Written By Kate Zimmermann | March 5, 2007 | Share This |

The RIAA’s “army of soul-eating lawyers” is notorious for suing children, dead people, and even families without computers. They’ve been nominated for the “Worst Company in America”, charged with racketeering, accused of extortion, boycotted, and likened to the “Internet Mafia“. Two weeks ago, the RIAA launched a campaign against DRM-free music and public WiFi. Last week they attacked the the Fair Use Act and university students. Just yesterday, Boing Boing uncovered the RIAA’s ‘McDonalds’ approach to processing court cases - a paypal-friendly website that advertises “reduced price settlements”.

It should come as no surprise then, that the RIAA has successfully convinced the US Copyright Office to enact “per play” fees on web broadcasts. The new fee scheduling will charge a minimum of $500 a month, with upward rates based on traffic and songs played. In other words, independent web radio programs are screwed. As Techdirt writes,

“Of course, [the new rate schedule] is utterly backwards and damaging to the industry itself. A webcaster (especially the smaller, independent ones) is a great means of promotion for artists. It tends to attract more loyal and well-targeted audiences, who are more likely to want to later go out and buy a CD, a t-shirt or attend a concert. It lets the industry better promote material from a wider range of artists. However, in the industry’s desperate need to charge for every single use, they’re effectively killing off yet another wonderful promotional vehicle. The industry continues to think that it needs to do this because it wants to own all distribution and promotional avenues in order to be able to continue to take its large cut. However, that’s no reason for the Copyright Royalty Board to put in place these artificial barriers that only serve to protect the recording industry’s outdated understanding of its own business model.”

Wait a minute, haven’t I read this story before?

Oh right: