FedGovs decide to destroy webcasts and grant extortion power to RIAA


Abusing the rule of law
Technically this is about destroying free markets.

The RIAA and their trained attack dogs are taking on webcasts.

Retroactively to the beginning of 2006. Emphasis in original.

A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays.

The minimum fee is $500 per channel per year.  There is no clear definition of what a 'channel' is for services that make up individualized playlists for listeners. 
For noncommercial webcasters, the fee will be $500 per channel, for up to 159,140 ATH (aggregate tuning hours) per month.  They would pay the commercial rate for all transmissions above that number.

Participants are granted a 15 day period wherein they have the opportunity to ask the CRB for a re-hearing.

Within 60 days of the final determination, the decision is supposed to be published in the Federal Register, along with any technical corrections that the Board may wish to make.
This is going to devastate webcasts.

Now I am a free market advocate. I believe that artists and composers deserve to have their copyrights protected AND enforced. But let's face facts, the RIAA doesn't support the artists. It supports the middlemen. It supports the bloody opportunistic bloodsucking breed of lawyers who sue grandmothers for music downloads that never took place. It supports locking new artists out. It supports making music mediocre.

This is shaping up to be another example of a government enforced monopoly.

This is how The Man gets made.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - March 5, 2007 at 05:01 AM  Tag


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