House Bill Would Set Internet Radio Royalties Equal to Satellite

[SUBMAN1]

This bill is even too exptreme in my book. My favorite stations would still be hard pressed to come up with the case neccesary. Of course this would be substantially less than before, but still up there!

-S



House Bill Would Set Internet Radio Royalties Equal to Satellite

By Scott M. Fulton, III (%20sfulton@betanews.com), BetaNews

April 27, 2007, 1:58 PM

A bill introduced yesterday before the US House of Representatives by Rep. Jay Inslee (D - Wash.) and Rep. Don Manzullo (R - Ill.) would explicitly nullify the findings of the Copyright Royalty Board, which set forth last month a royalty fee for Internet streaming performances that online providers say could put them out of business entirely.
In its place, the Inslee/Manzullo bill, currently called the Internet Radio Equality Act, would establish a flat per-listener hour rate of 33 cents, or a third of a dollar for every individual who listens to music over the Internet for one hour. The rate would be retroactive to 2006, so the nation's #1 streaming music provider, AOL Radio, could find itself owing past-due royalties for last year in the amount of $916,000, by BetaNews estimates.


Read more here:

http://www.betanews.com/article/House_Bill_Would_Set_Internet_Radio_Royalties_Equa l_to_Satellite/1177696497

[Heibges]

I use Pandora, and got an email from then a few weeks ago, that said it would basically put them out of business.

[NefariousKoel]

These SOBs need to leave the internet alone.

The freakin' politicians have been trying to squeeze all the money they can out of the internet, and I don't like it. Luckily a fair portion of them have been fighting against such BS for awhile now but it's an ongoing battle.

[Frau_Phillips]

Every generation has its way of sticking it to the man.

Mine is just a lot nerdier, and doesn't really make an impact. But they still want to keep us from doing it! :nope:

[tycho102]

I posted something remotely related to this, a few weeks ago.

The RIAA also has sponsored a bill allowing them to collect royalities for all music played on satellite, intartube, and radio......for any band or group that is not otherwise "signed" with a production corporation. Basically, they just don't want to get sued by another corporation. But they're still billing for royalities even if you are the actual playwright and performer, and have not authorized them to collect royalities for you.

I felt it was a significant issue because it won't be long before they'll sue you for illegally distributing your music for free, endangering their ability to collect royalities.

Both of these events are related because Sony-BMG, Columbia, Universal, etc are seeing reduced profit-margins. Smaller profit-margins means investors (and your shareholder's board) start looking at other corporations in which to invest. Thus, they're looking for any untested form of income, the best of which is completely free -- to the extent it doesn't require doing anything different than just extorting more money from people who are already doing other forms of business with you and might be intimidated into avoiding a lawsuit.