Thursday, March 15, 2007

BAM! The future of....

The 1998 House Resolution 2281 included a provision called the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act. It was intended to fill a loophole in copyright law after a court decision struck down some the legal wording regarding the rights of boat and water craft designers. The Act basically extends sui generis protection for the designs by stating there is little difference between the function of a boat’s hull and its shape. The new provision have greatly influenced the canoe blueprints I’ve drafted and plan to build as soon as I get a large enough backyard, several felled birch trees and a dozen deer pelts.

The VHDPA was part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for some reason, which also includes some gobbledygook about digital copyright and music and web radio. I don’t pretend to understand that in the same way I appreciate boat hull legislation. But according to the WSJ, it means WOXY is about to go off the air. Again.
"Regular broadcasters pay royalties to composers and songwriters. But a DMCA rule calls for Web radio stations to also pay a fee to performers. The government set the fee for small radio stations at 10% to 12% of revenue or 7% of expenses, whichever was higher. Combined with other costs of streaming music over the Internet, that meant the cost of running WOXY began exceeding its revenue."
Everyone gets paid. Yeah. No one gets to listen. Boo.

1 comment:

Javier Marti said...

Hi
I am Javier, the founder of Trendirama.com, the fastest growing community of amateur writers writing about The Future of everything. We would like to invite you to join us and write an article on the website, perhaps "The future of copyright" or on whatever you are passionate about...
It is up to you, you choose the subject.
You would get a link back when you link to your own article, if you wish.
You can even re-use some of what you have here, in the last part of the article, "your view and comments". That would save you time and still be interesting for readers.
And yes, I know you may not have the time. Theoretically, none of us do...;)

Failing that, if you like the project and you can help us spread the word -even if you don't write- it would be great.
Since we are starting, any help is appreciated.

By making this valuable information available online for free, I truly believe we are helping to make the world a better place.
And you could do your bit for the world too, by sharing what you know, as we already do.

Please let us know if you link or mention us, so we can link you back too if you wish.
You can even use our valuable articles on your websites, provided that you link back. Any better offer than that?! :)

Look forward to hearing from you or reading your interesting article at Trendirama!

Best regards
Javier Marti
http://trendirama.com