[DMCA-Activists] Lucky day for webcasters! CARP goes down!

[Jonathan Watterson]

Dear music fans and freedom lovers,

The record companies may not be able to tax internet radio after all.

CARP, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel commissioned under the
DMCA, presented (in February) its recommended fees and requirements for
streaming music, which shut down many webcasters (like WERS
<http://www.wers.org/stream.htm>). 

Today the Register of Copyrights and the Librarian of Congress both
agreed to reject CARP's fee plan.

More info:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/21/153226&mode=nested&tid=141
http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcasting_rates.html

We now need to convince the Copyright Office ( 101 Independence Ave.
S.E., Washington, D.C. 20559-6000, telephone (202) 707-3000 ) that fees
need to be lower than CARP's recommendation, not higher, and that the
proceeds should go not to RIAA (the record companies) but to ASCAP and
BMI (the songwriters).*

J

* M4d pr0ps to Jim of the Big Ego <http://bigego.com> for pointing out
the issue of RIAA vs. ASCAP et al.


-- 
Jonathan Watterson                                Digital Freedom Organizer
http://digitalspeech.org                          Free Software Foundation

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