Today is net radio's Day of Silence, and boy, is it loud. Royalty rates for webcasters have been tripled; not only that, but tripled and made retroactive for 18 months, effective July 15th! What does this mean for you? It means the best music online will effectively be stopped - Pandora, Shoutcast, EpiphanyRadio, basically any streaming radio station not backed by the big bucks of the RIAA. I don't know about you, but I love my net radio stations - considering the dearth of decent non-mainstream radio where I live - and life would be a whole lot blander without those choices.
Contact your Congressperson (I did) and ask them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act (S. 1353 and H.R. 2060, already introduced). Please. We as librarians are supposed to stand for freedom of speech, and freedom of choice - that should extend to music as well as to books and web sites.
No comments:
Post a Comment