Ahh, now most of these are stories I take great pleasure in reporting. The first batch is about the fact the Webcasters Alliance is moving to file suit against the RIAA over some comments by the Association attorney, where he said he didn't care of 25,000 webcasters fell to royalty demands, because AOL would be offering it's own stations. The Register's take also brings up the sell out by the VOW Eight at the height of the webcaster royalty debate, and points out that this group as well did this to stifle competing stations. John Simson of SoundExchange is quoted "The average hunter spends around $1,800 per year on their hobby. How much do photographers spend?" he told us. "It's all well and good to run a hobby, but Kodak doesn't give out free film. It's only right to pay a reasonable fee," he said.
That is fine, but there is a major difference between paying a few thousand for your hobby and owing tens and hundreds of thousands in back dues and another 10,000+ each month to play music for other people. There is a big difference, an inescapable one, between what the net radio and terrestrial radio stations have to pay to put out music on their respective mediums, and that the RIAA is clearly in favor of only those it likes is ridiculous and illegal. David Lawrence of Online Tonight reasoned that many stations would have their fees covered by their label contacts, but most small webcasters have no such contact, which again proved how unfair the market is towards internet radio stations and their listeners. I don't know what their problem is, but it's wrong.
Next up we have news on the P2P side of things, including news that the boycott of the RIAA is in full swing, with ramp up coming in a couple weeks with a massive email and letter campaign to congressmen, senators, and any other lawmaker willing to take the time. The letters received by the news outlet's have been overwhelmingly in support of a boycott and a ruining of the music label business plan to the point of ensuring that the RIAA and their bought and paid for lawmakers realize the people are speaking and won't be pressured into silence. As well, Grokster announced they will be forming their own lobby in September. The battle for the consumers and users of this stuff is heating up, and secrecy and anonymity are the key's to a long fought battle.
Now on the legal side, we have word that RIAA is suing Puretunes.com, a Spanish music service that is no longer in existence, over the fact it purported to be a legitimate service, when in fact it wasn't. The service, whose ownership is a mass of paperwork and confusion leading to some of the nicest places in the world, was sued in the US because it was hosted in the US on a Cogent network in Virginia. The worst thing is that many of the songs were not only stolen from other services, but the service's maintainers didn't even bother to clean up ID3 tags to remove notations announcing them as having originated from other services like Russian service allofmp3.com. The service is gone, so it is unclear what the RIAA will be able to do, but I wish them the best.
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