To his credit, Simson, whose Sound-Exchange firm is essentially a branch of RIAA, isn't afraid to talk at length about the fees, which he thinks will help struggling independent artists. But he doesn't get misty at the thought of struggling stations going under after they've been saddled with royalty payments. "I'd love to see a lot of small Webcasters thriving, but if they can't commercially succeed as a true Webcaster, I don't know that there's anything we can do about it," he says.
"These rates had absolutely nothing to do with the stations that failed," echoes AFTRA's Chaitovitz. "And the stations that are left pay for their bandwidth; they pay for their employees; they pay their electric bill. But the most important part of their business -- the music -- they don't want to pay for."
Mike Gorman
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Still, such a bill may not come due immediately even if the fee structure is approved as proposed. Web sites like www.saveinternetradio.org are calling on legislators to get involved, and last week, twenty members of Congress signed a letter asking librarian Billington to choose "a balanced approach for royalties" that won't "stifle an inchoate industry and force hundreds of small Webcasters out of business."
But without a miracle, RadioValve's Fodel believes the worst-case scenario will come to pass. "And if it does," he says, "everyone loses."
Efficiency, Denver Newspaper Agency-style: In a column a couple of months back, I synopsized a several-months-long battle to straighten out my home subscription to the Denver Post, as well as concurrent troubles with a Rocky Mountain News subscription at the school where my wife works. At the time of the piece's publication ("Caught in the Middle," March 7), everything had apparently been resolved, and Jim Nolan, spokesman for the Denver Newspaper Agency, assured me that these difficulties were "isolated incidents." But in the past week or so, I've received plenty of evidence to the contrary.
First came a call from a reader who described a predicament practically identical to mine: She paid for her paper, but it stopped coming, and the DNA's attempts to resolve the situation were regularly foiled by ineptitude. I suggested that she call Nolan, whose efforts on my behalf seemed helpful, and went on my merry way. Then, the following Monday, the Post failed to hit my driveway at the appointed time, and when I called to find out why, I was told that delivery had been stopped because the subscription had lapsed in January because of non-payment. Actually, my wife had renewed the subscription the previous November, and with extra weeks promised us due to prior gaffes, we were paid through winter 2003. But the receptionist wouldn't authorize delivery without a canceled check, which the DNA had lost twice before.
Fortunately, my wife had saved the number of the circulation supervisor at the Post, and her anger made such an impression on this manager that she said she'd restart the subscription immediately. Too bad the next day's paper didn't show up, either.
Meanwhile, back at the office, I received a letter from Colorado Springs resident Gene Edwards, a former News employee who'd taken an early-retirement offer in the wake of the joint operating agreement linking the Denver dailies. As it turns out, he was having problems of his own with the agency. "Since semi-retiring, I've made way over a hundred calls to Denver -- not to mention trips there -- to try to straighten out the unholy mess the DNA has made of my benefits," he wrote. "I have yet to receive anything close to a correct bill and accounting of my pension, Kaiser, and Cobra dental payments, and it took until April to get a 1099 with the right Social Security number on it. The DNA has only returned approximately one call out of four lo these many months. Yes, the buyout was fair -- but the organization remains totally disorganized."
Oh, yeah: When I called Edwards to ask for permission to quote from his letter, he told me that his position at the News had been in the customer-service department.
Afterward, I couldn't help wondering if there was any way to win in such a circumstance. But shortly thereafter, an e-mail arrived offering me, and all of us, a little hope. The author of the note, a friend of mine who shall remain nameless, reports that he'd been sent a bill to renew his Post subscription at $101.25 for 48 weeks. Knowing that new subscribers get a better deal, he called and tried to negotiate but was told to "pay up or get cut off."
He had a better idea: He phoned the DNA and started a new subscription ($73.80 for a full year) in the name of his dog. "I saved about forty bucks," he writes. "I figure by the time my wife, kids, dog and alligator all get subscriptions, I should get a fair price for the next six or seven years and then can start using my name again. Also, I'll soon find out how many times those assholes sell my personal information, since anything addressed to my dog will have come through their subscriber-information sales and sharing."
In other words, the DNA is going to the dogs -- and thank goodness. Fetch!
