndogradio, Frank Coon, Owner
http://www.houndogradio.com, Stone Mountain, Georgia
KPIG, Bill Goldsmith, Online Operations Manager
Santa Cruz County, California
Montpelier Communications L.L.C., Onion River Radio
Frank R. Schliemann/Founder
http://www.onionriverradio.co
Radioio, Mike Roe, Owner
http://www.radioio.com , Jacksonville, Florida
RadioParadise, Bill Goldsmith, Owner
http://www.radioparadise.com, Butte County, California
Radiostorm.com, Inc., Michael Donahue
http://www.radiostorm.com , Sudbury, Massachusetts
SomaFM, LLC, Rusty Hodge
http://www.SomaFM.com - San Francisco, CA 94110
Ultimate 80s - Dave Landis, Founder
http://www.ultimate-80s.com - Los Angeles, California
WebMedia Consulting, Inc. (Digitally Imported Radio)
http://www.digitallyimported.com - Staten Island, New York
Wolf FM - Steve Wolf, Owner
http://www.wolffm.com - Nashville, Tennessee
It's a little more complicated than that- Congress granted SoundExchange- a little division of the RIAA- the right to collect royalties FOR ALL COPYRIGHTED RECORDINGS. I won't go into what a big scam this is, and how the RIAA is allowed to recoup 15 million dollars in the expenses they've had setting up SoundExchange (and Hillary and Simson and Marks reputed half million dollar a year salaries).
HOWEVER- If you get "waivers" from the bands you want to play that give you the right to play their copyrighted recordings. The band in question must OWN their recordings. Ideally, they should own their compositions as well or else you 'll have to pay ASCAP and BMI.
The current administration - in addition to working hard to eliminate all ownership caps on commercial stations, to make it easier for the giant corporations to control more of the media - the FCC has put a new emphasis on finding and shutting down pirate FM stations. In the old days, you'd get one or two warnings first. Now they come in and immediatly confiscate all your equipment.
:-)
Of course, a few activist stations have been successful at staying on the air - Radio Free Berkeley and San Francisco Liberation Radio have been using the legal system to keep the FCC from forcing them off the air. Luckily they have some lawyer friends.
But your timeframe of going on the air to getting a knock at the door by FCC agents has gotten drastically shorter in the last 2 years.
Just FYI. Be prepared.
Let me get you started in the right direction:
You don't need to "buy the rights to rebroadcast the songs from the record companies, song writers, and publishers". You merely need to pay royalties for the public performances of copyrighted compositions to ASCAP, BMI and possibly SESAC. The total of all these will be around 5-6% of your stations gross revenue.
Copyright law specifically exempts FCC-licensed radio stations from any fees for public performance of the "Sound Recording" (that is, the copyrights owned by the record companies).
As for the power you will need to cover a decent sized metro area - you sure don't need 50-100,000 watts. The FCC breaks the license classes down into 3 main groups, Class A, B and C. Class A are typically around 5kw, Class B, 50kw, and Class C, 100kw. But an important distinction here is that these amounts are not transmitter power, but ERP (effective radiated power). Also, depending upon your transmitter's HAAT (Height above average terrain), you may be authorized for a lower power than the class of license's maximum.
You would be surprised how well 1000 watts ERP on a hill into a good circular-polarized antenna system will cover a metro area. In fact, in Los Angeles, one station transmits a mere 600 watts from Mt. Wilson and covers all of the greater Los Angeles metro area. In their case, it's the height that gives them the coverage, not so much the power.
You can learn more about station coverage contours, power and classes from the FCC.
But before you get into all that, you should read the FCC's Broadcast Station Application Process. Did I forget to mention that you need to either buy an existing license or apply for a new one? And before you can even apply for a new license, you'll need to prove that you have the financial resources to complete the station and do a technical feasibility study - usually a spacing study for commercial FM (to make sure you can fit your station into the band without causing interference to existing stations) or a Interference study for noncommercial/educational stations (in the 88.1-91.9 part of the band. You can't do these yourself, you'll need to hire a company who specializes in this and has access to the FCCs databases. Dataworld is a company that has been doing this for over 25 years.
Before you get started on this, you should do a lot of background reading. An FCC licensed station is not a toy o hobby and there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with it. Fortunately, the FCC has a How to Apply for a Broadcast Station section of their site. Unfortunately, it starts off like this:
There are so many other things you're going to have to think about before you apply for a license as well.
