Comments on: Major Webcasters to face billions in new fees?

New letter to Congress from Yahoo, RealNetworks, Pandora and Live365 execs urges politicos to reconsider new rules they argue would require not only higher royalty rates on songs, but more than $1 billion in annual "administrative" fees.

[billmosby]

One Senator's Take on the subject

I am a subscriber to Live365 and would gladly pay double what
they ask to continue to receive the choices they provide, if that
would help them and their broadcasters to stay in business. So I
wrote to my senators and congressman.

Senator Bennett's reply was the most detailed, but also seemed
to say that the Copyright Royalty Judges had made a decision
based on a free market theory. Quoting from Bennett's reply,
"This new rate structure does not provide special provisions for
the 'small' webcasters who were previously addressed in the
SWSA. The rationale behind the current decision was made
based on the 'willing buyer/willing seller' standard. This
standard determines the rate based on what a willing buyer and
willing seller would agree upon in an open marketplace."

This does not address at all the situation described in the
current article, where the 500 dollar per year fee goes to Sound
Exchange and adds up to much more than 10 times their
administrative costs. It is probably the fee more than the
anomolously high per listener-hour royalty that threatens to
shut down the small broadcasters.

I doubt that the out-of-the-mainstream artists would be "willing
sellers" in a system that threatens to put their only distribution
channels out of business. And the "willing buyers", the small
broadcasters who provide those channels more as a hobby than
as a business, would not be willing to dig deeper into their their
own pockets more than they probably already are.

Senator Bennett did not say he would be voting against the relief
legislation, rather that he would review it with my views in mind,
but did say he was "convinced of the efficiency of the free
market" in his letter to me.

[ddesy]

Typical

This kind of attitude is why we have this problem in the first place. No matter who you elect it seems like they end up selling out.

The "free market" is hardly efficient or even fair to most people and small companies. I think we need a change!

[fuzoid]

A Live365 Webcaster Thanks You

As a Live365 small webcaster, I would like to thank you for being so willing to pay double. However, don't be so quick to break out your wallet just yet. The House of Representatives currently has a full 1/4 support for the Internet Radio Equality Act and I have a feeling more will be jumping on board. It's the Senate we have to convince more because as I understand it, there are only three Senators backing the Senate version (S. 1353).

If you're interested in staying on top of this issue with the latest news, go to http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/060607/index.shtml.

Thank you once again.

fuzoid
http://www.live365.com/stations/fuzoid

[jakspade]

Government vs. Capitalism

You know, this is just a way for special interest (i.e. corporations) to put the kibosh on an industry that isn't any different than radio or other media. And how capitalistic is that? An administration that claims to be all for capitalism, now they're allowing government regulation to kill the competition.

[georgescott]

Webcasting for free is dead, just forget it.

It was a fun hobby but webcasting music represented by SoundExchange is a dumb thing to do unless if you are going to be able to cover there fees, your own, and pull a profit. The fees will only go up, including the "per channel" extortion fee.

MP3's will live on for podcasting. Since there is "free expression" I don't believe anything stopping you from putting out your own work on MP3 will ever exist. If a service network that sends out the MP3's changes to a different format, a new service network will pop up to service your MP3's I am sure. If there is a market someone will come in the fill the market with a product.