by George Ziemann -- June 23, 2008

Once again failing to acknowledge any legal decisions which they do not agree with, the RIAA has decided to bring up the failed argument from 1922 that broadcasting music is piracy.

Wired has a story which attempts to make it look like Congress is ready to take action on this, but it's just another of Howard Berman's (D-ongle, California) frequent attempts to let the RIAA write copyright law. Don't panic. At this point, it's much closer to being a fantasy than a law.

The other problem with the story is that it misses the obvious, apparently for the simple reason that neither side mentioned it.

Wired's report says: "The argument boils down to this: Radio is making billions off the backs of recording artists and their labels; and the recording artists gain invaluable exposure because they're on the radio, so royalties should not have to be paid."

The missed obvious part? Payola.

Neither side is going to talk about it because they settled without admitting guilt. The broadcasters' best argument against royalties is that the RIAA was paying radio millions to play their music and if Elliot Spitzer hadn't nailed them all, it would still be going on today. But that would be admitting guilt. So they can't bring it up and the RIAA knows this.

The guy at Wired ought to know this, too, and should have pointed out the hypocrisy. Why didn't they? It's the same kind of award-winning journalism trend that couldn't possibly have suggested that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 -- because "no one raised that issue."

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As for the issue itself, I have no problem with paying royalties to the performing artists, although it's rather disengenuous of the RIAA to bring their stale, phony concern for the artists into any conversation, when their intention is to take half of it.

What I do have a problem with is trying to enact legislation on the basis of false pretenses. Ending payola let the RIAA keep those millions that they would have spent on promotion five years ago. Apparently, this was not enough, so now they want to see checks rolling the opposite direction. The RIAA's ability to sell this new royalty is dependent on everyone pretending payola never happened. Otherwise, the broadcasters would have numbers to illustrate how valuable the labels thought airplay was and how much they were willing to pay for it when they could get away with it.

Unlike peer-to-peer, radio has been through this all before. The first time around, the broadcasters simply found something else to play. It would be even easier to do the same thing today.

You know what, I've got a viable solution for the RIAA: Let a law be passed that makes it illegal to broadcast ANY of their copyrighted music.

[sarcasm] I mean, that ought to make them happy, to have the music moochers stopped in their tracks, right?
After all, according to them, "broadcasting music is piracy", so-o-o, let's stop it!

P.S. Let the internet rule the day, since it provides a fairly level playing field for independent artists.

awesome idea! if the radio ends up only being able to play indie, then all the riaa artists would be forced to break away from the riaa and go indie in order to get airplay. genius!

I think that artists should charge radio stations progressively higher rates each time they play a song so I DON'T HAVE TO HEAR THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER.