Congress Resolves Webcasters Royalty Debate

from the are-people-actually-happy? dept

Could it be? Could Congress actually have come up with a reasonable bill concerning webcasting? The history on this one, if you haven't been following it, is that Congress initially set royalty rates for webcasters that most small webcasters said would put them out of business. Last month, a group of small webcasters hammered out a compromise with the RIAA, but concerns over some parts of that compromise (and the fact that many small webcasters thought it sold them out) stalled the bill in the Senate. Apparently, late last night, some new language was worked out that (surprisingly) seems to have satisfied many of the people involved. I'm sure there are some who still won't be happy - but it appears the new bill allows small webcasters to negotiate their own fee setup. Of course, I wonder how well this will work in practice. If the RIAA and the webcaster can't agree, won't the RIAA just tell the webcaster that they need to pay the ridiculous extortion rates?