Doc Searls has the best overview and analysis of the disasterous Copyright Royalty Board's recent decision on streaming rates I've seen. It begins:
In a move that recalls the Vogons' decision to destroy Earth to clear the way for a highway bypass through space (a thankfully fictional premise of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), the judges comprising the Copyright Royalty Board have decided to destroy the Internet radio industry so the Recording Industry won't be inconvenienced by something it doesn't know, like or understand. ...
And ends:
... We need action now. ¶ Internet radio is a canary in the coal mine of an insane Net-hostile Regulatorium that stretches from the cableco/telco duopoly to the copyright oligarchs who are strangling what Professor Lessig calls Free Culture. That Regulatorium should be the enemy of every free-market Republican and every free-speech Democrat. It's slowing down the U.S. and its businesses as competitors in the World Wide Marketplace we call the Net. ¶ Will this decision to execute the Internet radio canary motivate us to do what we should have been doing more of for the past ten years? That's up to you and me. ¶ Because if we don't do something, she's gonna die.
With some very important stuff in between.
Link: Linux Journal.
Doc continues on his own weblog with, On the continuing death of Internet radio. Link: Doc Searls Weblog. And also, RIAA moves to kill Internet Radio. Link: Doc Searls Weblog.
Must reading for radio professionals and online radio listeners. --Dennis
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