Internet Radio
If you've seen this website, or have received a certain e-mail from Pandora, of late, then you know that webcasting is in trouble. The CRB (Copyright Royalties Board) recently announced the results of certain hearings and plans to raise royalty fees on internet radio 3 to 15 fold of the next few years. If this goes through, then services such as Pandora, Shoutcast, Last.fm as well as thousands of smaller stations, will have greater difficulty in running their already weak businesses.
As an avid listener to Last.fm (you can even see my charts on this blog), I find this distressing. Recently, over 200,000 people petitioned congress, and were able to delay the bill. In addition new legislation, the Internet Radio Equality Act, has been proposed so that congress will set the price and prevent the CRB from raising so high. This is being hailed as the way to save internet radio.
Any blow to the CRB's and SoundExchange's (the entity that collects the royalties, gives a portion to copyright holders, and keeps the difference) control on pricing is a good thing in my book. Allowing government entities to control pricing in any one industry is form of corporatism and is a very very bad thing. However, this particular legislation, Internet Radio Equality, misses the point in my opinion and is merely replacing one tyrant with another.
The problem is government control. The purpose of copyright laws is to use government to artificially create a market for creative works. Anyone with a smattering of understanding of economics knows, however, that markets will form of their own accord to fulfill a demand and don't need government price mandates. The government believes that it needs to garauntee monopoly privilages to creators of intellectual works to ensure that said works are created. This, however, has led to an ever escelated debate as to the extent of this monopoly and more and more government has stepped in to form a compromise.
This gives us entities such as the CRB and SoundExchange which are centralized intermediaries with government backing, who perform all business in the range of royalties collection without regard either the copyright holders or users of copyrighted works. That is, in an artificial market, a giant corportist entity as been built which is allowed control of nearly the whole industry, which is a problem.
With the new bill, congress threatens to step in and take matters into it's own hands. Or, in other words, congress plans to replace the corporatist entity with itself, so we'll have socialism instead of corporatism, which is about the same thing.
What we need to do is abolish copyright laws and do away with the need for this kind of legislation altogether. Then webcasters can purchase the music directly from the artists, publishing companies can purchase books directly from authors, etc, etc, and we can do away with SoundExchange, syndicates, the RIAA, and all other middlemen who tax the production of creative works far more than it need be.
As an avid listener to Last.fm (you can even see my charts on this blog), I find this distressing. Recently, over 200,000 people petitioned congress, and were able to delay the bill. In addition new legislation, the Internet Radio Equality Act, has been proposed so that congress will set the price and prevent the CRB from raising so high. This is being hailed as the way to save internet radio.
Any blow to the CRB's and SoundExchange's (the entity that collects the royalties, gives a portion to copyright holders, and keeps the difference) control on pricing is a good thing in my book. Allowing government entities to control pricing in any one industry is form of corporatism and is a very very bad thing. However, this particular legislation, Internet Radio Equality, misses the point in my opinion and is merely replacing one tyrant with another.
The problem is government control. The purpose of copyright laws is to use government to artificially create a market for creative works. Anyone with a smattering of understanding of economics knows, however, that markets will form of their own accord to fulfill a demand and don't need government price mandates. The government believes that it needs to garauntee monopoly privilages to creators of intellectual works to ensure that said works are created. This, however, has led to an ever escelated debate as to the extent of this monopoly and more and more government has stepped in to form a compromise.
This gives us entities such as the CRB and SoundExchange which are centralized intermediaries with government backing, who perform all business in the range of royalties collection without regard either the copyright holders or users of copyrighted works. That is, in an artificial market, a giant corportist entity as been built which is allowed control of nearly the whole industry, which is a problem.
With the new bill, congress threatens to step in and take matters into it's own hands. Or, in other words, congress plans to replace the corporatist entity with itself, so we'll have socialism instead of corporatism, which is about the same thing.
What we need to do is abolish copyright laws and do away with the need for this kind of legislation altogether. Then webcasters can purchase the music directly from the artists, publishing companies can purchase books directly from authors, etc, etc, and we can do away with SoundExchange, syndicates, the RIAA, and all other middlemen who tax the production of creative works far more than it need be.
Labels: copyleft, copyright, CRB, internet radio, Internet Radio Equality Act, savenetradio.org, SoundExchange
posted by Andrew Stine at 6:52 PM
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