The Librarian of Congress ruled that webcasters should pay a royalty rate of .07 cents (7/1000 of a cent) per song per listener instead of .14 cents per listener per song. Here is the decision: Webcasting Determination.
So, the small webcasters will only go out of business half as fast. Webcasters have one month to file an appeal -- they'll have to do it since you can bet your bottom dollar RIAA will not.
What's wrong with the percentage of revenue rate broadcasters pay now? Who's going to track how many listeners are out there, and how? Will the government know I've been listening to 3Wk, and for how long? How are the song copyright owners going to get paid? Who's going to keep track of this?
Looks like LoC Billington doesn't understand what is going on, or he's in bed with the RIAA. Probably both. Or one of the audit bureaus. Figures he'd create a huge new line of business for something that could have been fairly straightforward if percentage of revenue rules applied. Then, perhaps, copyright owners would get SOMETHING. Under this scheme, the webcasters will go out of business and the copyright owners will not only lose any source of royalty revenue from webcasting, but they will also lose record (CD) sales because people can't buy something they don't know exists.
It's a shame. I hope webcasters can somehow band together and file an appeal. Or figure out a way to tell the goverment to screw itself and continue to webcast without paying ransom to the RIAA -- maybe putting a reasonable royalty fee into some sort of escrow account that an impartial third party could then distribute to the copyright holders.
It's crap like this that makes me realize Thomas Jefferson was right. And why, if I were to ever register with a political party, it would be with the Libertarians.
Posted by Lee at June 21, 2002 03:36 PM