Dear Small Business Committee
p2pnet.net news:- One way or another, Thursday, June 28, will be a red letter day for online radio stations.
That’s when members of the House Small Business Committee are slated to think deeply on the Copyright Royalty Board decision to seriously over-hike Royalty Rates.
Tomorrow, Net radios will go silent in a bid to raise public awareness.
Meanwhile, says Nashville entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms, contact every one of the 12 members to let them know which way to vote.
Wilhelms has already faxed his thoughts to them and he says feel free to cut and paste his letter in any way you want >>>>>>>>
June 25, 2007
To The Members of the House Small Business Committee,
This Thursday, January 28, 2007, you have scheduled a hearing entitled “Assessing the Impact of the Copyright Royalty Board Decision to Increase Royalty Rates on Recording Artists and Webcasters.” In a clearly bipartisan effort, twelve members of the Committee have co-sponsored H.R. 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act (IREA). I ask the entire Committee to pass the bill for consideration by the full House at the earliest possible moment.
You will undoubtedly hear from proponents of the announced CRB royalty rates. Because the Committee is, by design, focused on Small Business issues, I believe it would be most enlightening to ask those witnesses if the announced CRB rates, which will take effect less than a month from now, promote the growth of Internet Radio as a business? As the webcasting community has unanimously objected to the CRB rates, and many of them have declared that the CRB rates will silence them, I think it would be very informative for the Committee to hear from those who disagree with the webcasters. Only they can tell you why the stifling of this new platform is good business.
The Committee should also ask those witnesses:
- how a royalty structure that will drive thousands of stations off the Internet will serve the interests of the artists who rely on those stations for Internet airplay?
- how those artists will earn royalties under the CRB schedule if their music is not heard on the surviving stations?
- if by shutting down tens of thousands of stations featuring a broad diversity of artists that they are risking leaving Internet Radio in the same few hands that now control terrestrial radio?
- if the “offers” made in SoundExchange press releases to small commercial webcasters requires that small commercial webcasters always remain small commercial webcasters by the imposition of earnings and listener caps that, if exceeded, will incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in retroactive license fees?
- if SoundExchange really needs $500 per webcast channel to cover “administrative fees,” and if SoundExchange really needs $1 billion of those “administrative fees” to collect and distribute $50 million in royalties annually?
The Committee should keep in mind that there are two groups of “small businesses” at risk here; the fledgling Internet webcast industry, and the community of recording artists that they play. The great majority of recording artists aren’t superstars. They are creative people trying to reach an audience, and, with luck and talent, to make a living doing so. Make no mistake about it, they want to be paid, but they know that shutting down those niche stations that play their music isn’t going to help them in any way.
No matter how the CRB supporters attempt to present it, this is not a battle over whether or not a royalty should be paid at all. Webcasters, with a few exceptions, acknowledge the right of artists and copyright holders to be compensated. This is, rather, a battle over what compensation is fair. Webcasters, and many artists, question whether a royalty rate many times higher that the total revenue of the entire industry is what Congress had in mind when they established the rate setting procedure. In the same sense, webcasters and artists have difficulty accepting that the CRB can set one rate for satellite radio services and then set one several hundred times higher for their Internet based competitors.
The Internet Radio Equality Act is a solution that serves both small business constituencies placed at jeopardy by the CRB rates. If IREA passes, the webcasters will be charged a reasonable royalty based on a percentage of their earnings, and the artists they play will earn their share of those royalties. Furthermore, a firm foundation will be laid for the future without the risk of arbitrary and irrational decisions such as the current CRB rates. Without that impediment, Internet Radio will be free to find business models that foster growth and innovation which will serve them and the artists they feature.
The hearing this week is a critical step forward in seeing that IREA become law and that rosy future comes to pass. Please give this matter all the attention it deserves.
Fred Wilhelms
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 25th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
The sad part of all of this is that the Copyright Royalty Board knows and, worse, does not care that whatever royalty money is collected goes to big business and none or almost none goes to artists and songwriters, the ones that are allegedly motivated to produce more because copyright do pay.
Anyone that does not agree with me, please show me who independently audits the books and where are the audit results published.