From Salon.com: "In recent weeks, webcasters have started a Save Internet Radio campaign to try to amend the DMCA so they can stay on the Internet airwaves.

"Rusty Hodge, the program director and general manager of SomaFM, spoke to Salon from his day job at a Web health insurance company to explain how the ruling will likely affect stations like his and what he's doing to fight it...

"What do you think the Save Internet Radio campaign can accomplish? Do you think that it can do anything, or is it already too late?"

"We realize that going after CARP is the wrong thing. That's like going after the punishment, when really what you have to do is go after the original law that put this in place. The DMCA dates from back in the late '90s, when the mindset was, 'Oh, it's digital, it means a perfect copy of something.'

"Congress didn't really think about how streaming audio broadcasts are using compressed audio and that they do not sound as good as the original CD. Streaming is not a way of actually distributing recorded music. And that's what the RIAA and the other copyright owners were concerned about when they were pushing for the passage of the DMCA. They were all scared that people would be able to distribute perfect copies of their sound recordings.

"The key phrase there is 'perfect copies.' [The DMCA] talks about how digital allows 'perfect copies' of an original. And therefore they had to be taxed or there had to be a royalty at a very high price, because these perfect copies would be taking away from record company sales.

"But the truth is that with Internet radio, while the sound quality is good, in most cases, it's not as good as the FM broadcast. And in some cases when it is as good as an FM broadcast, we all know that an FM radio doesn't sound nearly as good as listening to the original CD.

"So, there's a big letter-writing campaign going to amend the DMCA to separate systems that would distribute perfect digital copies vs. systems that distribute degraded digital copies. When you compress it using Windows Media or Real Audio, the copy you are distributing is no longer a perfect digital copy, it's a degraded copy. It's not the same as the original. We want to change the DMCA to reflect that Internet broadcasting is not distributing these perfect digital copies. We want to see the DMCA amended to state that Internet broadcasting, which is different than peer-to-peer file sharing or online musical distribution services, should be treated the same way as over-the-air broadcasts."

"I understand that you're making a big effort to separate this case from the Napster debate. What impact has the Napster case had on Internet radio?"

"The problem with Napster is that people think that Internet radio is just another way to get music for free. And, you know, in some ways it is. Some people who listen to the radio never, ever buy music, but I probably get like 20 e-mails a day from people trying to track down records that are hard to find.

"And I've gotten other e-mails from people who say, 'Oh my God! Since I've listened to your station, I've bought like 60 records. It's all this new stuff that I never knew existed before. Thank you for introducing me to it.' It's not like people are coming to us to get music so they don't have to buy CDs. The core of our audience is people who are looking to discover new music."

"Do you think that the whole Napster debate has made it more difficult to argue for the legitimacy of Internet radio?"

"Yeah, because Napster has sort of equated Internet music with stealing music. We just want to be treated as over-the-air broadcasters are treated."

Read Salon's entire article here.

...

... One minor correction: Most of the efforts on SaveInternetRadio.org are NOT aimed at getting the DMCA amended, under the belief that the process would take too long to save the current set of webcasters. Instead, most of the efforts on SaveInternetRadio.org are aimed at encouraging Congress to encourage the Librarian of Congress to modify the CARP ruling -- most importantly, to add a royalty rate option that's expressed as a percentage of gross revenues, as both the RIAA and webcasters were originally willing to accept and has served the radio industry and ASCAP/BMI/SESAC well for decades. -- KH ...

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From Wired.com: "Ask any music fan who surfs the Net about 'Behind the Music That Sucks' and you'll likely see a glimmer in their eye.

"The animated series, which parodies VH1's popular 'Behind the Music,' features five-minute gems that skewer everyone from Britney Spears to Kid Rock with reckless aplomb.

"Because of 'Sucks'' great popularity, it did what few Internet shows have done: It made the leap to television. The program has been broadcast in Japan, Israel, England and the United States. For many companies, that would have been the penultimate success before the inevitable sell-off.

"Not so for David Carson and Simon Assaad, the brains behind Heavy.com, the company that has taken Sucks global. Instead, Heavy generated its own revenues through marketing deals that allowed its founders and their staff of 40 to create the popular animations that have garnered a rabid following."

Read the entire article at Wired.com here. Heavy Radio was RAIN's "Internet Radio Site of the Week" last May, here.

From Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News Tech columnist: "Media conglomerates are in a merger frenzy. Telecommunications monopolies are creating a cozy cartel, dividing up access to the online world. The entertainment industry is pushing for Draconian controls on the use and dissemination of digital information...

"The offenses against the public interest have been piling up, one after the other...The most recent outrage...is the music companies' scheme to control Internet radio or murder it if they can't. Net radio provides the variety and value that broadcast radio, so dominated today by a few behemoths, has almost utterly lost. Now it's going to disappear, if the greedy souls who dominate commercial music have their way -- just one more whack at the public interest to preserve the untenable business models of well-connected corporations.

"I'd been hoping that Congress would come to its senses one of these days, and mitigate the damage it has done with laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [in .pdf form]. As prescient critics warned, the law has been abused by the entertainment crowd and its craven allies in the technology business to threaten scholars, curb free speech and even incite outrageous prosecutions.

"I'd been hoping that lawmakers would see the danger of market concentration in telecommunications and media. No luck there, either. I'd been hoping that the courts might intervene. But courts are more political than we learn in our third-grade civics classes. Federal judges are nominated and confirmed by politicians who only occasionally peek out of the pockets of the special interests. Again and again, with few exceptions, judges are upholding laws that trample on tradition and rights.

"There's no simple, all-encompassing solution to this dismal situation. Fighting for the public interest will involve work on a variety of fronts. It's essential, for example, that we put pressure on Congress and keep it there...

"Here's my message to the record industry and its allies: I'm not a thief. I'm a customer. When you treat me like a thief, I won't be your customer."

Read Gillmor's entire editorial in the San Jose Mercury News here.

According to a Reuters story appearing in today's New York Times (here), though posting a wider fourth quarter net loss (as compared to Q4 2000) yesterday, Sirius Satellite Radio plans to finish its nationwide rollout a month ahead of schedule.

The company plans to be nationwide by July 1. That means 39 more states will be brought into the fold — including Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas — in the next 60 days.

Sirius reported a fourth quarter net loss of $83.6 million ($1.52/share) from $54.1 million ($1.28/share) last year. According to the article, Sirius has a cash balance of over $400 million, including the $158 million it raised in a stock offering in January. That amount is projected to last through March of next year.

As you can see by the screenshot, Sirius stock was trading at $5.21 as of press time.