Stay Denied, Negotiations Continue? HR 3015 Introduced

The US Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C denied the emergency stay requested by webcasters.  The stay would have prevented the new rates from going into effect until the various options concerning changing the rates played out.  These options include an appeal the rates before the same court, which is not likely to be heard for months, congressional intervention and negotiations.

Yesterday, there was a meeting that included congress, representatives from both sides of the webcasting royalty issue (SoundExchange, NPR, RIAA, SCW, AFM, DiMA, NAB and Pandora). There has been some press coming from that meeting. One example is available at Rain.  One interesting item to note is the word choice of Simson when he stated that “Our biggest desire is to have people paying legally and being compliant”.  Given context, the compliance he appears to be seeking is with the reporting requirements, which is one of the primary problems that College stations face.

Negotiations are continuing between webcasters and SoundExchange, but any true compromise would need to be approved by Congress in order for it to be a comprehensive solution that would cover all sound recordings.  The question concerning negotiations is if they are window dressing or if the RIAA representatives (aka SoundExchange) are willing to do the right thing for Educational Stations.

Last night Chairwoman of the Committee on Small Business, Nydia M. Velázquez  and Ranking Member Steve Chabot introduced H.R. 3015 which is intended to suspend the CRB decision by 60 days to allow continued negotiations.