>Plymouth, MI (a small city a bit north of Ann Arbor, not really known for anything)
From Plymouth's History page:'Daisy Air Rifle was founded in Plymouth and it used to be known as the Daisy Air Rifle Company began here in 1886 and earned for Plymouth the title of "Air Rifle Capital of the World"'
There is not going to be any copyright reform in the foreseeable future. Copyright laws all go through the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. As you might guess, the members of those committees are the top recipients of money from the copyright lobby (RIAA, MPAA, Disney, etc).
The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) actually travels as a lobbyist for the RIAA. If you find this as outrageous as I do, you can send a complaint letter here.
Who do you think sponsored the DMCA, with its legislated compulsory licensing?
It certainly wasn't the webcasters. It was the music industry. It would be quite interesting to see what rates a true free market approach would have yielded. Thanks to the RIAA and Congress, we don't have that choice.
>BTW, I don't think very many other people are reading this thread at this point.
>If they can't afford the bandwidth, how can they operate?
Many stations don't actually pay for all their bandwidth. They are subsidized by employers and listeners with fat pipes. I'll wager that most, if not all stations in the Shoutcast top 20 aren't paying for banwidth. Smaller stations such as mine do usually pay for bandwidth, and most stations operate with no income. Music, hosting fees and equipment all cost money, and these people get no wages for their effort.
Terrestrial broadcasters who webcast are as unhappy with CARP as webcasters are. They do pay for bandwidth, and they say the economic model under CARP is unworkable.
This is the early stages of a new business, and it will take time to gear up to a viable model. In the early days of FM, it was commonly referred to as "find me". FM did eventually get found, and now its a huge business. Internet radio has the same potential. IF its not legislated out of existence.
>Put yourself in the shoes of a band with a record. Presume you're not keen to have it cast on webradio...
I know many people in bands, and every single one is eager for airplay. Have you ever met a band member who isn't? Having said that though, I do support the idea that a musican should have the right to say his music can't be played. However, under the current system, a band has NO say as to whether or where their music is played. The licenses issued by ASCAP/BMI/SESAC are blanket licenses, and cover all artists in a company's repertoir.
>You might get 10% of what the label gets...
Actually, the band gets 45% under this agreement. The RIAA gets 50%, and 5% is for administration. With terrestrial radio, they get nothing.
>The only thing that reconciles them is what did it on broadcast radio. The labels were happy to get their music on the air for free to promote the songs and sell CDs. In fact they were happy to pay Payola to make that happen.
It can work that way with internet radio too. None of your examples illustrate any irreconcilable differences between the economic goals of record companies, bands and webcasters. We are willing to work with them. I wish the opposite were true.
>There's no easy answer here, not in compulsory licences.
I understand that you have strong ideological objections to compulsory licenses. If you were more familiar with how the music industry currently operates, I'm sure you would be as strongly opposed to it as you are to the DMCA/CARP licenses.
Regardless of your or my opinion of copyright law, the recording industry, courtesy of the government, has given us the DMCA, and the DMCA dictates the rules we're operating under. This will remain the case until it is overturned or replaced with something else.
I don't understand why you're so intent on focusing on one element in the cost of webcasting. To address your fairness question, one of the stated goals of the DMCA was to foster an enviroment where the new industry of internet radio can thrive. Exterminating it through impossibly high licensing fees does not appear to be compatible with this goal.
For the bandwidth providers I'm familiar with, you buy the max # of simultaneous users you want for a month, and if you don't use all of it, tough luck.
Bear in mind that terrestrial radio pays zero to the RIAA. The RIAA counters with the "perfect digital copy" argument. I have two responses to this: 1) The copies aren't perfect. I rip my music at 256k (much higher quality than most stations) and broadcast at 96k, which is good quality. Each song the listener hears has gone through two encoding processes, and is nowhere near CD quality, "perfect" though subsequent reproductions may be. 2) Terrestrial radio's AM and FM digital broadcasts are exempt from paying RIAA fees.
Also, bandwidth cost is subject to technological improvement and market competition. The CARP/LoC rates are based on one deal, between the RIAA and Yahoo! at the height of the dot com boom. It was supposed to represent what a willing buyer and willing seller would agree to, but its hard to determine that when the seller doesn't really want to sell.
