Save Internet Radio

Please sign this petition to help keep internet radio safe and legal:

"As a fan of Internet radio, I was alarmed to learn that the Copyright Royalty Board has decided to raise music royalty rates by 300 to 1200 percent. For most webcasters the new royalties exceed their revenue and they simply will go bankrupt and stop webcasting.

The silencing of Internet radio would be a blow to listeners like me who enjoy the wide variety of choices only available via Internet radio. This will kill the great diversity of music that I hear over the Internet and all the independent artists who have a difficult time breaking through on other forms of radio.

I respectfully request that Congress look into this matter and take action to prevent it. Please understand that time is of the essence since the new royalty rates are retroactive to January 1, 2006 so they will cause immediate bankruptcies if they become effective for even one day. Please don’t let the music die"

Royalties and copyright law have yet to catch up with digital technologies and are a tangled mess by any standard. But this current situation with regard to internet radio is particularly heinous. Internet radio will be required to pay not only music publishers like BMI and ASCAP which support composers, but also performers -- something broadcast radio does not do. Recording artists receive their money from record sales and concert tickets. Radio play is simply one of the important ways they promote those sales. But now internet radio will be different from broadcast radio. It will have to pay a great deal more money than broadcast stations to play exactly the same music. Of course, internet radio doesn't just play exactly the same music. All those artists you never hear on broadcast stations will also no longer be able to be heard on internet stations either. Make some noise folks. This is something that shouldn't be allowed to happen.