My last job had a very liberal no harm/no foul mp3s on the network “policy”, so I was late to the net radio scene. At the current job I’m stuck with attentive IT and a dinky 40GB hard drive so these days I listen to a lot of music on Pandora stations (particularly Undertow Orchestra) and at least part of Breakfast of Champions each day. MAYBE some NPR if dramatic newsworthiness is going down.
All this is at risk of ending come this May 15th though per a decision from the ominously title Copyright Royalty Board (an easy 0/3 on the fuzziness meter). This group of non-elected judges (Scott Sledge, Stanley Wisniewski, and William J. Roberts) has decided that it’s ok for small internet radio stations to pay fees that outstrip the entirety of their income. The net effect of this decision is that while Yahoo or Microsoft will have no problems running enough ads to stay in business, small nuggets of awesomeness like somafm’s Secret Agent station have no hope of staying online.
So the choice is yours – enjoy the forthcoming whitebreadedness of internet radio or act to motivate a legislative solution. The link below has a petition and autofax setup that can be done in two minutes.
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