Internet Radio Equality Act
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Internet Radio Equality Act (IREA), originally introduced as H.R. 2060 , is proposed legislation by Rep Jay Inslee (D) WA to nullify the May 1, 2007, determination of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) modifying the current webcast radio royalties and fees retroactively to January 1, 2006. The previous system charged radio stations a per performance rate of $0.000768, and it was that same rate from 1998-2005. The new system, effective May 1, 2007, increased that per-performance rate to the following levels: 2006=$0.0008, 2007=$0.0011, 2008=$0.0014, 2009=$0.0018, and 2010=$0.0019. This bill was introduced on April 26, 2007 by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL) and has been cosponsored by over 100 members of the Congress. It was introduced in the Senate as S. 1353 on May 10 by Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sam Brownback (R-KS). The bill's proponents claim that "the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent" when the Copyright Royalty Board's decision takes effect unless the bill passes.
The legislation appears to have been abandoned in committee, as of July 19, 2008.
Background
The decision of the Copyright Royalty Board was made following the guidelines of a "willing buyer / willing seller" business model, and as the result of a two-year proceeding, with dozens of witnesses and hundreds of documents from over twenty different parties, including (but not limited to) large webcasters, small webcasters, NPR, college stations, and SoundExchange.
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This entry incorporates text from “Internet Radio Equality Act” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.