I suggest you subscribe or read online Radio Shopper, a radio tech centric newsletter that also covers things that small operators need to do to fufill their oblications to the FCC and the community. And of corse, it's a great place to find used transmitters and antenna systems.
Some places to get a feel for the prices of this equipment are Broadcast Supply Worldwide and Harris Broadcast. If you are on a budget and need used equipment, Mooretronix is a great place to start.
Here's a great pictorial of the installation of a new FM antenna system and 60kw transmitter for KPFK in Los Angeles. Just to give you an idea of what is required. KPFK is a non-profit.
I also suggest reading Bob Gonsett's CGC Communicator, a really great technical newsletter for broadcasters in the Southern California area. There are hundreds of his past newsletters online, and you can read about the saga of new stations in SoCal, as well as issues with construction permits (station upgrades). Lots of good info here.
I hope this has helped give you some good background on what all is involved in starting a radio station. I've worked at a couple small commercial broadcast stations in the past. I assisted in some upgrades to the transmitters and antenna systems, so I got to see all that was involved with just the construction permit with the FCC. I even got to assist in a proof of performance once, back in the days before GPS. We had to do it all using topo and street maps.
So don't give up hope - you CAN start your own radio station. But it's really hard to do with just one person. And it will take a bunch of money. Get a critical mass of people together in your town, form a non-profit, there is a really good chance that it you're not in one of the top 100 radio markets that you can get a license and start a station.
I encourage you to try!
--rusty
no.valid.email@worldnic.com is the standard contact info that many domains get when registered through NSI's Worldnic service. This is my biggest complaint.
Not too fuzzy. Fair use allows this. The founding fathers back in the old days, when the politicians represented the people not the corporations - they explicitly made many exceptions in the copyright rules. They knew it was not in the public interest to give a copyright holder a monopoly in the marketplace, and they strove to strike a balance between the rights of the creator, and the rights of the public.
Only unsigned bands that suck will be played on US radio stations. Because if they're any good at all, they'll get a deal right away, and sell their copyrights to a label affiliated with SoundExchange (the RIAA's division that collects the royalties on behalf of all copyright holders - as granted by law). And then the net station can't play them anymore.
The problem is that independent labels aren't granting broadcast permission to webcasters. They've been told by SoundExchange / RIAA that they'll make tons of money on the royalties. So of course the business people at the small labels aren't going to give their product away if they think they'll make money from the CARP fees.
Paul previously ran f.root-servers.net (which I believe was the successor to ns.isc.org) which was also a GTLD server before the GTLD's were split onto their own servers around the end of 2000.
So he can and has done it. Here's some background from some messages posted to NANOG-L over the years.
A letter on 8/8/2000 from Network Solutions:
On 8 August, 2000, Network Solutions took actions in compliance with the cooperative agreement with the Department of Commerce to discontinue use of the 'InterNIC' name. One specific aspect of this change involves the server named rs0.internic.net, which had been the primary name server for the root-servers.net domain name along with secondary servers ns.ripe.net,
ns.isi.edu and ns-ext.vix.com.
All four of these servers were removed from the root-servers.net domain name and replaced with the following servers which were already functioning as root servers:
a.root-servers.net
f.root-servers.net
k.root-servers.net
j.root-servers.net
At 1730 EDT, the new suite of name servers began acting authoritatively for the root-servers.net domain.
The net zone will be updated to reflect the root-servers.net nameserver entries in serial #2000080801.
The four hosts rs0.internic.net, ns.isi.edu, ns.ripe.net, and ns-ext.vix.com will continue to serve the root-servers.net zone with the new list of name servers. These hosts will continue to remain active until the time of the new name server suite exceeds the Time To Live (TTL), as defined in the root-servers.net zone. That TTL is currently set to 3,600,000 seconds, or
about 42 days.
This is an operational change that transferred very smoothly. You will NOT need to make any configuration changes on your machines. You will NOT need a new root.cache file.
From: "Verd, Brad"
Subject: TLD operations change
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 15:56:49 -0400
Effective zone serial number 2000080101, g.root-servers.net (192.112.36.4) will no longer be authoritatively answering for com, net, org. In its place g.gtld-servers.net (198.41.3.101) will be added as an authoritative server for com, net, org.