Check out this link, which compares composition and recording performance rates for other countries. It concludes, "royalty rates for performance of sound recordings are no higher, and indeed, are generally set lower than royalty rates for the musical composition."
I've heard that ASCAP charges around 3% of station revenue for terrestrial stations. CARP abandons the percentage of revenue model, and instead uses a per-stream fee that works out to over 100% of revenue (for those stations which have revenue, this is.) The RIAA is advocating a type of royalty this is without precedent in the US, and a rate which is grossly disproportionate to what is charged in countries which do charge performance fees.
You conclude by suggesting that the labels should waive these fees, in order to promote their music. Nice idea, but the goal here isn't to promote music, its to control its' distribution. Records companies are comfortable with the hit-driven market, where relatively few artists make the majority of profit. The RIAA is composed of record companies; if they opposed the RIAA's approach, they would make it back down. They are actually encouraging it. They want to destroy internet radio as it stands today, and replace it with something under their control.
The closest thing to that I'm aware of is some webcasters have the artist/label sign a contract stating that the webcaster has permission to play the music, royalty free, and that this contract can be revoked at will by either party.
Under, "All other Internet transmissions ("Internet-only" transmissions) (whether transmitted by a broadcaster or a webcaster)" it clearly says $.0007.
You are also acting under the unproven, but hopefully true, assumption that non-RIAA music is not charged royalties.
Even if your numbers were correct, multiply $3 per hour * 730 hours per month and you get $2190/month in RIAA fees. With the 8.8% ephemeral performance surcharge, it increases to $2382.72. Don't forget ASCAP/BMI/SECAC fees, and actually buying the music you're paying the RIAA for the privilege of promoting. Oh yeah, web hosting and bandwidth costs too. A cheap bandwidth provider will run you $4000/month for 1000 listeners @ 128k/sec. Welcome to the world of internet radio!
Wrong! Internet radio stations are required to pay the $0.0007 rate. The $0.0002 rate is for simulcasts with over the air radio, and archived programming.
Do the numbers for a hypothetical station, and tell me how reasonable these numbers work out. Remember that over the air radio pays zero RIAA fees for their broadcasts.
I run Detroit Industrial Underground. My station has a 20 simultaneous listener capacity, and I've been broacasting for 3.5 years. To give you an idea of the small scale of most internet broacasts, DIU is currently ranked 222 out of around 2800 stations on the Shoutcast directory for total time spend listening (TTSL).
Some thoughts, based on what I've read here:
Terrestrial radio stations with webcasts are as unhappy with these rates as internet broadcasters are, and they'll be lobbying against this as well.
Some people have said that these rates won't apply to stations which only play non-RIAA material. While common sense would suggest that, it has not been proven yet, and common sense doesn't seem to apply to anything involving the RIAA and U.S. Congress.
Ephemeral recordings are "temporary" recordings made solely for broadcast purposes. In the case of internet radio, they're referring to MP3s. In practice, its an excuse to add another 8.8% fee on top of the per listener per song $0.0007.
Moving outside the U.S. won't save internet radio. U.S. based Broadcasters can be tracked through ISP's and billing relationships with hosting companies. Also, other countries have licensing bodies which are just as rapacious as the RIAA. In Canada, SOCAN is pushing Tariff 22, which imposes a $0.25 per unique listener per month fee. This adds up to more than the RIAA + BMI/ASCAP/SESAC fees, and forces listener tracking/subscriptions for auditing purposes. See the Stop Tariff 22 website for the details.
The battle isn't lost yet. On the Shoutcast list, we're working on our response to this. In the meantine, check out Save Internet Radio and the Radio and Internet Newsletter. Finally, write your reps in Congress, and include your snail mail addresss so they know you're a constituent.
Slashdot Mirror
http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/CategoryTeam2011
Top Four by country:
India 53
USA 37
Philippines 28
Mexico 27
Looks like Open Source is quite active in the Philippines and Mexico.
>What do you think of the ball and the bizarre status it holds in our culture? How would you change it for years to come?
I think I liked slashdot a lot more back when every post didn't end in a stupid question.
..for the Register. The review is here.
..back in January. This is news now? The review is here.
I received a replacement unit in about two weeks.
1978 called, and their jokes back.
