Radio Inter-nets
I missed this developing story on internet radio royalty rates entirely. I had pulled down an BBC piece
BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Fatal' blow to web broadcasters on this on 16 April, this is when things were already finished. When the Copyright Royalty board turned down an appeal from their original ruling in March. I glanced at it briefly and left with the impression it was talking about British law, but I left it open to read it in full when got a chance. A week later when I did, I saw that this was a US affair. The Copyright Royalty Board which I don't think I had ever heard of even seems to be part of the Library of Congress,
Copyright Royalty Board. I listen to Internet Radio 5 to 6 days a week and post about it, occaisionaly, with little direct provocation. Ex college-radio-dj disease; I drift through my days filled with the sense I haven't gotten the next song queued up yet. I've been living in ignorance that my ability to listen to grounded community radio from other places was in danger. Threatening our right to be one nation under a groove. I'm sure that's in the constitution somewhere. I went back to the net and turned up an Ars Technica piece
Internet radio dealt severe blow as Copyright Board rejects appeal, a tangental New York Times article
Digital Subscribers Like Free Radio, Too - New York Times and a piece in the one paper I engage with materially
Net Radio: 'New Song Royalties Will Kill Us' - washingtonpost.com, all of which I had overlooked at the time. Poking a bit further I turned up the website
Savenetradio.org which appeared to have been set up fairly recently. This last was essentially the only activity I found in the internet that was not derived from journalistic sources. Considering the drastic effect the ruling would have on the status quo this seemed to be an under-reaction. Maybe I wasn't the only one this slipped by. By Friday there were signs people were beginning to notice. WFMU had a post up on this by Liz Berg WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Hope on the Hill for Internet Radio. I have the RSS feed from the WFMU weblog and had been keeping an eye on it to see when they weighed in on this. In addition to confirming that this will affect noncommercial radio, she provided links to a web newsletter that tracks this broadcasting industry segment
RAIN : "Internet Radio Equality Act". The big news here is H.R. 2060 the Internet Radio Equality Act (OpenCongress - H.R.2060) introduced by Rep Inslee (D. WA) which is primarily designed to nullify this ruling Internet Radio Equality Act would overturn decision on webcasting fees. My primary concern, is with the effect on noncommercial radio. Such as educational licensed stations (in WFMU's case an ex edu). Commercial radio has a proven existing business models to fall back on. Besides I haven't listen to commercial radio in years. Stations in educational noncommercial category are often operating as simultaneous broadcast and IP streams. Developments like this may lead them to reconsider going bimodal
AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The End of Internet Radio? Odd circumstances resound through this story. The non-logical application of different rules for identical broadcast. The quick and under-the-radar manner of the decision. The arrogant and brutal manner with which the CRB judges shot the rehearing down. All the classic signs of iceberg 'public' policy : where what the average citizen knows is only a small part of the story. If I were to hazard a guess about what is happening It would be that some monied players have just discovered internet radio and said to themselves: You know what the problem is, you have a lively and competitive market here and no particular barriers to entry. Well, let's get to work and have that fixed. If Rep Inslee's bill gains some sympathy from fellow members of congress. If the issue gains some traction on the ground as people become aware. This issue may also follow the route of escalating activism as all the background interests come foreword. The path of a untethered noxious trash-barge-ruling clanging about visibly is likely to be different from the submerged glide of stealth public policy.
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