Hold on to your seats its going to be a bumpy ride. Last week a bill was introduced in the house to extend the deadline for small Webcasters by six months to start paying performance royalties. Then all of a sudden with lobbying from both sides they said that they could negotiate an agreement by the end of the week and on Sunday an agreement was reached. A press release was issued on HR 5469 saying that an agreement had been reached. Then all of a sudden we're hearing that the agreement was in trouble and may not get past the artists. What happened?

It seems the agreement that the small Webcasters agreed to, had the artists being paid directly their share of the performance royalty, but after they Webcasters left, language was inserted that changed that.

the changes:
1 - eliminate direct payments to artists
2 - allow the RIAA and SoundExchange to recoup their expenses before making any payment to artists.

If you remember a few years ago the RIAA did similar sort of thing on "work for hire", they suggested that four little words be inserted into a totally unrelated bill (satellite act of 1999, if memory serves) and all of a sudden the labels owned everything that the musicians did, by changing all of their work to work for hire. They would never get their copyrights back, ever, their masters, nothing. The RIAA called it a "technical adjustment". The artists and the copyright office called it theft.

It took Senate hearings and a separate bill to change it back to the what it was before hand. Why do I go into all of this? The person who made that "technical adjustment" on the work for hire issue was Mitch Glazer. At the time he was a staff attorney for the Senate Judiciary Committee. He left his job a few months later and went to work for, you guessed it, the RIAA. His new salary was approx. 5 to 6 times what it was while he worked for the gov't. He is now the RIAA chief lobbyist, and to be honest it smells like he's had his hand in this. The Senate Judiciary Committee is who was working on this bill, just drop by the office of my old bosses, suggest a technical adjustment and the artists get screwed again. This sure seems to have Glazer's fingerprints all over it.


**UPDATE**

I just received an email from one of the the webcasters who was member of the negotiation team, and low and behold it was Mitch Glazer who added the language that made the bill unpalatable to the webcasters as well as the artists.

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The small Webcasters are saying the copy of the bill they had been given they are already starting to change their endorsement of the bill that they thought they had negotiated which had the royalty been paid as a percentage (in the range of 8 to 12 %, I understand).

Once again the RIAA goons have done their dirty work. I can hear them now, "This is what they agreed to" See the internet companies just want to rip you off (to the artists).

Here's the scenario:

A bill is introduced to delay payment of performance royalties for 6 months for webcasting.
They say "We can work a deal before the bill has to be voted on."
On Sunday a deal is reached that both sides can live with.
Later Sunday the bill has language added that drives a wedge between Webcasters and artists.
The Webcasters withdraw support of the bill because of the RIAA's changes, that specify that the artists don't get paid directly and the RIAA takes all expenses out first before the artists are paid.(we all know how good the labels are at accounting and inflating costs.)




**UPDATE** Bill Changed and Passed Artists Get Paid Directly

Links:
Four Little Words
RIAA/Webcasters Statement that was issued Sunday before the changes
Boycott-RIAA Rogues Gallery-Mitch Glazier