Can the music industry sue its way to profit? - Los Angeles Times

The LA Times recently ran a fascinating op-ed series that pitted Radio and Internet Newsletter publisher Kurt Hansen against Jay Rosenthal, a partner with the Washington DC law firm Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, an attorney for the Recording Artists' Coalition, and a member of the board for SoundExchange.

The final installment in the series, Can the music industry sue its way to profit?, deals with the pending massive increase in royalties to be levied on Internet broadcasters. Rosenthal's latest contribution includes this glaring example of the industry's obstinate refusal to acknowledge its utter cluelessness and obsolescence:

And now the question is why we don't allow webcasters to do the same thing as Napster and Grokster, but without protest. We should just back off. We should allow them to use the music without payment, perhaps calling it a form of "fair use" or rationalize it as promotion—which will surely result in an explosion of music sales or increased touring revenue or loads of merchandise sales or whatever.

The entire series is well worth reading.

Fighting to maintain the Smallification of Music Broadcasts

I've already contacted my senators and representatives, urging them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act.

It's good to hear that efforts to combat the new royalty agreement that threatens the incredible diversity to be found on Internet "radio" stations as reported in NPR, Others Challenge Online Royalties, from Yahoo Finance.


This quote from that article puzzles me:

Normal radio stations don't pay those royalties for regular broadcasts since radio airplay is seen as having value for promoting sales of music CDs.

Is it possible that the people behind this boneheaded royalty plan can't see the promotional value of Internet music broadcasts? Given that sites like Pandora and others make it so easy to purchase songs/CDs from iTunes or online retailers, it's clear that the people behind the royalty plan have: a) never visited any of these sites, and/or b) have an interest in driving Internet music services out of business.