Overshearing The Sheep

Leave it to NPR, the often parodied and dismissed non-profit organization
of U.S. public radio stations, to take a stand against the bloated and greedy
members of the RIAA. Recently, our fine government has decided to increase the
fees that internet radio stations must pay the record labels for playing songs.
Not only have the fees almost tripled, but they are retroactive. This ludicrous
action means that many great online music sources face bills they simply can't
pay. Pandora, a fantastic site we have
covered before in our show, is just one small company that can't hope to
survive the revised licensing costs but by no means does this action affect
only small companies. This fee hike is hitting all online music
broadcasters, including National Public Radio. NPR has decided to draw a line
over this, and rightly so as they are now being asked to pay a vastly superior
amount of royalty money for their online music use as opposed to their
traditional radio cost, and for an audience that is a fraction of their radio
count. This
article on Medialoper has the full story. If you listen to NPR, Pandora, or
anything else online than write to your Congressional representative and
protest this action. Without hearing from us, our elected officials will no
doubt let this go without any intervention or scrutiny.



In relation to this story, I recently listened to an episode of This Week in Media, a fantastic
podcast that often covers areas of copyright and new media. In it, they talked
about the fact that the RIAA is in name a misnomer: there is not
"one" RIAA, it is a conglomerate of large record companies. By
calling it the RIAA, we take away the accountability of the companies that make
it up. For example, most people would probably recognize that the RIAA sues
people, but those same folks would probably not attribute those suits to, say,
Warner Music Group, even though the company is a member of the RIAA. On that
TWiM episode, they joked it would be a good idea to create a poster that made
people aware that the RIAA is in fact the following companies: Warner Music
Group, Sony BMG Music Group, EMI Group and Universal Music Group. I think it's
a very important idea, and over the next week I'm going to try to hammer out a
design for that very poster. In the meantime, the always great Consumerist
has posted the names and contact info for the members of the RIAA. Make
your displeasure known, folks, that's the only avenue of fighting these
behemoths of greed.

Leave it to NPR, the often parodied and dismissed non-profit organization
of U.S. public radio stations, to take a stand against the bloated and greedy
members of the RIAA. Recently, our fine government has decided to increase the
fees that internet radio stations must pay the record labels for playing songs.
Not only have the fees almost tripled, but they are retroactive. This ludicrous
action means that many great online music sources face bills they simply can't
pay. Pandora, a fantastic site we have
covered before in our show, is just one small company that can't hope to
survive the revised licensing costs but by no means does this action affect
only small companies. This fee hike is hitting all online music
broadcasters, including National Public Radio. NPR has decided to draw a line
over this, and rightly so as they are now being asked to pay a vastly superior
amount of royalty money for their online music use as opposed to their
traditional radio cost, and for an audience that is a fraction of their radio
count. This
article on Medialoper has the full story. If you listen to NPR, Pandora, or
anything else online than write to your Congressional representative and
protest this action. Without hearing from us, our elected officials will no
doubt let this go without any intervention or scrutiny.

In relation to this story, I recently listened to an episode of This Week in Media, a fantastic
podcast that often covers areas of copyright and new media. In it, they talked
about the fact that the RIAA is in name a misnomer: there is not
"one" RIAA, it is a conglomerate of large record companies. By
calling it the RIAA, we take away the accountability of the companies that make
it up. For example, most people would probably recognize that the RIAA sues
people, but those same folks would probably not attribute those suits to, say,
Warner Music Group, even though the company is a member of the RIAA. On that
TWiM episode, they joked it would be a good idea to create a poster that made
people aware that the RIAA is in fact the following companies: Warner Music
Group, Sony BMG Music Group, EMI Group and Universal Music Group. I think it's
a very important idea, and over the next week I'm going to try to hammer out a
design for that very poster. In the meantime, the always great Consumerist
has posted the names and contact info for the members of the RIAA. Make
your displeasure known, folks, that's the only avenue of fighting these
behemoths of greed.