Comments on: Congress urges peace talks in Net radio conflict

Controversial new fees Webcasters say would cripple them are supposed to kick in July 15, but Congress is reluctant to intervene, at least not yet.

[fizzcity]

internet radio

I am a big fan of net radio. It allows me, when I am out of town to listen to my local radio stations. As far as for the musicans, artists, and performers that arent making "nuff" money. Sorry to hear that. They will still be able to listen to internet radio over seas. Where does the control stop?

[Hardrada]

Yeah right!

The record companies and SoundExchange OBVIOUSLY have no interest in being fair to, and conversing with, webcasters, or they wouldn't have proposed these new rates in the first place! Their aim is to kill internet radio, and ONLY Congressional intervention will solve the problem!

[Radio Jimmydreamz]

Vote for your right to listen to the music YOU like

As a webcaster, most of the music played on my station can not be heard ANYPALCE else, 80% of our artists are independant and mainstream radio will not play their music. Mainstream Broadcast radio wants to feed you what they want you to hear so they can make big money, they don't want to give you freedom to choose. Contact your rep's and tell them to support freedom and internet radio, or be stuck listening to the garbage big business wants you to hear!
http://www.savenetradio.org
http://radio.jimmydreamz.com

[DatabaseDoctor]

This stinks!

No wonder congress has a lower approval rating than President Cowboy Bush!

Those idiots are bowing to the record labels once again! All the small time webcasters are going to shutdown and the listeners will be the ones to suffer. The deal that was offered was an attempt to split up the solidarity of the webcasters by enticing the smaller casters to settle and continuing to stick it to the large ones.

Everyone should call their contressperson and loudly complain about the lack of support! Go to savenetradio.org and find out how.

Don't let the Internet go silent! Speak up and complain!

[SeizeCTRL]

Good point

but you know what, people will sit back and agree that it stinks and say WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING, but never follow through.

This is a country founded on WE THE PEOPLE and the government should answer to us, but we are too lazy or too cowardly to actually stand up and allow ourselves to be heard.

[ambigous]

Peaceful Resolution? Not a chance

The fact that some Congress reps think it best they abstain from getting involved and let both sides come to a "peaceful" resolution only underscores how little they understand about this issue. The time window for "peacful resolution" has long expired and may never even have really existed at all. By wanting to hammer smaller webcasters with as much as a 1200% retroactive royalty increase and slam aggregators like Pandora and Live365 with a minimum $500 per channel "administration fee" it's quite obvious that the record companies and their "false front" SoundExtortion (sorry ...SoundExchange) have a solid agenda in place to simply wipe them out. They want US Internet radio to be solely controlled by their corporate friends who do not act independantly and can be counted on to push whatever the recording industry wants pushed. This mess was the result of laws passed by Congress being incorrectly interperted and applied. Therefore Only Congress can and should fix this.