Since starting my office job at a law firm this summer, I've become an avid listener of Pandora, the popular internet radio website. After raving about Pandora to friends and coworkers, I was surprised on Tuesday when Pandora and all of the other internet radio providers staged a "Day of Silence."
A recent ruling in March by the Copyright Royalty Board increased royalty rates by 300 to 1200% for internet radio broadcasters. The steep increase is so severe for internet radio broadcasters that a special website has been set up to fight the ruling, and all internet radio broadcasters went dark on Tuesday to call attention to the issue. Supposedly, it worked, as more than 350,000 calls were made to Congress opposing the royalty rate hike.
Internet radio broadcasters argue that their royalty rates should be equal to the royalty rates paid by satellite radio broadcasters. This seems pretty reasonable to me. You can't copy songs onto your computer from internet radio broadcasters, so I don't understand the harm of lower royalty rates. If anything, Pandora exposes me to musicians that I've never heard of, and encourages me to buy the music I really like since I can only listen to it once on Pandora.
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