How to fight an administrative ruling

An update on the efforts of Save Net Radio to battle the ruling by one of the newer Admin Boards on the block: The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) created in May 2005.  In a week, on June 26, anyone who listens to internet radio while at work, like myself, will have to resort to the CD player as webcasters in a show of protest will go silent. This is a long battle through the admin process, including a denied appeal and another try at a rehearing, and a good example of the alternatives to fight an administrative ruling.  As you recall, the CRB decided to triple the royalty fees for broadcasting music online effective July 15 and retroactive to January 2006.  The result on internet broadcasters will set royalty costs at less than one fifth of a penny per song played by 2010, which calculations results in a 300 percent increase for the big dogs like AOL and Yahoo! and a whopping 1200 percent for the small guys. The most vocal coalition of artists, labels, internet radio listeners and webcasters, Save Net Radio is lobbying hard in Congress to fight this administrative decision.  And indeed they got Congress' attention, through a bill sponsored by Reps. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and co-sponsored by 118 other representatives that sets a standard fee of 7.5 percent of revenue, applicable for Internet cable, satellite radio and jukeboxes. The bill is still in committee. A resounding retort by SoundExchange, the company that collects and distributes royalties from Internet radio, claims that 82 percent of its royalties were collected from the ten largest webcasters and accused Save Net Radio as being a front for large webcasters. For full article, click here.  Stay tuned, except on June 26. CQ