*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** *** New! Discuss Posts - http://e-democracy.org/do/discuss.html ***
Take a look at <http://www.saveinternetradio.org> and follow <http://doc.weblogs.com> and other web loggers on the subject of CARP <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/carp/webcasting_rates.html> or the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel. More from the recording industry <http://www.riaa.org/Licensing-Licen-3a.cfm>. A text clip below makes it clear that most Internet radio stations, even online versions of traditional broadcasters with music, in the U.S. will close because of costs. Here is where the issue of fees for streaming songs came from <http://news.com.com/2100-1023-217284.html?tag=bplst>. And news and activism from today <http://www.kurthanson.com/> and from Slashdot <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/20/2351222&mode=flat>. You can observe webcasters in their natural online environment here <http://www.broadcast.net/pipermail/webcasting/> and <http://community.streamingmedia.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?visit=thelist>. >From an online activism stand point the Saveinternetradio site and sites like <http://www.digitalconsumer.org> need to ratchet up their e-mail activist alert efforts and begin identifying supporters by geography (congressional district) in order to have any real political impact. The Net may be global but politics starts local. My questions - how does this impact streaming in/from other countries? Will this lead to a major split in the kinds of music streamed on the Internet where royalty-free music dominates hobbyist streams and the vast catalogs of past recordings owned by record companies will only find a place on traditional broadcast radio? Will the unintended consequence of this lead to a new paradigm where a minor league of music essentially gives stuff away and only the best (I imagine some sort of Internet music chart) get grabbed up by the recording industry? Or will this change the economics so dramatically such that new bands with talent find a way to survive and make money without a major recording contract? No clue. I am an e-democracy guy. Steven Clift Democracies Online Listening to Jazz with Winamp <http://www.winamp.com> via Shoutcast <http://www.shoutcast.com/waradio.phtml> perhaps for the last time?! Here is a bit from the home page of Saveinternetradio: The CARP decision: Most Webcasters had hoped that the CARP's recommended royalty rate would be based on a percentage of revenues somewhere between the 15% of revenues that the RIAA had been asking of Webcasters and the 3% that Webcasters had proposed (which would be more in line with their ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC royalties to composers). On February 20, 2002, however, the CARP arbitrators issued their recommendation .14 per song per listener for Internet-only webcasters, .07 per song per listener for broadcast radio simulcasts, and .02 per song per listener for non-commercial radio simulcasts. CARP rate implications: While CARP's proposed royalty rate might be manageable for Internet radio properties owned by multi-billion-dollar corporations like AOL, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, it seems as if it will effectively bankrupt the vast majority of Webcasters. For example, for a mid-sized independent webcaster (e.g., two or three people working out of a home office or dorm room) that has had, say, an average audience of 1,000 listeners for the past three years, the bill for retroactive royalties -- which will come due sometime early this summer if the CARP rate recommendation is approved -- would be $525,600! *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
