Congress Fucks Up Another One

It seems there are already some discrepancies of royalties that have to be paid by internet radio broadcasters as opposed to your Clear Channel and Cumulus conglomerates. the author of the article has had his been slowly building his own Internet Radio Channel over the internet.

Here is the gist of the argument from Kurt Hanson:

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).

Bill Goldsmith from Radio Paradise had this to say:

"while Internet stations like ours are being told they must pay royalty fees that exceed their income, sometimes by several times over, FM stations - including those owned by media conglomerates like Clear Channel - pay nothing at all!"


All of this came about because of this legislation:

music industry lobbyists persuaded Congress to include wording in two pieces of legislation (the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) that drew a sharp division between analog and digital broadcasts. Their reasoning was that a digital radio transmission was not a radio broadcast at all, but a sequence of perfect digital copies of music performances provided to the user, who could then copy them rather than paying to own a CD.


"Radio is radio, whether it comes in digital or analog form." says Goldsmith. Hey congress, not every lobbyist that come through the door has American citizens best interests at heart. When they tell you everyone will be stealing digital music, don't believe them! Not everyone has that technology just sitting around their house.

It may get worse before it gets better, but there is no better time than now to stop overt corporate control of our government.

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