The new set of servers authoritative for these TLDs will be:
A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.4
G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.101
E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 207.200.81.69
F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.17.208.67
F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 192.5.5.241
J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.21
K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 195.8.99.11
A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.38
M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 210.176.152.18
C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 205.188.185.18
I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 192.36.144.133
B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 203.181.106.5
G.root-servers.net will continue to answer for the gov, mil, arpa, in-addr.arpa and root zones.
From: "Verd, Brad"
Subject: Root zone change -- d.gtld-servers.net
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 16:14:43 -0400
Effective zone serial number 2000091901, f.root-servers.net (192.5.5.241) will no longer be in the list as authoritative for com, net, org. In its
place d.gtld-servers.net (208.206.240.5) will be added as an authoritative server for com, net, org.
The new set of servers authoritative for these TLDs will be:
A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.4
G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.101
E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 207.200.81.69
F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.17.208.67
D.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 208.206.240.5
J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.0.21
K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 195.8.99.11
A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 198.41.3.38
M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 210.176.152.18
C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 205.188.185.18
I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 192.36.144.133
B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 203.181.106.5
This will not require any change to the root.cache file and
f.root-servers.net will provide answers for com, net, and org in parallel for enough time to accommodate the zone's TTLs.
And finally, this message talks about Bind 8.2.2. running on f.root-servers.net (which as I recall was still serving com/net/org/mil/edu.
Subject: BIND 8.2.2 (T3B; RC0) is available for general testing
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 00:01:59 -0700
From: Paul A Vixie
Confidence: moderate. This is running on part of F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET and on all of our local production servers. The only reasons it's not a full release candidate are that IXFR is still disabled and we're still tinkering with the NT support.
-rusty
I worked for a company who was using this type of technology to provide a service to financal services companies. That company is no longer in business, even after demonstrating a working product. The problem is that financial institutions move far too slowly, and want proof that things will work for a year or more before they will commit to them.
We thought our sales cycles would be 6-9 months.. it turned out to be 18-24 months.
We eventually sold our technology to E*Trade and some other large financial companies. As far as I know, it is still not deployed into production.
Sorry, ain't gonna work. Maybe driving around in circles around their monitoring system (probably back at the studios). But the capture effect of FM you'll probably not even hear your 50 watt transmitter 50 feet away if you're right next to their 20,000+ watt transmitter.
The nice thing about FM is the way that a stronger signal "captures" a weaker one and the receiver hardly notices the weaker one. (Yes, you can hear a little additional noise in the background, but the signal strenghts need to be in the same order of magnitude for that to even be noticable.
Case in point: most stations if not all have backup transmitters. They test these into "dummy loads", big resister banks that absorbe most of the output power so they can test without putting the transmitter on the air, or coupling it to the antenna. However, these "leak" RF, and a 5kw signal going into one of these is going to appear like a low wattage transmitter into a normal antenna. Still, the signal isn't strong enough to capture the main signal more than 10 feet from the transmitter.
So I don't think your idea is going to work.
If you're really tricky, and really want to do some damage - try capturing their STL - the studio to transmitter link. Lots of them are still analog, in the 900mHz range. Just bring up your own transmitter on their frequency, right in front of their STL receive antenna... and well, that would be illegal. :-)
I guess because they're afraid that if they don't pay, then their records won't get played.
And then, they're trying to kill all web radio stations, the few stations that will play new music without expecting huge cash payments. Go figure.
NOTE TO RECORD COMPANIES: start servicing web radio. They still listen to all the music they get.
You may have read today that the Librarian of Congress, based upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, issued an Order rejecting the Panel's determination proposing rates and terms for these licenses. In such cases, the law provides that the Librarian shall issue his final determination within 30 days of his decision to reject the Panel's proposed rates and terms. The final determination is due on June 20, 2002.
We hope this means that the Librarian has realized that not all current parties were properly represented at the CARP hearings, and the proposed rates and reporting requirements were unreasonable and did not represent a market rate.
Webcasters want a royalty rate that is fair and equitable to all sides - a rate based on revenues, in the 3% range, much like the royalties paid to the composers of the songs now through ASCAP and BMI. The rejected proposal would have killed the market by wiping out most if not all of the industry.
Webcasters also want reduced reporting requirements - Song Name, Artist, Album and Label where available. Not the 25 or so data points asked for by the RIAA.
We do not know what will happen next. This ruling may even mean that another CARP hearing will be held, this time we hope it will be more accessible to small internet broadcasters. (Previous CARPs required all participants to share the costs associated with it, which came out to about $300,000 for each participant.)