>Plymouth, MI (a small city a bit north of Ann Arbor, not really known for anything)
From Plymouth's History page:'Daisy Air Rifle was founded in Plymouth and it used to be known as the Daisy Air Rifle Company began here in 1886 and earned for Plymouth the title of "Air Rifle Capital of the World"'
All those BB guns that shot kid's eyes out had to come from somewhere!
(Oh yeah, and it's east of Ann Arbor, not north.)
You do it because you are a thief.
There is not going to be any copyright reform in the foreseeable future. Copyright laws all go through the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. As you might guess, the members of those committees are the top recipients of money from the copyright lobby (RIAA, MPAA, Disney, etc).
The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) actually travels as a lobbyist for the RIAA. If you find this as outrageous as I do, you can send a complaint letter here.
Webcaster Alliance paypal link
There is a Paypal donate icon on the WA home page.
There is a PayPal account on the Webcaster Alliance homepage. Any donation is appreciated.
Help us fight the RIAA!
Brian Hurley
Webcaster Alliance
I posted a detailed rebuttal to the misinfornation, faulty conclusions and outright lies in Rusty Hodge's comments on the first Register article.
Who do you think sponsored the DMCA, with its legislated compulsory licensing?
It certainly wasn't the webcasters. It was the music industry. It would be quite interesting to see what rates a true free market approach would have yielded. Thanks to the RIAA and Congress, we don't have that choice.
>BTW, I don't think very many other people are reading this thread at this point.
At least we agree on something!
>If they can't afford the bandwidth, how can they operate?
Many stations don't actually pay for all their bandwidth. They are subsidized by employers and listeners with fat pipes. I'll wager that most, if not all stations in the Shoutcast top 20 aren't paying for banwidth. Smaller stations such as mine do usually pay for bandwidth, and most stations operate with no income. Music, hosting fees and equipment all cost money, and these people get no wages for their effort.
Terrestrial broadcasters who webcast are as unhappy with CARP as webcasters are. They do pay for bandwidth, and they say the economic model under CARP is unworkable.
This is the early stages of a new business, and it will take time to gear up to a viable model. In the early days of FM, it was commonly referred to as "find me". FM did eventually get found, and now its a huge business. Internet radio has the same potential. IF its not legislated out of existence.
>Put yourself in the shoes of a band with a record. Presume you're not keen to have it cast on webradio...
I know many people in bands, and every single one is eager for airplay. Have you ever met a band member who isn't? Having said that though, I do support the idea that a musican should have the right to say his music can't be played. However, under the current system, a band has NO say as to whether or where their music is played. The licenses issued by ASCAP/BMI/SESAC are blanket licenses, and cover all artists in a company's repertoir.
>You might get 10% of what the label gets...
Actually, the band gets 45% under this agreement. The RIAA gets 50%, and 5% is for administration. With terrestrial radio, they get nothing.
>The only thing that reconciles them is what did it on broadcast radio. The labels were happy to get their music on the air for free to promote the songs and sell CDs. In fact they were happy to pay Payola to make that happen.
It can work that way with internet radio too. None of your examples illustrate any irreconcilable differences between the economic goals of record companies, bands and webcasters. We are willing to work with them. I wish the opposite were true.
>There's no easy answer here, not in compulsory licences.
I understand that you have strong ideological objections to compulsory licenses. If you were more familiar with how the music industry currently operates, I'm sure you would be as strongly opposed to it as you are to the DMCA/CARP licenses.
Regardless of your or my opinion of copyright law, the recording industry, courtesy of the government, has given us the DMCA, and the DMCA dictates the rules we're operating under. This will remain the case until it is overturned or replaced with something else.
I don't understand why you're so intent on focusing on one element in the cost of webcasting. To address your fairness question, one of the stated goals of the DMCA was to foster an enviroment where the new industry of internet radio can thrive. Exterminating it through impossibly high licensing fees does not appear to be compatible with this goal.
For the bandwidth providers I'm familiar with, you buy the max # of simultaneous users you want for a month, and if you don't use all of it, tough luck.
Bear in mind that terrestrial radio pays zero to the RIAA. The RIAA counters with the "perfect digital copy" argument. I have two responses to this: 1) The copies aren't perfect. I rip my music at 256k (much higher quality than most stations) and broadcast at 96k, which is good quality. Each song the listener hears has gone through two encoding processes, and is nowhere near CD quality, "perfect" though subsequent reproductions may be. 2) Terrestrial radio's AM and FM digital broadcasts are exempt from paying RIAA fees.
