If you haven’t heard the news, the American powers that be have decided that Internet based radio stations should be paying the same royalty fees as satellite radio stations - starting retroactively from January 2006. (And by “U.S. Congress” I mean American Fat-Cats, in general. I’m looking at you RIAA.)
From Gizmondo:
Unless something changes, July 15 will be the day that webcasters are presented a bill covering all of owed royalties dating back to the beginning of 2006, calculated using the current, oppressive rates. “Starting then,” says [Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora], “every webcaster is bankrupt, except for a couple.
My Canadian status makes “call your congressman” a bit meaningless. Should I call the Canadian Senate? Ha HA! No doubt, the outcome of this decision will ripple across the border. At the very least, there will be less media for us to listen to. Even now, American streams are locking out non-US IP’s. This makes me sick and furious. Free services on the Internet should not be locked down within geographic, invisible borders. Grrr! The Internet should be without borders.
If America web-radio does fall over - that may create room for a quirky Canadian boy, musician, writer, podcaster to scoot in, create a user-base, monetization strategy - and then start paying off his student loan. Yoo!
[Mrumble, grumble, rumble... I'll pay myself... bumble.]
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