x Last Friday's suggestion for another "Day of Silence" (here) has already generated loads of reader feedback. Please let us know what you think; we'll continue to publish your feedback on the "Day of Silence" proposal here in RAIN throughout the coming days. [Our feedback form is here.] x

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "It's not hard to figure out how to kill a relatively young, fledgling industry: Regulate it to death and slap as many unreasonable fees on it as you can.

"Last week, the Copyright Royalty Board did so when it upheld a decision forcing online radio stations streaming music to go from paying royalties based on a percentage of their revenues (as determined by the Small Webcasters Settlement Act of 2002) to paying flat fees per song.

"The cost of per song will continue to rise. We're talking pennies here — each song will cost $0.0019 by 2010, but those pennies add up fast,...

"Those fees are retroactive for 2006, meaning even tiny, basement-run stations or operations such as Seattle's non-profit KEXP, which focuses on promoting independent music, will have to fork over sums of money that could hamper their online efforts.

"In a statement responding to the CRB decision, the station's executive director said, 'Carrying this additional expense will likely require us to cut services or let go of projects.' The magazine Wired reported that 'the smallest Web casters ... likely will vanish unless the rates are overturned.'

"The fees collected largely will go to record labels, but down the line,  this decision will harm them, too — less exposure to music means lower CD and online song sales.

"Congress should intervene and reverse this culturally asphyxiating decision.

Read the entire op-ed at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

From the Washington Post's Faster Forward blog, by Rob Pegoraro: "When it comes to copyright policy, it seems that no idea is too stupid to get a second hearing. Most of the time, the greedy proposals foisted upon us by Big Copyright are appropriately ignored even on the first go-round, but every now and then some foolishness slips by.

"Which brings us to this week's outrage: The government's Copyright Royalty Board rejected an appeal brought by numerous Web broadcasters large and small,...

"This is a staggeringly bad idea, both unfair towards Web radio and ultimately harmful to  the musicians it's supposed to benefit. The defects of this concept should have been obvious when it first surfaced five years ago. And yet it's back anyway.

"My colleague Marc Fisher did his usual excellent job documenting the effects this will likely have on Web radio stations in this blog posting (Short version: SoundExchange, the non-profit set up by the Recording Industry Association of America to collect and distribute these royalty payments to musicians and record labels, is trying to mug people with very thin wallets). But there's a couple of points I'd add.

"One, if Web radio stations are ripping off musicians so badly that they must be slapped with these new, much higher royalty payments, why do record labels ever send these stations free copies of the musicians' work? Even operations as small as my old college radio station... get free CDs, and with good reason—how else are fans supposed to discover new music without spending hours every week in record stores or in clubs?

"Two, a big chunk of music sales these days consists of the more obscure artists, not the chart-toppers you can't escape on commercial radio—the so-called 'long tail' of the business. The last thing musicians need is to choke off the one part ofthe radio business that helps expose these lower-profile acts—the smaller, usually independently-run Web broadcasters that don't let market research program their playlists...

"Some musicians understand this—read the Future of Music Coalition's detailed posting on this topic... I'd like to see more stand up and say if they need SoundExchange's 'help.'

Read the entire post the Washington Post's Faster Forward blog.

Here's feedback from our suggestion of another "Day of Silence" here...

"It's the only way to get the powers that be to listen..."

"Fight for our right to exist!"

"Let's direct listeners to a station that is covering all the issues..."

"Created to keep this unique American art form from becoming extinct..."

"We did it for the music..."

"We have the largest platform in the world to speak to the nation..."