If the legislation doesn't pass internet radio is DEAD!

Quote

Guest wrote:
If the legislation doesn't pass internet radio is DEAD!

Clear Channel, and other big players (aka RIAA insiders) will still be up. Internet Radio will not go away, it will just be converted into the same pointless, commercial, unresponsive, mind-numbing crap that is broadcast now over the AM and FM spectra. Quality, new artists, niche market stations, off beat collections, they will disappear, along with most of the audience. But Internet Radio will continue.

Not that most people will care any more.

Where we would be if publishers of other media and "artists" such as Shakespeare, Longfellow, Robert Frost, etc. insisted on a royalty each time a book was read or poem recited.

This is a sad day for those who enjoy the arts for their depth and beauty and a victory for the money grubbing industry and so called artists. We have lost our freedome to enjoy and are burdened with a new comercialism.

Quote

Artgrnlf wrote:
Where we would be if publishers of other media and "artists" such as Shakespeare, Longfellow, Robert Frost, etc. insisted on a royalty each time a book was read or poem recited.

This is a sad day for those who enjoy the arts for their depth and beauty and a victory for the money grubbing industry and so called artists. We have lost our freedome to enjoy and are burdened with a new comercialism.

There is an inherent difference between performance art--music, dance, theater, film/video, speaking, etc.--and static art--books, poems, paintings, sculpture, etc.

However, if you look closely at written works that are still under copyright, the "performance" rights--recitations, readings, recordings (e.g., audiobooks) etc.--ARE covered. Thus, if you were to recite/read in public a poem that is under copyright, you would have to get permission from the copyright holder. The key is that would be, like broadcasting on radio, a "public performance" of the work. Whether it is for profit or not, that falls under copyright protection.

Of course, the works of Shakespeare and Longfellow are well into the public domain: no one can copyright them, per se, though one may copyright a particular expression, e.g., a book of Longfellow's poems. (The BOOK would be copyright, but the POEMS would not.) I'm not sure about Frost's work.

Every so often, the term of copyrights gets extended, just about the time when early Disney animated films would come into the public domain. That is NOT a coincidence.

Who stands to benefit?
I will bet it is big business.
Is it also a blow to democratic webcasting?
Cheers:
Bob