[DMCA-Activists] Webcasting rates set

[Jonathan Watterson]

The Librarian of Congress has announced the final set of fees for
webcasting. You'll recall that in May the LoC rejected the rates
suggested by CARP, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (commissioned
by the DMCA).  The schedule of fees is listed here, and compared with
the earlier proposed CARP rates:

http://www.copyright.gov/carp/webcasting_rates_final.html

For more info:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/20/2143244&mode=nested&tid=141

This plan is the result of a deal between Yahoo! and the RIAA.

The meager good news is that most of the rates will be half what the
CARP originally suggested. Essentially, however, nothing is changed; the
rates are still based on number of listeners and not on income, and the
fees still go to the RIAA (not to ASCAP/BMI, like they do for radio).
Many webcasters will still be shut down. Worse, it's possible for radio
stations that broadcast both by radio and by internet that not only will
their webcasting be shut down, but they will still be billed for back
fees going back to 1998, effectively shutting down the business. This is
not a good thing.

Reps. Rick Boucher (D, VA), a longtime DMCA good guy, and Rep. Jay
Inslee (D, WA) have denounced the new rates plan, as reported at
http://www.kurthanson.com/#Inslee

Please let your congressmen know how you feel and ask them to sign on to
the Boucher/Inslee statement. More suggestions on what to say to your
legislators are at http://somafm.com/carp/

Thanks,

J

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

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