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Tuesday, October 8, 2002
On the air again 
| | I'm flying to Denver for the Digital ID World Conference this morning. Not sure how often I'll be able to check in today, although I should be reporting for Linux Journal from the conference through Friday — and blogging live, too. |
| | If all goes well, SomaFM can resume broadcasts. (There is just that issue of $6500 in retroactive CARP fees....) |
| | (Oct 07, 2002) One down - two to go: The "compromise" webcast royalties bill has passed the House of Representatives. It should hit the Senate sometime within a week, and be signed into law by Pres. Bush shortly thereafter. Certain provisions of the bill that artists' organizations objected to were removed before the vote, which means passage in the Senate should be easy. This bill is far from an ideal solution, but it should allow us to at least limp along toward the future. Thanks for all of your support during this long, difficult battle. |
| | (Oct 06, 2002) We have a deal! The group of independent webcasters that we've been working with has finally come to terms with the RIAA. We'll end up paying a lot more than we'd like in webcast royalties, but it's a workable deal. It needs to be approved by both houses of Congress, which seems likely to happen sometime this week. |
| | Technically, the RIAA was formed in 1952 to "facilitate the technical standardization of records by bringing together engineers from member companies to develop the RIAA curve, a frequency response specification for optimizing the performance of phonographic playback systems." In other words, they were formed to make sure the science of recording was optimally used by all companies, in formats that everyone could play. In 1958, they decided to copy RCA/Victor's creation of a "gold record" (which they gave the Glen Miller Orchestra), and awarded the first one to Perry Como. When I was a kid, that was their entire job - certifying gold records. There are a lot of rumors about back-door dealings in that process, by the way, none of which I'll go into here, but most of which are on the Internet. |
| | With the advent of Hilary Rosen, the RIAA took on a whole new gamut of "problems", and began holding themselves out as defenders of intellectual property rights/defenders of artist's rights/defenders of record company rights (choose one). And that's what they are now - defenders of various rights they determine are important for the good of the mainstream record industry. Unfortunately, just like defense attorneys, they never ask whether their client is guilty - they just try to get him the best deal possible. |
| | One huge change is the amount of things the RIAA control, and the way they exercise that control. For instance, in order to buy a copy of one of my gold/platinum albums in Nashville as a gift for someone, I have to go to one store that's "licensed" by the RIAA to produce those. That's the only store in Nashville, believe it or not, and they're usually backed up several months (not to mention that the first run is always wrong, and has to be re-done. Once they even spelled my name wrong.) When I asked a friend who owns a framing shop why she didn't try to get an RIAA account, she looked into it, and was told they had to apply. The person they spoke with didn't think they would be approved, because they weren't "the type", and he warned them that it would cost $5,000 a year for the privilege, as well as their having to fulfill a minimum amount of orders. They'd also have to be re-approved yearly. In other words, whoever drops the most sugar in the lemonade, gets to have a lemonade stand. |
| | She also says Hilary Rosen's salary is over $1 million/year. Says here it's $1,163,729. Jack Valenti's is $1,030,000. |
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