Conversations: Bizarre vs. Bazaar
Posted on Tuesday, March 12, 2002 by Doc Searls

In a bizarre move that requires a bazaar response, the U.S. Copyright Office plans to price Webcasters off the Net and replace the creative commons with a content pumping system for Big Media.

Are you ready to lose Internet Radio? Well, get ready, because that's exactly what will happen if the Copyright Office carries out its current interpretation of the DMCA.
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This hits home for me. I do an Internet webcast, from my living room, called TestingTesting. This would shut me down. This is serious shit. RIAA, ASCAP, and all the rest are nothing more that legalized thugs. We have a 230 seat performing arts center here on Whidbey Island. They have to pay a monthly fee to ASCAP in case someone performing there sings a song that ASCAP owns. It's a shakedown, pure and simple. Do the artists get anything? My good friend Derek Parrott, of TestingTesting House Band fame, had a song in rotation a while back at a local station. They had his song in the station logs and he should have been paid accordingly. He never saw a cent.

The music industry doesn't give a shit about the customer or the artist. What purpose is there for their existence?