Boulder's new Pirate! KGLO

Well shit! Someone's taken over 95.3FM in Boulder!

KGLO... 95.3 FM

This is a real pirate. I'm listening to slam poetry spoken to the guy while he plays hard guitar (pretty well). Poetic Terrorism seems to be the subject.

WOOT!

They even apologized for commandeering the airwaves from the old KBFR crew, but felt 'forced' to do it, as brothers (no shit!) to fight the corporate media.

It's a riot! STRONG signal. I'm pretty impressed actually. This guy (these guys?) take it seriously.

Looking forward to some real pirate action from these guys. MOST cool.

Come yell at the Law Firm that's doing the RIAA's dirty work APRIL 9TH at CU

The War on "Piracy": A Fight for Industry Survival or a Failed Approach?

@ Cofrin Auditorium, ATLAS Building, University of Colorado
April 9, 2008, 5:30pm

Please join us for a panel discussion between attorneys from Holme Roberts & Owen and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. HRO is a Denver-based law firm that represents record companies in their attempts to stem online music copyright infringement, including actions targeting individual university students. The EFF is a nonprofit organization that frequently questions the RIAA's tactics and opposes it in court.

In the nine years following the development of Napster, the music industry has changed dramatically. To match the new methods of downloading music illegally, there are new means of detecting such activity and new legal ramifications. The ethics of downloading music illegally and who should be responsible for such activity continue to be debated. This debate relates to the broader question of whether the music industry's business model-i.e., charging for the distribution of music-faces an existential threat not merely from piracy, but the proliferation of artists willing to share their music for free.

Whether or not individuals can justify downloading copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks or other outlets, the fact remains that this conduct is illegal. To underscore that message, the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) has brought thousands of lawsuits against individuals who have violated the copyright law, seeking to invoke the substantial damage remedies available under that statute. At the same time, organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have suggested that the advent of file sharing cannot be stopped by litigation and that the focus should be on finding alternative ways for artists to make money.

To address the issues at the heart of the debate over digital piracy and its impact on the recording industry, Silicon Flatirons will host a panel discussion, featuring attorneys from the EFF as well as from the RIAA's outside counsel (the Denver-based law firm, Holme Roberts & Owen). Over the course of the discussion, the participants, along with moderator Paul Ohm, will discuss the ethics behind downloading music illegally, the soundness of copyright law in general and its application to digital content in particular, the appropriateness of the lawsuits brought by the RIAA, and the fate of the music industry.

A reception will follow.

Featured participants include:

Fred von Lohmann

Fred von Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property matters. In that role, he has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in a variety of copyright and trademark litigation, including MGM v. Grokster, decided by the Supreme Court in 2005. He is also involved in EFF's efforts to educate policy-makers regarding the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, free expression, and innovation. Before joining EFF, Fred was a visiting researcher with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and an associate with the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, ABC's Good Morning America, and Fox News O'Reilly Factor and has been widely quoted in a variety of national publications. Fred has an A.B. from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Cindy Cohn

Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as its General Counsel. She is responsible for overseeing the EFF's overall legal strategy and supervising EFF's 9 staff attorneys. Ms. Cohn first became involved with the EFF in 1995, when the EFF asked her to serve as the lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Outside the Courts, Ms. Cohn has testified before Congress, been featured in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere for her work on cyberspace issue. The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online." In 2007 the Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America.

Richard Gabriel

Richard L. Gabriel, a partner in the Denver office, came to the firm in 1990 and chairs the firm's Intellectual Property Practice Group. He concentrates his practice on general commercial litigation, intellectual property litigation, probate litigation, and products liability litigation, including appeals, and has significant experience representing companies in a wide variety of industries including health care. He also serves as Knowledge Management Partner for the firm.

Mr. Gabriel currently serves as lead national counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America in connection with the recording industry's lawsuits against those who illegally copy and distribute the record companies' sound recordings through unauthorized file-sharing programs. In October 2007, Mr. Gabriel tried the first of these cases to go to trial and obtained a judgment of willful infringement in the amount of $222,000 for the plaintiffs. Mr. Gabriel also has defended and prosecuted trademark and copyright claims for such clients as Sony Music Entertainment Inc., Zomba Music, Michael Jackson, the Colorado Rockies, Build-a-Bear, and Coors, and he has litigated a number of patent cases, including cases involving patents for the Lasik laser eye surgery, artificial heart valves, and several different medical lasers. In addition, Mr. Gabriel has substantial experience in the defense of securities fraud, products liability, and toxic tort cases, and in the prosecution and defense of commercial contracts, business tort, probate, and personal injury actions. Mr. Gabriel has also served as city prosecutor for the City of Lafayette, Colorado.

