You are all great! Thanks so much for your support and helping us this way!
I think on Monday I am going to call both Senator Kennedy and Kerry's office. The saveinternetradio.org site has a script on what to say. I am also going to appeal to Senator Kennedy's office in particular, knowing that he is very "Irish" American and also very influential.
What really does not make sense about this whole thing is that traditional AM/FM radio stations do not pay royalty fees. Why? Because they fought the RIAA over it and won. Their point was that playing a musicians music is considered promoting and is repayment for any sort of rights to broadcast.
But, because the majority of webcasters are small, the RIAA has the perfect opportunity to flex its muscle and in one swop eliminate 1000's of stations that hard working honest Americans have created over the past 5 years. Why? So they can control the content. What was originally agreed to, like traditional radio stations, was that 3% of all revenue generated by the station would pay for royalties. New stations that did not generate revenue initially would not have to pay.
As an example, given the current total listening hours per month for Highlander Radio we would need to pay about $3,000 a month in fees! THat is why all us web broadcasters are upset. The fees are not fair, they are designed to kill our stations.
My personal feeling is that the big music corporations want to charge you a fee to listen to internet radio. Like everything else on the internet today! And this attempt will give them more leverage in charging a fee.
Our one hope is that Congress did not intend for webcasters to be bankrupted out of business. Their mandate was for the copyright office to work with both parties in establishing fair rates. Their intent was for diversity and culture to be created for a benefit to the citizens of the U.S.
Well, hope that explains it all without reading all of this legal pages on the issue. Again thanks for all of your action on this matter! We are going to fight this to the end!
Paul |
