So, they're trying to kill Internet Radio again, in case you haven't heard. There have been a number of other articles on the subject, but this one gives the gist fairly well.

This time it's a little more blatant - SoundExchange, rather than publishers, are trying to suck some more money up and shut down independent distribution avenues.

These are not people trying to gain compensation for struggling artists whose works are being played at profit and at no promotional value by the seedy pirates of the internet.

These are industry people trying to argue that internet radio somehow provides a different publicity standard than terrestrial radio waves, despite literally being a global venue, and that on top of the understandable publishing royalties for those ARTISTS who hold the copyright that were the eventual outcome of this fight in 2002, the RIAA should get some extra money for all the lawyers they have to hire to sue the pants off thousands of people. Well, presumably they also have to use some of that money to pay the lobbyists who get this kind of stuff slipped into the system.

As the law stood, after the compromise in 2002, royalties were paid to copyright holders based on revenue of the broadcaster. That's fair to me - if you're making money hand over fist by playing someone else's material, you have to cough up. These new royalty structures are punitive, and designed in a way to crush even large-scale net broadcasters, because they are based purely on users and songs, not the profitability of the company. If someone is paying 50 thousand dollars a year in bandwidth, and subsisting off donations, chances are they aren't rolling in piles of money on the backs of the starving artists they are exposing to thousands of new people. They are probably losing some money and doing it out of a love of exposing people to new, or non-mainstream music. So, of course, it is time for them to be stopped, or the mainstream pap-wagon will go the way of network television - death by choice. Capitalism's a bitch, huh?

I believe very strongly in these distribution venues - they provide me with new music I would never have experienced otherwise, which I then research, and go...BUY. Amazing concept, isn't it?

I support the venues themselves, as well, because it is of value to me that there are broadcasters not in bed with or in the pocket of content producers. I put my money where my mouth is, and have a soma fm tshirt to prove it.

I put my actions where my mouth is, as well, and on Friday wrote a series of letters to my elected officials, just as I did in 2002 when this crap was happening. I only hope that this time I will have a similar victory post.

Unlike in 2002, I had a cool little tool in Congress.org, which the soma site directed me to. It basically makes pestering the crap out of your officials as easy as ordering books or searching for porngiving to various non-porn-charities.

One of congress.org's great features is what I will call the blab-o-meter. Couple tips if you want to actually get noticed by your elected officials:

1. Vote in primaries
2. Keep your stupid letter under 1500 words.

In addition to auto-detecting your various reps and automatically filling in their email address for you, this Blab-o-meter also lets you know when you are getting a bit lippy and will probably lose the attention of the windbag you're writing to. Very handy feature.

Anyway, I urge anyone reading this who is distressed by the United States of Clearchannel and is sick of the RIAA bullying everything they don't control with legal threats or lobbying maneuvers to use the link on soma.fm and use congress.org to scream pretty loudly.

Unless you live in Alaska. Then your personal letter will get caught behind some massive amounts of material, because I mean I just got internet from there yesterday.

Yes, I am still doing Ted Stevens jokes. The man was head of a committee and was a national embarassment.

[you meddling kids]