Stage 6, recently linked in a popular FPP, has announced it will shut down today. Rumors about why include their battle against UMG to a "ridiculous battle of egos."
posted by Avenger50 on Feb 28, 2008 - 13 comments

Sound Exchange Can't Find Wall of Voodoo Who else can't they find? Charles Mingus, Archers of Loaf, Art Blakey, T. Rex, Brand Nubian, Art Blakey, and thousands of others. The link is comprhensive list of the "missing," which is a long list indeed, but includes many who aren't that hard to find. Nashville entertainment lawyer Fred Wilhelms has tried to help SoundExchange as he has written about at least twice in Counterpunch. SoundExchange is the organization put together by the R1AA and the major entertainnment companies to collect royalties for streaming (Internet, DMX, XM) radio performances protected by copyright and to distribute it to the artists. These, indeed, are some of the royalties that could be going to artists, if only SoundExchange could find them. Unfortunately, many artists will not be getting pizzaid for performances from 1996-2000 if they do not register with SoundExchange by December 15 of this year (2006). SoundExchange was chartered to find these artists or their estates, but apparently they aren't looking very hard. Why? Because if the artists don't register, SoundExchange (read: R1AA and their corporate partners) GET TO KEEP IT!.
posted by beelzbubba on Oct 21, 2006 - 21 comments

"...The Copyright Office followed almost to the letter the RIAA's wish list." The final nail may be about to be driven into the coffin of online music streaming in the US, as the Copyright Office issued its notice of proposed rulemaking on the issue. The proposed rules are extremely favorable to the RIAA, to the point where many streamers are saying they'll simply have to shut down. Even worse, any ruling will be retroactive to 1998, and streamers will have to pay the announced rate on everything they've streamed since that year.
posted by aaron on Feb 20, 2002 - 16 comments

Wired News reports on the upcoming DMCA review. Via Linux Weekly News: "When music is streamed, webcasters are required to pay a performance royalty. In order to generate smooth playback of incoming streams, computers temporarily store some of the data in memory in a RAM buffer. Music publishers have stated that the data in this buffer should be considered a physical creation that would require webcasters to pay a mechanical royalty, similar to what they pay for downloads or CDs." Anyone need any more on that? Time to get your congressman on the phone...
posted by baylink on Nov 30, 2000 - 3 comments

iCraveTV is streaming free, live network television feeds using RealNetworks software, and the big guys are steamed. The broadcasters are citing copyright infringement, but the guy running iCraveTV, William Craig, says he's perfectly legal. I think it's pretty ballsy, but legal? Apparently, since he's 'casting from Toronto, Canadian cable laws allow the retransmission of broadcast signals sans the licensing fees, as long as the signal doesn't get altered.
posted by grant on Dec 6, 1999 - 3 comments