[widely circulated appeal - my notes on this are on http://wwwhatsup.com/isoc-ny/Internet_Radio_Royalty_Rates ]
Your choice to listen to Internet Radio is in Real, Immediate peril again from March Govt. Regulatory Ruling - Background & TAKE ACTION below! Coporate Music Rules America (RIAA) is trying to vastly limit your listening choices once again, folks. Please take a moment of your time to look over what I have put together below on this issue, then please take action - Thanks, Steve. (Note: For those of you interested in some background see directly below. For those of you who want to TAKE ACTION! immediately see further down the page at the *****). BACKGROUND: On March 2, 2007, The CRB (Copyright Royalty Board) approved royalty rates that will bury any small webcaster and create a heavy burden even for big broadcasters like Yahoo and AOL Music. How did this happen? The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) told the CRB thats what they wanted, and the CRB just gave it to them. Your're probably thinking, hey that's awful, but who are the the RIAA and CRB? RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is a lobbying group formed by the five largest record labels. They are embedded in Washington D.C. They make sure laws are written to keep them rich, no matter what. The CRB (Copyright Royalty Board) is part of the US Copyright Office. The Board is charged with determining the royalty rates that would be determined by a willing buyer and a willing seller in a marketplace transaction. They decided to jack the rates beyond a broadcasters means despite decades of royalty rates being 1 - 2% of broadcaster revenue. In sum, these new performance royalty fees are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station's revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA. Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 - plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009. There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money. That's over $11 per listener per month in 2007. No Internet radio station currently operating comes even close to that kind of income. In other words, if they are allowed to stand these rates are a death sentence for independent Internet radio stations. The only stations that would survive would be those who can AFFORD TO OPERATE AT A VERY, VERY LARGE LOSS such as AOL (who would owe over $20,000,000 in 2006, far in excess of their income from radio) and maybe Yahoo. As quoted in Boston.com on 3-14-07, Mark Lam, chief executive of Live365 Inc., a major Internet broadcast service (AND THE HOST OF MY INTERNET RADIO STATION 'NEWGRASS, PROG & MORE!', says the new rates will kill off most Internet broadcasters. "As the current law stands, we are out," he said. The CEO of Pandora, another large, popular internet-only broadcast service said essentially the same thing. A Big Guy Speaks out against this debacle: DAVID BYRNE (former lead singer for the ultra-successful new wave band THE TALKING HEADS) has this to say in his blog: "The reasoning that it's for the benefit of the artists rings a little hollow as most artists heard this argument re: cracking down on file sharing," Byrne writes. "Most never see money from their record companies anyway so the line about 'we're doing it for you' is pretty suspect." a little guys speak out against this debacle: Matthew Ebel, an independent musician and podcaster says in his blog that, "You'd think that, as a musician, I'd be overjoyed to see a larger slice of the pie going to publishers and, therefore, guys like me. Hell no. Would I like to see a little chunk of change every time my music gets played anywhere? Of course I would. But am I willing to sacrifice the goodwill of internet broadcasters and their listeners simply to make, quite literally, a nickel?" ***** SO WHAT CAN YOU DO/WHERE CAN YOU GO TO MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD ON THIS ISSUE?! No, it's not world peace, and end to hunger, or anything even close to that. However, if music is as important to your life as it is to mine being a webcaster allows me the creative space each evening to unwind so that I can have that much more mental energy and enthusiasm for my full-time job as a special educator in Virginia's public schools then take some time to visit the websites below and take action on web radio's behalf. Websites dedicated to this issue (not in any particular order): http://www.saveourinternetradio.com/ http://www.webcastersunite.net/ http://www.savethestreams.org/ http://www.savenetradio.org/ http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/040607/index.shtml http://www.save-internet-radio.com/ Thanks so much (and thank you to the creators of the websites listed above for much of the information that I condensed into this bulletin), Steve S-N Steve Sikes-Nova, M.Ed., M.S.W. --------------------------------------------------------------- WWWhatsup NYC http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com --------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.isoc-ny.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
