During the nearly 5 years that I have had the pleasure of building and running Celtic Radio I never thought that everything that we have worked so hard to create could be lost in a single moment.
Yet that moment came last Friday when the Copyright Royalty Board announced new rates for Internet Radio Stations. Friends, if these rates go into effect it will basically kill off ALL independent and even big name internet radio sites like Live365.
The RIAA has managed to have our own government's Copyright arm rubber stamp their own agenda which is an assault on all American people by their own legal system. Thousands of independent stations like Celtic Radio will be wiped off the scene and a new age of Corporate only radio sites will replace the community and creativiness that you have all come to know and love.
The purpose of the new rates is to Kill off all independent radio stations in the U.S. and replace it with one big spam machine run by the RIAA. There will be no sites such as Celtic Radio where a person can find the comfort of good friendship, good music and a bit of sanity from this often cruel world.
I am now asking that everyone please help us save this site and the many thousands others like it by contacting your congress and senate. This needs to be done ASAP because we only have 30 days to get this overturned. Please tell all of your family and friends, business associates, teachers, church families. Copy and paste this message in an email and ask them to help.
Please visit this site for more information and links to write to congress and the senate.
We will update this section as new links and resources become available. The following links are very important and you can help Internet Radio by visiting these links which include information, petitions and more:
As your constituent and a fan of Internet radio, I was alarmed to learn that music royalty rates were recently determined by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which, if enacted, would certainly silence most or all of my favorite online listening services. For most webcasters, this royalty rate represents more than 100% of their total revenues!
The shuttering of the webcasting industry would be a loss for not only independent business owners, but also for musical artists, for copyright owners, and for listeners like me who enjoy the wide variety of choices available via Internet radio.
I respectfully request that your office look into this matter and initiate action to prevent it. As the CRB rate decision is retroactive to January 1, 2006, please understand that time is of the essence -- as the immediate impact of this decision could silence many Internet radio stations forever.
Dear Lord, lest I continue in my complacent ways, help me to remember that someone died for me today. And if there be war, help me to remember to ask and to answer "am I worth dying for?" - Eleanor Roosevelt
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
Podcasters like myself will be next, no doubt. I limit myself to mainly independent artists who still own their own music and grant me individual permissions to play their music for no profit, which will give me a loophole in this specific action. But the fat cats of the RIAA will not be satisfied to stop at internet radio.
College radio stations who archived their shows on the net have already been forced to take their archives down. Now they are after internet radio. Podcasters will be next. It's insane. How can this happen in a democratic, free-market society?
I will pass along the info to everyone I know. WRITE IN, DEAR FRIENDS AND LISTENERS, WRITE IN!
Wendy
--------------------
Even the mighty oak is just a nut that held it's ground.
Group: Super Moderator
Posts: 3,069
Joined: 09-Oct-2003 Zodiac: Holly
Realm: Kentucky
I am sending the following mail to several of my friends:
A public service announcement from a friend. The corporate suits are at it again. It is not enough that they curtail your rights of fair use by locking your CDs and your computer files to self destruct like a audio tape from Mission Impossible. NO! They want to stamp out all competition! By eliminating Internet radio and thereby the venues where thousands of otherwise unknown independent artists get heard. This is not the first time that Internet Radio has been threatened. And every time, hundreds of wonderful stations are wiped off the Internet. Just because they play what people want to hear. Unless you want Internet radio to be controlled by Clear Channel, and every Internet radio station be be like MTV ("I remember when you could actually hear good music on the Internet."), then please. Help to take a stand.
If the corporate suits can do this to Internet Radio, you can bet that popular sites such as Myspace and Youtube where so many hang out, will go the way of the Dodo as well. If this is allowed, then before long there will be no place where anyone who has not signed their rights away in blood can legally be heard.
my friends, now to be fair I have not had a chance yet to peruse the documentation on this issue in detail. One thing I did catch in it though is that supposedly noone will say just how much (or how little) the terrestrial stations pay in royalties. Makes me suspicious right there. That there is nothing to compare these numbers too. Also, someone want to tell me how THEY could be expected to pay like this?? Per listener per song played?? Unless there is some way that an AM or FM station can know how many people are tuned in at any time considering any device with a coil of wire can pick up their signal.
Well, I wrote to my congressman and both senators Kennedy and Kerry. Basically, if the RIAA has its way then small to medium webcasters would pay 125% of the their revenue. So, you would have to pay more than you actually make to cover their fees!
This is just not about Celtic Radio, but thousands of other sites like Celtic Radio. Radio Paradise is another site that you can visit for more information http://www.radioparadise.com. Its run by a husband / wife team.
And its not just about internet radio, if an entity such as the RIAA can basically buy their way into congress and the copyright board, then what else is possible?
3 Years ago this happened, and a big push happened that got congress involved. I'd say that we have an even bigger voice now with more listeners and broadcasters. If everyone writes and calls their congress and senate we can make a difference and support all of the great musical groups out there the the RIAA wants to suck dry.
But beyond this issue, it just seems that corporations are getting bigger, stronger and controlling more and more of America. What are we going to do someday when there is little choice left and all of the good jobs have been outsourced over seas to cheap labor? What will be left for our kids?
There is an underlying theme to this all and it is about big business and big corporations. Just keep on stepping on us and you will be sorry you woke up a generation that has the power to change your strangle hold on America. It can happen!
Took me ten minutes to figure out which "issue" (required choice if I wanted to send an email to my revered Senator) this fell under, so I picked things like "anti-trust" and "legislative changes" and hoped for the best.
Great Public Service Announcements to be inserted into the broadcast schedule of small internet radio stations. Trying to figure which might work best in my show!
I have sent the following letter to my senators here in NJ. If it sounds treating, that’s because I meant it to be. The time to stop talking, and to start take acting is right around the corner.
Save Internet Radio,
This increase in royalty fees being levied on Internet Radio is just more extortion being perpetrated by the international corporations. To allow this increase to happen simply means that you are my enemy. So don’t expect to get my vote ever again. Not that I trusted the vote to begin with. The battle for freedom is not in Iraq, or any place else in the world. It’s right here and now. So go a head and allow internet radio to be extorted, and well see what happens.
John Clements
PS: My issue choice was… CRIME
--------------------
We’re all poets, only some of us write it down. JC 9/27/08
Anyone who has the courage to disagree, deserves all do respect. JC 4/28/08
Life is a loosing battle, so you might as well live it up. J.C. 3/29/08
Life should be like skiing, you have the most fun on the way down. J.C. 8/17/07
Take their word for it, and that’s just what you’ll get. J.C. 3/19/07
Only the truth is worth the ultimate sacrifice. J.C. 1/26/06
Compared to the far right, the far left is somewhere in the middle. J.C. 2/22/06
I’ll be the first to apologies, as long as I get one back. J.C. 3/7/06
It’s a happy man, who can laugh at himself.
If you’re looking for a new experience, don’t hire someone with a lot of it. J.C. sometime in 1990
this so sucks...i'm letting all my extended family in the us now about this....i'm hoping my cuz with nasa might help, keep your fingers crossed, when she gets going there is no stopping her!!
--------------------
non nobis domine,non nobis sed nomini tua da gloriam.
Just sent an email to our representative. Hope he will listen.
--------------------
"He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart.
You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion."
Author Unknown
1 User(s) are reading this topic (1 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)