RIAA / News / RIAA Announces Intent To Appeal Internet Radio Royalty Rates
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced its intent to file a court appeal of the June 20 decision by the Librarian of Congress on royalty rates for Internet radio.
It’s not bad enough that they’ve all-but killed Internet radio, they want to reduce the corpse to ashes and scatter them to the winds.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is encouraging all of us to send a letter to our representatives to fight the Berman Bill. I’ve mentioned this before here. What is it? If passed, it would give legal protection to copyright holders who hack into your computer if they suspect you have any files on it that violate their copyrights–and grant protection for any damage done (files lost, etc) in the process. Yes, really.
SUVs are a pet peeve of mine. Very few people have any valid justification for driving them, they’re dangerous (both to the driver and to others, though they instill a false sense of security in the driver), they’re un-economical and un-environmental, and they’re road hogs. I’m not the only person who feels this way–the Car Talk guys agree. Harper’s Magazine also wrote a decent polemic on the subject (thanks, Greg).
Chimera 0.4, a browser for Mac OS X, is out. I’m using it right now. I like it.
It’s still very obviously a work in progress, with odd behavior when new windows pop up, or when typing in a field (as I am doing now), etc. But it seems to be well behaved, fast, and designed with good “instincts.” Joe Bob says “Check it out.”
As if we needed further convincing that Big Media is evil: License to Hack: Black Hats win.
A bill is being prepared that would allow copyright holders to hack into your computer if they suspect you have illicit copyrighted materials. The bill would also shield them from damages if they happen to mess up your computer.
via Kuro5hin.
From Justice Scalia, a Chilling Vision of Religion’s Authority in America
A tightly argued article on a troubling justice. What do you do with someone like Scalia, who is so obviously brilliant, and yet resolutely channels that brilliance in the most wrongheaded ways?
A couple of news stories worth pointing at:
Apparently some marketing weasel at Eli Lilly thought it would be a fine idea to send unsolicited samples of prozac through the mail. The mind reels.
Despite the shrill editorializing in spots, this article has some sobering thoughts about the war in Afghanistan.
Big, Bigger, Biggest: The Supersize Suburb
Does anyone actually need an 8,500 square-foot house? There’s something vaguely pornographic about a house that big. My own house is somewhere in the range of 1,550 to 1,800 square feet, and families of four have lived in it comfortably. You could fit my house into one of these McMansions four or five times over. When I lived in Japan, I shared an apartment that I generously estimate to have been 240 square feet.
Goodbye, Internet radio. There’s no way the hobbyist-level operators, who are doing this as a labor of love, will be able to pay these royalties (apparently, about $500 a day). Up until today, I barely listened to conventional radio at all; I listened to Internet radio all the time. As of today, most of my favorite streams are dead air, and I have to imagine the others are not long for this earth.
No doubt the big broadcast-radio conglomerates and the RIAA are happy. The RIAA, which has had its collective head stuck up its collective ass for years, shouldn’t be so smug. I’ve bought quite a few albums as a result of music I heard on Internet radio–probably more than I’ve bought because of broadcast radio. In the past, there was a chance they’d get some revenue through record sales. Now, they’re not going to get any royalties from the Internet streams (since they’re disappearing), nor from the album sales spurred by those streams. This is arguably more of a clear-cut win for big radio, since it eliminates real competition. Then again, I’m not going to start listening to broadcast radio more as a result of this.
War On Error: Live Pictures Taken by U.S. Planes Were Freely Available
The war on terrorism in Europe is being undermined by a military communications system that makes it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of U.S. intelligence operations than to watch Disney cartoons or new-release movies.
Now, I’m all in favor of openness in government, but I believe someone’s pants are down around his ankles here.
What do you suppose the odds are that this’ll get to be a big story, and that Ashcroft will then tell us something scary to distract us?