Also, bandwidth cost is subject to technological improvement and market competition. The CARP/LoC rates are based on one deal, between the RIAA and Yahoo! at the height of the dot com boom. It was supposed to represent what a willing buyer and willing seller would agree to, but its hard to determine that when the seller doesn't really want to sell.
Check out this link, which compares composition and recording performance rates for other countries. It concludes, "royalty rates for performance of sound recordings are no higher, and indeed, are generally set lower than royalty rates for the musical composition."
I've heard that ASCAP charges around 3% of station revenue for terrestrial stations. CARP abandons the percentage of revenue model, and instead uses a per-stream fee that works out to over 100% of revenue (for those stations which have revenue, this is.) The RIAA is advocating a type of royalty this is without precedent in the US, and a rate which is grossly disproportionate to what is charged in countries which do charge performance fees.
You conclude by suggesting that the labels should waive these fees, in order to promote their music. Nice idea, but the goal here isn't to promote music, its to control its' distribution. Records companies are comfortable with the hit-driven market, where relatively few artists make the majority of profit. The RIAA is composed of record companies; if they opposed the RIAA's approach, they would make it back down. They are actually encouraging it. They want to destroy internet radio as it stands today, and replace it with something under their control.
The closest thing to that I'm aware of is some webcasters have the artist/label sign a contract stating that the webcaster has permission to play the music, royalty free, and that this contract can be revoked at will by either party.
Study the chart here.
Under, "All other Internet transmissions ("Internet-only" transmissions) (whether transmitted by a broadcaster or a webcaster)" it clearly says $.0007.
You are also acting under the unproven, but hopefully true, assumption that non-RIAA music is not charged royalties.
Yes, there are stations which have over 1000 listeners.
Even if your numbers were correct, multiply $3 per hour * 730 hours per month and you get $2190/month in RIAA fees. With the 8.8% ephemeral performance surcharge, it increases to $2382.72. Don't forget ASCAP/BMI/SECAC fees, and actually buying the music you're paying the RIAA for the privilege of promoting. Oh yeah, web hosting and bandwidth costs too. A cheap bandwidth provider will run you $4000/month for 1000 listeners @ 128k/sec. Welcome to the world of internet radio!
Wrong! Internet radio stations are required to pay the $0.0007 rate. The $0.0002 rate is for simulcasts with over the air radio, and archived programming.
Do the numbers for a hypothetical station, and tell me how reasonable these numbers work out. Remember that over the air radio pays zero RIAA fees for their broadcasts.
I run Detroit Industrial Underground. My station has a 20 simultaneous listener capacity, and I've been broacasting for 3.5 years. To give you an idea of the small scale of most internet broacasts, DIU is currently ranked 222 out of around 2800 stations on the Shoutcast directory for total time spend listening (TTSL).
Some thoughts, based on what I've read here:
Terrestrial radio stations with webcasts are as unhappy with these rates as internet broadcasters are, and they'll be lobbying against this as well.
Some people have said that these rates won't apply to stations which only play non-RIAA material. While common sense would suggest that, it has not been proven yet, and common sense doesn't seem to apply to anything involving the RIAA and U.S. Congress.
Ephemeral recordings are "temporary" recordings made solely for broadcast purposes. In the case of internet radio, they're referring to MP3s. In practice, its an excuse to add another 8.8% fee on top of the per listener per song $0.0007.
Moving outside the U.S. won't save internet radio. U.S. based Broadcasters can be tracked through ISP's and billing relationships with hosting companies. Also, other countries have licensing bodies which are just as rapacious as the RIAA. In Canada, SOCAN is pushing Tariff 22, which imposes a $0.25 per unique listener per month fee. This adds up to more than the RIAA + BMI/ASCAP/SESAC fees, and forces listener tracking/subscriptions for auditing purposes. See the Stop Tariff 22 website for the details.
The battle isn't lost yet. On the Shoutcast list, we're working on our response to this. In the meantine, check out Save Internet Radio and the Radio and Internet Newsletter. Finally, write your reps in Congress, and include your snail mail addresss so they know you're a constituent.