14 DAY TRIAL // The crap around what will internet radio become in the future is far from being over. The Copyright Royalty Board's ruling on Tuesday regarding the new fees for webcasters has reached a much higher level even before it was appealed. To see how serious things are, a new hearing took place in the House of Representatives yesterday.
Democrat Representative Edward Markey has spoken heavy words on the recent ruling which came from CRB Tuesday and tried to explain the results of such new fees being applied retroactively for 2006, let alone in the future. He also described the way the present and the future look in such conditions: '"This represents a body blow to many nascent Internet radio broadcasters and further exacerbates the marketplace imbalance between what different industries pay." "It makes little sense to me for the smallest players to pay proportionately the largest royalty fee", he added.
After making some brief calculations, the webcasters (and anyone, in fact) realized that the 1.28 cents per hour per listener would simply mean the demise of so many internet radio stations that only the big and strong will be left and even they would have to pay dearly for the sin of owning more channels. For those of you who are not acquainted yet to what the stupid and glutton CRB ruling meant, I will remind you the minimum $500 fees ANY webcaster should pay, no matter how small.
Discussions touched another rather sensible subject when it came to music online, the MX and Sirius merging and how it would (or could, actually) make some changes in what prices and fees are concerned. Satellite radio came also in discussion, but in this field things are so unclear that me telling you more would mess things up even further.
To see how crappy and slippery things are, once with the RIAA and CRB s**t went loose, new and very-very sensible issues have been attacked such as future and possible further restrictions which would actually render web radio a mere chimera. Mr. Robert Kimball Senior Vice President, Legal and Business Affairs at RealNetworks Inc. put it this way : "Copyright law also places a number of programming restrictions exclusively on Webcasters, Kimball said, including forbidding them from announcing upcoming songs and playing more than two songs consecutively or four songs over a three-hour period by the same artist. "
This is definitely one battle we should keep our eyes on and watch it closely as, given the RIAA and CRB's lack of politeness, we can't expect but loads of crap and gluttony from them.