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Tuesday, June 26, 2007 |
RadioDismuke: "Today, June 26, 2007 Radio Dismuke joins thousands of Internet radio stations in observing a Day of Silence to call attention to the impending shutdown of the vast majority of Internet streams if the new sound recording royalty rates are allowed to go into effect on July 15.
For today only, listeners who tune in will be directed to a non-music informational stream explaining the crisis facing Internet radio and featuring testimonials from a variety of broadcasters. Normal Radio Dismuke programing will resume on Wednesday.
The Internet Radio Equality Act has been introduced in both the US House and Senate which would establish Internet radio royalties at a rate that is equal to the more reasonable percentage of revenue model that satellite broadcasters pay for airing the exact same music. By contrast, the rates which are scheduled to go into effect on July 15 are based on a per-song per-listener basis and would amount to well over 100 percent of most existing webcasters' annual revenues - and they would be applied RETROACTIVELY back to January 2006. The Act would also do away with a $500 per channel minimum so-called 'administration fee' that is part of the new rate structure. Radio Dismuke's service providers, Live 365 and LoudCity host THOUSANDS of Internet radio stations. This administration
fee alone is likely to send them into bankruptcy. Indeed, based on the number of unique channels they offer, four of the top Internet radio networks, Live 365, Rhapsody, Yahoo and Pandora alone would owe SoundExchange, the RIAA's royalty collection arm, approximately $1 BILLION per year for these administration fees alone IN ADDITION to the very expensive royalties. To illustrate how absurd this is, that $1 billion in 'admin fees' from those four webcasters alone would vastly exceed the $20 million in total royalties that SoundExchange collected last year from all Internet radio stations combined.
The new rates are nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt on the
part of the RIAA to kill off a rapidly emerging medium which, by bringing the public's attention to an unprecedented range of independent artists and niche genres, threatens the market share the RIAA labels have held for decades. According to Live 365's Director of Engineering, last month the several thousand stations across the Live 365 network featured recordings by over 250,000 artists. That's probably around 249,000 more artists than you would likely be able to hear on your local
FM radio stations - artists who would have almost no opportunity for broadcast air time to expose their works to new audiences were it not for Internet radio. That's 249,000 artists whose existence and music the RIAA would prefer that you to not know about.
The major RIAA labels make their money by selling mass market recordings aimed at the widest and lowest common denominator - i.e., the sort of
music you will hear on FM radio and find in the limited assortment of CDs available at your local discount retailer. The degree to which audiences discover and become enthusiastic about the wide variety of wonderful artists and music that fall outside of the RIAA labels' lowest common denominator offerings is the degree to which their market falls apart on them. Every time I receive an enthusiastic email from a high
school student telling me how, as a result of discovering Radio Dismuke, 1920s and 1930s popular music is now his or her favorite type of music, that is one less person who is likely to act like a good little sheep and buy the latest hit recording that has been played over and over again on half the FM stations in town. And the same is true for the people who, through Internet radio, discover stations which play
Ukrainian folk music, or ragtime, or polka, or blues, or jazz or even features some group of young rock musicians who perform at local clubs and are not famous enough to get FM airplay.
Internet radio is at the forefront of a wonderful revolution in both how
enthusiasts listen to music and how aspiring artists promote themselves. It is bringing about a world where audiences will have endless options to access an unprecedented variety of quality music and where artists - especially those who previously had little hope of getting past the focus groups and 'gatekeepers' at the RIAA labels and FM radio stations - will have new opportunities to make themselves known to new fans and to promote their recordings and live performances. The RIAA does not have any special advantage in such a world and will face new competition
from a wide variety of sources, including artists who in an earlier day would have signed with an RIAA label but now realize it is increasingly advantageous to remain independent and thereby retain ownership and control of their music and keep all of the financial rewards for themselves. Therefore, the RIAA has used its political pull in an attempt to kill off the new and increasingly popular industry which is making such a world possible: Internet radio.
If you value the music that I and countless other Internet broadcasters
present, please do not allow that to happen. Please telephone your Congressperson and both of your Senators TODAY and ask them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act. In the House, the specific bill is H.R. 2060. In the Senate the bill is S.1353."
10:33:43 AM 
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ICH: "America is being destroyed. Many Americans are unaware, others are indifferent, and some intend it. The destruction is across the board: the political and constitutional system, the economy, social institutions including the family itself, citizenship, and the character and morality of the American people.
Those who rely on the Internet for information are aware that the Bush regime has successfully assaulted the separation of powers and civil liberty. Both Bush and Cheney claim that they are not bound by laws that impinge on their freedom of action or that interfere with their ideas of the power of their offices. Bush has issued presidential directives that permit him to make himself a dictator by declaring a national emergency. Cheney asserts that his handling of secret documents is not subject to oversight or investigation or bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information.
The eyes of all peoples are still upon us, only for different reasons. Whom will we attack next? When will we be bankrupt? What good is the American consumer market when the mass of the people are employed in third world jobs? How much longer will those trillions of dollars held by foreign governments be worth anything? How long before Americans will be knocking on European doors claiming political asylum?"
10:25:14 AM
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WashingtonPost: "More than a year after Congress passed McCain-sponsored restrictions on the questioning of suspected terrorists, the Bush administration is still debating how far the CIA's interrogators may go in their effort to break down resistant detainees. Two officials said the vice president has deadlocked the debate.
Bush said last September that he would 'work with' Congress to review 'an alternative set of procedures' for 'tough' - but, he said, lawful - interrogation. He did not promise to submit legislation or to report particulars to any oversight committee, and he has not done so.
Two questions remain, officials said. One involves techniques to be authorized now. The other is whether any technique should be explicitly forbidden.
According to participants in the debate, the vice president stands by the view that Bush need not honor any of the new judicial and legislative restrictions. His lawyer, they said, has recently restated Cheney's argument that when courts and Congress 'purport to' limit the commander in chief's warmaking authority, he has the constitutional prerogative to disregard them.
If Cheney advocates a return to waterboarding, they said, they have not heard him say so. But his office has fought fiercely against an executive order or CIA directive that would make the technique illegal.
'That's just the vice president,' said Gerson, the former speechwriter, referring to Cheney's October remark that 'a dunk in the water' for terrorists - a radio interviewer's term - is 'a no-brainer for me'."
10:21:02 AM
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