Question for Scot regarding Internet radio

[Rough Cutt]

While reading the news today I came upon the following article:

Web radio sites go silent in protest
New licensing fees could doom Internet radio, but webcasters are fighting back with a 'Day of Silence.'

Found it in Google news via the following link:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/26/magazines/business2/internet_radio.biz2/

My question to Scot, although this article pertains to internet music radio broadcasting is there any concerns for All Game Radio or similar formats? I have always been a huge fan of talk radio. It has been listening nirvana ever since I found All Games Radio. Gaming is my passion/hobby and to find a talk show that shares my level of enthusiasm for gaming is pure bliss.

I would hate to see Federal regulations muck up a good thing. Your thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Rough Cutt

[Blackwolf]

Even though I'm not Scot, I can answer part of this for you.

The royalties don't affect the talk radio side of our programming. However, it has a chance of affecting our music stream if game music starts to get licensed under the RIAA.

Some of the rumblings I've heard is that SoundExchange will even want a royalty fee for ANY music played - not just RIAA. In theory, they'd take royalties from a song I wrote and played on our station - even though I get no payment from SoundExchange.

I still urge you to call your senator and congressman and tell them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act, however. SaveNetRadio.org (http://www.savenetradio.org/) will help tell you who you need to call and what you need to say.

We will not be going dark today, but we urge everyone to still lobby their elected officials.

[Rough Cutt]

I just hope this is not a catalyst that enables government reform. My worst nightmare would be Big Brother impeding the free thought and speech that internet radio offers. I love AGI and a lot of the other shows on allgames.com and I will no doubt get involved with the Internet Radio Equality Act.

[Blackwolf]

I just hope this is not a catalyst that enables government reform. My worst nightmare would be Big Brother impeding the free thought and speech that internet radio offers. I love AGI and a lot of the other shows on allgames.com and I will no doubt get involved with the Internet Radio Equality Act.

Luckily there are a few congressmen on our side, just need to tell more to get on our side.

This current dilemma is just the music industry, however. Terrestrial radio stations are threatened by internet radio, so they're trying to snuff out the competition by making it too expensive to compete with them. The only thing that would really change is that AGI would have to stop using some of their sound clips since they're RIAA (Moe's theme, Jess's stripper song, most of Gringo's intros...)