Saturday, June 30, 2007

Some questions for webcasters

Dear webcasters,


A question, being that it seems there likely will be no timely legislative -- or perhaps even judicial -- relief for webcasters regarding the patently absurd Copyright Review Board royalty decision: At what point does this become a matter begging for civil disobedience, on the principle (St. Augustine via Martin Luther King) of "an unjust law is no law at all"?

Every five years, the entire industry -- an entire medium of mass communications -- is thrown into utter chaos by a regulatory structure guided by something akin to whim. It is like trying to build a skyscraper upon shifting sand.

Furthermore, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act treats similar media -- radio broadcast vs. Internet radio -- in a fundamentally unequal manner, maintaining a preferential system of no royalty payments (other than ASCAP, BMI and SESAC) for terrestrial broadcasting, moderate rights fees for satellite broadcasters and exorbitant fees for Internet media. To this layman, that doesn't seem to pass the "equal-protection clause" smell test, much less any basic-morality smell test.

So, given a "legal" environment where Internet broadcasting is screwed no matter what it does while others receive preferential treatment under the "law," when does the industry take matters into its own hands and say "non servium"? Pay nothing apart from ASCAP, BMI and SESAC royalties?

Does not this whole issue involve fundamental matters of justice and equal protection under federal law? And if webcasters decided not to play by unjust rules, would the government, could the government take legal action against everybody?

And at a basic level, wouldn't the cost of fighting and losing be exactly the same as that of playing by extortionary rules -- webcasters going out of business one way or the other?

Perhaps I'm all wet, but it seems to me those are some fundamental matters few people are talking about. With the exception, of course, of the record labels, who would dearly love to soak terrestrial radio, too. (But they'd need to change the law to be able to try it.)


In a 1967ish mood
some 40 years on,


The Mighty Favog

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