If you haven’t heard yet, a new law may go in effect soon, drastically raising the royalty rates for playing songs on Internet radio, very potentially and easily putting the vast majority of good Internet radio stations out of business. Here are some excerpts from the Digitally Imported article:

On Friday March 2nd, the U.S. government, through the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), made a determination of the royalty rates Internet Radio webcasters must pay the owners of sound recording copyrights to license the music they webcast for the years 2006-2010. The license is paid to SoundExchange, a nonprofit organization that collects royalty payments from digital music broadcasters and distributes them to rights holders.

The issue is that the new rates completely ignore the business and market realities of Internet Radio. In a nutshell they expect many webcasters, such as at Digitally Imported, to pay far greater money for licensing than we ever even collect from all of our services, effectively driving webcasters out of business.

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What’s ironic is that even if the Internet radio advertising market was fully mature, which it isn’t, and we played as many audio ads for you as we could - then not only we’d be in for a prize for most ads played by any entity, as one other webcaster joked. But we still would be very far from reaching the required revenue numbers and being able to pay such rates. It’s just completely unrealistic to expect any sort of a model to exist both now and in next years that would come close to being able to justify these rates. Maybe the big corporations of the world such as Yahoo and AOL could in theory afford to loose on such rates and still provide music, but that doesn’t mean all other businesses have to go as a result. Do you really want to have just a few big corporations playing the music for you in the future?

You may ask us about why don’t we just play unlicensed tracks or make an agreement with artists directly to avoid paying so much. The reality of the business is that it is virtually impossible to micromanage things this way. You’d have to have a world class communication company to be able to track down so many artists or labels, find where who is, who to contact, what forms to sign, talk them into it, etc. Plus you’d be surprised just how much of the non-mainstream music you love so much here is really signed to a label. That’s why in theory the law that allows for a blanket license is really convenient - it’s just that the rates which were set now are truly hopeless and stifle any kind of competition. What are we supposed to do, wave a flag and and turn into a payola service? Put a banner out that says “hey, whoever pays us the most in advance gets to have his or her track heard on the radio!”? Because that’s the only model that is going to work with these rates.

So if you care at all about Internet radio (e.g.: maybe you listen to A State of Trance with Armin van Buuren), then please take a few minutes of your time to write emails or letters to your senators and congressmen. Or if you’re lazy, like me, you may just go to this Congress.org page to copy an already-written letter you can paste. If you live near me, though, I highly encourage some variation/deviation from that letter, since I’ve already emailed that in to Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Sam Johnson.

In any case, if you want to act like a good citizen today, take this chance, regardless of whether or not you listen to Internet radio! (Remember, kids, the future of Internet radio is in your hands!) Thanks.

I’ve finally finished a completely new layout for this blog! You can compare this screenshot with a screenshot of the new layout or just compare it to this page. Anyway, here’s what I put in my newly updated colophon about it:

Version 3: Then, finally, from March 10 to March 12 I completely redesigned and rewrote a new layout, choosing to make it completely XHTML 1.1 valid this time. I redid the banner using the same photo and almost completely changed the style of the blog while still retaining some similar elements. The design was not really modeled directly off any other blogs, but the font scheme for the standard paragraph text is exactly the same as the one at the Wordpress website. The greatest change in the feel was the move to a single-column layout, without any sidebars. All relevant sidebar information has been moved to separate pages accessible from the top navigation bar.

This layout has been tested in Camino 1.0.4, Firefox 2.0.0.2 (Windows version), Safari 2.0.4, and Internet Explorer 6.0 (Windows version). It should look the same in all of these, except for these differences:

• Safari and Camino do not render submit buttons (eg: the comment form’s button) the same fancy way they’ll look on Firefox and IE. You may, however, see the font on the button in a different font, but that’s about it.
• Safari doesn’t render border: 1px solid #bf9960; for any of the input fields, anywhere.

I must note that, despite the fact that everything looks fine in IE, it was really frustrating trying to make it fully functional (although generally possible).

Finally, if you subscribe, please update your RSS feeds to use this new FeedBurned one: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PaxAsiana. And now, if you want to subscribe by email, you may also do so.

For seniors at Cistercian, every day is a half day during the fourth quarter. However, that time is supposed to be used for an independent academically related project. To come up with a project, each student must write a proposal and seek the approval of a faculty advisor who tracks the student’s progress and grades his results. Typical projects include preparation for a difficult AP exam of choice, learning pieces of music and setting up a recital at the end of the quarter, doing off-campus scientific research, directing a one-act play, or reading and teaching oneself a specific academic topic (like set theory for Joseph Simmons).

I’m analyzing Go games. I’m glad that Dr. Hahn, a mathematician and Go player of currently about my level, started teaching at our school this year. Previously, I would’ve thought such a project unthinkable. Long ago, I dreamed of building a synthesizer for my senior project, but that would probably prove too difficult (for a good, satisfying one, anyway), and I don’t think I actually want to explore in-depth those kinds of things anymore. Well, it’s not like I can major in Go or anything in college, but I really want to improve my skills, and I haven’t found much time to do so, so as a senior project, I think this would be pretty beneficial (and fun)! Besides, I may even put the finished paper up here.

If I weren’t doing Go stuff for my senior project, I’d probably end up doing cyber law stuff, which I’ve recently found a lot of interest in and want to pursue after my undergraduate education (more to come on this subject later). See, doing Go for a senior project and writing a lengthy academic paper on it is just so cool, and I couldn’t pass the chance. I can always do the law stuff some other time.

So, in any case, here’s the body of the pretty much approved proposal:

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Analysis of decision-making in three sets of recorded matches in the game of Go— first: Honinbou Shusaku (c. 1850s), second: Go Seigen (c. 1920s), third: a to-be-selected modern top player (c. 2000s).

PROCEDURE: (Optional: Read a book or two beforehand, or read and study game commentaries and analyses, ie: on Shusaku.) Then begin analyses of about four games per era (the three mentioned above), at a rate of about two games per week. Make conclusions based on each game and over all games to develop a better understanding of how the most advanced professionals choose and prioritize moves— either a question of style or technical anticipations. Compile a paper based on these results.

METHOD OF EVALUATION: Paper detailing analyses and conclusions.

I’m going to be spending time making lots of diagrams like this:

I really look forward to spending a lot of time studying and improving my play during the fourth quarter, which begins after spring break (which starts on Friday at noon). For now, I have to work on a lot of tedious (but somewhat interesting) stuff.