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Webcasters Must Pay
Posted by Paul Szynol on Saturday, October 19 @ 17:40:43 EDT Governance
The Sun Sentinel predicts the impact that the .0007/song "performance royalty" requirement will have on Webcasters.

First due date: tomorrow.

 
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Re: Webcasters Must Pay (Score: 1)
by mako on Saturday, October 19 @ 18:47:47 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message) http://yukidoke.org/~mako/
This article hardly touches on the battle over Internet radio that has been ongoing over the last year or so, and it leaves readers with the wrong conclusions.

For the last rew months, everyone knew that the per-song-per-listering royalty fee was bad and would be well over 100% of the revenues of many small webcasters. After listeners and webcasters alike worked to inform their representatives of the situtation, there was finally hope when Jay Inslee (D-WA) spearheaded the Internet Radio Fariness Act.

However, the bill floundered and reprieve did not come until the introduction of HR 5469 (which simply postponed the payments by six months--hopefully enough time for congress to figure out something else). It was passed unanamimously on October 7th. Listeners and webcaster breathed a sigh of relief.

On October 17th, Jesse Helms single-handedly blocked the passage of the bill in the Senate--one business day before royalty rates were due.

However, it now seems that might be a happy ending to this story (from Digitally Imported):

With H.R. 5469 held up in the Senate, Congress out of town until November and the October 20 due date for royalty payments fast approaching, Sound Exchange (the label and artist collective for these royalties) stepped forward late yesterday, to avert the imminent shutdown of many small independent Webcasters like ourselves.

For the time being, eligible small Webcasters will not have to pay royalties at the steep per-performance rate set by the Copyright Office back in July. (That rate is retroactive to 1998 and comes to over 100% of revenues for many.) Instead, SoundExchange will let small Webcasters pay just the $500 annual minimum fee for each of those years, until this Congress acts one way or the other on the pending legislation.


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Non-RIAA Music (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, October 21 @ 00:39:03 EDT

I hope the licences push webcasters to non-RIAA music. Doing business with the RIAA is kind of like doing business with Microsoft -- you only profit if you lick their boot, and then just a little.

Hopefully this will push some of the webcasters to avoid the RIAA tax altogether and give more playtime to non-RIAA artists. I think the number of people who hate the RIAA is surging to such a point that a "free mucic" scene can emerge.

I know of one such webcaster -- www.rantradio.com . They have an industrial mix, which is not my personal favorite, but I can understand why that particular type of music would be innovating in the RIAA-screw-off category.


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