Mr. Gabriel's pro bono and community work includes ongoing representation of the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center, where he undertakes representation of children in dependency and neglect cases. Mr. Gabriel was named one of the Center's 1997 Champions for Children for his hundreds of hours of pro bono service to the center. In addition, Mr. Gabriel has represented the Fort Lewis College Political Science Club alleging violations of the First Amendment, and he has represented an Oklahoma death row inmate through the ABA Capital Representation project. Mr. Gabriel has also had a long relationship with Volunteers of America, coordinating a firm-wide food drive that has delivered over 20,000 Thanksgiving dinners to needy families since 1987. Other community activities include his service as president of the board of the Colorado Wind Ensemble, with whom he performs on the trumpet, and his service on the boards of the Colorado Judicial Institute and the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center. In June 1998, Mr. Gabriel was selected to perform the Star-Spangled Banner prior to a Colorado Rockies baseball game as part of pre-game festivities honoring Holme Roberts & Owen on the occasion of its 100th anniversary.

In 2002, Mr. Gabriel received the Richard Marden Davis Award, given by the Denver Bar Foundation and the law firm of Davis Graham & Stubbs to a lawyer under the age of 40 who combines excellence in the practice of law with creative community leadership. Mr. Gabriel has been recognized as a Colorado Super Lawyer and has also been listed in the Chambers USA Guide to America's Leading Lawyers for Business. In addition, Mr. Gabriel was named the 2007 Intellectual Property Lawyer of the Year by Law Week Colorado and a 2007 Lawyer of the Year by Lawyers USA.

FCC's online pirate reporting system

This is precious.

The FCC is now taking pirate radio complaints online!

http://www.fcc.gov/eb/PIRIX/

I think it would terrible of people used this to report stations that didn't exist using up the precious and overworked FCC Field Agents. And you just know those sneaky pirate supporters do things like that.

It might even make the system useless. That would be bad. That would be wrong.

These sneaky guys should NOT even THINK about using http://www.fcc.gov/eb/PIRIX/ to report a station that isn't even there. That would be evil, immoral and just wrong.

So wrong.

The death of radio

It's becoming clear that analog (and HD radio, for that matter) radio is dead.

Who listens to FM anymore? Not many. Most people only listen in their cars, and even that's being replaced by ipods, Sat. radio and MP3 CD's.

At home, if you have internet, you have the richest music listening imaginable. From Pandora to LastFM to tens of thousands of streaming radio stations.

So.. commercial radio, NPR, LPFM or even pirate radio.. who cares? Or more accurately, who's listening to anything non digital? No one I think.

My dog

This, is my Dog, Matey.

Internet Radio is Dead! Back to Underground Pirate Radio We Go!

Arrrrrrrr...

Wow. I just can't believe it. They killed internet radio! The MAIN reason we decided not to fight the pirate radio fight long term was it didn't matter, the internet was going to fill int he gaps anyway so why bother?

Well, clearly, we got that one wrong. From ars Technica at this link.

Check this out:

A panel of judges at the Copyright Royalty Board has denied a request from the NPR and a number of other webcasters to reconsider a March ruling that would force Internet radio services to pay crippling royalties. The panel's ruling reaffirmed the original CRB decision in every respect, with the exception of how the royalties will be calculated. Instead of charging a royalty for each time a song is heard by a listener online, Internet broadcasters will be able pay royalties based on average listening hours through the end of 2008.

Wow. I mean fuckin A wow... I'm floored.

Well guys, time to get out the van, mixers and transmitters again. Let's rock this joint.

Monk

Internet radio dead? Maybe time for pirates again

I'd pretty much given up on the whole FM spectrum and decided that, with the advent of cheap streaming radio and podcasts, it didn't much matter anymore.

No need to put up an underground FM station. Just set up a streaming radio station. Get your self broadcasting needs taken care of with a podcast (which often is what's played on an internet streaming radio station)

Ah.. no more. The damned recording industry is trying it's damnest to kill that off too (or worse, turn it into another commercial filled wasteland impossible to listen to).

I'm thinking, maybe it's time again to go for the FM spectrum. Or, at the very least, help some other folks I know that are interested in doing it to get up and running.

SoundExchange Defends Internet Radio Royalty Rates

SoundExchange recently defended a revised streaming radio royalty rate structure as passed by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), arguing that the ruling was "fair". In a statement issued Thursday, SoundExchange executive director John Simson called upon broadcasters to consider the revenue needs of artists. "The music created by artists is the main reason why people listen to internet radio, and those artists should be fairly compensated for the value they bring to each webcaster's business," Simson said. "Yet, the webcasters refuse to acknowledge this common sense fact." The declaration follows a swell of protest from major streaming radio groups following the CRB decision, and a subsequent decision by the Board to rehear arguments in the matter. The protest group, which includes heavy-hitters like National Public Radio (NPR), Clear Channel, and AOL, argued that the newly-issued royalty structure would impose needless expenses upon broadcasters, and cause a significant number
of small and midsize companies to exit.

Simson acknowledged those assertions, though he also pointed to the myriad of revenue possibilities open to enterprising broadcasters. "Webcasters have a number of opportunities to maximize revenue with a captive audience attracted by music created by artists through banner ads, pop-ups, video pre-rolls, audio commercials and other avenues of revenue generation," he noted. That argument could affect refreshed CRB deliberations, though both parties are likely to hammer a recording royalty rate structure that offers more balance between the revenue needs of artists and the total budgets of internet broadcasters. The recently-passed schedule, passed March 2nd, replaced royalty calculations based on a percentage of total revenues with a per-play penny rate. The CRB offered to rehear arguments earlier this week.