But internet broadcasters are happy that we can stay on the air for another 30 days. If the decision went the other way, many stations would have started shutting down this week.
I guess all great collage artists are thieves too.
I guess the classical composers who "payed homage" to each other by including parts of each others compositions in their own songs were theives too.
I guess Disney is the biggest thief of all, stealing all those classic fairy tales and creating there own derivitives of them as well.
BMI, ASCAP, SESAC fees are reasoble and are not the problem. But under the DMCA, you legally have to either (1) negotiate a deal with all the copyright owners of the musical recordings you play - which is not necessarily the artist or (2) use the DMCA "compulsory license" with all its restrictions and the costs imposed by CARP. Which are about 100 times higher than your ascap/bmi/sesac fees.
You just think you're safe now... but the RIAA (through it's DMCA authorized division SoundExchange) is coming to get you soon.
Fine. Take my net away, and I'll be chatting on the phone all day long. Don't they remember that's how it used to be before the 'net came along? Or take some time off to go down to the travel agency to plan my vacation. And since I can't look up my sickness symptoms on the net, I'll have to go to the doctor more often.
And what the hell, I'll go back to playing arcade games instead of net games.
>>simply dropping everything from .kr is evil and wrong, IMHO.
But dropping everything from an open relay isn't?
I've lived in San Francisco since 1994. I grew up in white bred (and bread) Orange County. When I was 5, my conservative parents took me to San Francisco (they had never been there, and fisherman's warf sounded fun to them). I remember driving with them through the city, the tenderloin, south of market, and embarcadero (which was really, really different then). I was fascinated by it. I came back once or twice with them while growing up, and every time loved the city. The contrasts, the strangeness, the acceptance. I got it in my head that I would like to live there some day. 8 years ago, I made the move, and I love it here.
Which is not to say that the city is without problems. But one thing about this city - here there is a chance of SOLVING those problems. Unlike southern california - many people (not all) are very accepting of people. It's like the homeless thing. SF has far more homeless than Southern California because we (often reluctantly) tolerate them and even support them. In LA, they're thrown out of town or into jail or whatever it takes to get them off the street. Sometimes, they're confined to one or two blocks in a run down section of downtown that no one except the lost and the adventerous drive through.
Yes, things are more fucked up now, but they're starting to change for the better. Prices are starting to come down again. There is a massive glut of commercial real estate out there and landlords are starting to get desperate to rent it. If you want to live in a warehouse, it's easy to do it now. (Forget the whole live/work space scandal, that was just a way for our corrupt mayor's friends to get rich quick and bypass the planning process.) You can't "live" in your warehouse, but you can have a kitchen, a bathroom, tub/shower. You can have 24 hour access, you can sleep there. Just don't tell anyone you're *living there* and you'll be fine.
This city has cycles, ask old timers and they'll tell you that. Half of my neighbors have lived on our street for 25 years or more. The woman across the street has lived in her house for almost 50 years. Our neighbors talk to each other, we watch out for each other and MOST OF ALL we're tolerant of each other.
Here's where part of the problem lies: in the late 90s, during the dotcom boom, the carpetbaggers arrived looking for the big bucks.
It's getting better. Real estate prices are getting normal. Greedy landlords are thinking twice after seeing lots of their greedy peers get fucked by dead dotcoms. You can go to a nice place to eat now for $10-15 a person. Artists can actually afford to live here agaom. (And some were savvy enough to not piss off the dotcom carpetbaggers but instead turn them into customers. Exploit the evil yuppies! Corrupt them! Drag them to an underground party and dose them and change their worldview.)
But I'm rambling. I'm sick of the "San Francisco Sucks" mentality. What sucked were a bunch of people who came here with a get rich scheme and nothing else. But they're going now. They're chasing the dollar someplace else. Really. Look around, look deep.
I believe the market for this is radio news gathering. Right now, those folks use cassettes or microcassette recorders, quality isn't that important (128k mono will be find thank you for that!). The miniplug is probably because the alternative is a XLR, which is way too big.
Orban makes products for the radio broadcast market. This is not aimed at the taper crowd.
It's a specialty product.
Funny that all these broadband providers are going out of business because they can't afford to pay the bills for the expensive bandwidth... and at the same time, all these telco companies going out of business because they built these huge fiber networks that no one is using.
Don't worry, they'll ruin it soon. It only took Infinity 12 months to ruin Live 105 in San Francisco.