whereas we all know that a 68k stream is hardly exact or perfect - digital FM is probably higher sound quality. and if i add a tuner card i can capture an FM broadcast just as easily as i could a stream. but, that's reality, not politics ...

The thing I don't understand is, if you heard Stacie Orrico on KXFM, she wouldn't be getting any royalties at all from that. Why does Pandora have to pay? Apart from, oooh scary, it's the intartubes...

(Not that she's likely seeing any actual money anyway - half of what's collected by Sound Exchange goes to their 'overhead'.)

You know, honestly, I am sick of people treating smokers as this infinite sink of sin that they can force to pay for whatever keen idea they come up with. "Oh, it's to help them, the poor dears." Yeah right. If you supported actually effective ways to get people to quit smoking cigarettes, then where will your revenue come from? What kind of "health care" depends on maintaining a fatal addiction?

No, they set those rates to close the discussion.

The purpose of all of this is to shut down independent music streaming services. A few large players will do direct deals with the media companies - with all the money going to the copyright holder and not the artists.

The music industry wanted to get money every time a song was played when radio first began. They didn't get that, because the radio stations successfully argued that the promotional value was worth far more. So when digital music came around, the music industry thought it would try again - and this time it worked, because they could wave around "digital" and "perfect copy" and scare people, and because they vastly outweighed any opposition in dollars and clout.

Trying to get the CRB to be reasonable is missing the point. The entire structure is absurd. Unfortunately, rewriting old bad law seems to be impossible...

There's a good backgrounder here.

Jamming with the choir :)

The cultural and political, free-speech aspects of crap like these copyright runarounds, the egregious rate schedules being levied against Internet radio, the attempts to strangle satellite radio, etc. are all pretty well covered.

There's another common thread that ought to hook progressives in, though, and that's the economic strategy it all represents. It's another case of using every lever of government power for the benefit of the current monopolies and cartels; there shall be no economic activity that doesn't pay back to them, certainly nothing that could create new markets and new, uncontrolled actors. They already made that mistake once with the Internets.

I think, as usual, Ian has it right:

Millenials are trending Dem, but locking them in is smart, and showing that Democrats understand the new world, and are on the side of the future, not the past, is how you do it. [...] The politician who does this will reap great rewards - and so will the party.

"my late producer Jack Savage"???

er. that's quite a contract.

"Reagan never lost a war. Bush lost two."

Two? Hmm. You mean Afghanistan? I think that may be being lost at the moment but it hasn't quite gone past the point of no return yet. That's if you consider everything from US bombing/invasion forward as all part of the same war.

And I have to agree with Yglesias, the whole point of what is wrong in Iraq is that we won the war:

It's the fact of American victory that makes further involvement so untenable -- this is what winning looks like and, frankly, it looks like shit; there's no earthly reason to keep doing this; becoming "more successful" at backing the Maliki government wouldn't accomplish anything.

Unethically minded and with exquisitely awful political judgment. I think Schoen's days in the party are numbered.

I'm sure this is a typo. You meant

I think Schoen's future employment is guaranteed.

right? I mean, that is how it works.

I see that they've also gotten the language restricting Bush from attacking Iran removed from the bill. What is the advantage of caving in to these folks? Why is it better to pass a neutered bill than to put a real one up for a vote, even if it doesn't pass?

It is interesting that Obama supporters seem far more drawn to Clinton as a second place choice than are Edwards supporters.

I'd suspect that's because what Clinton and Obama have in common is that they're not the standard kind of candidate - first woman President, first black President. I'd bet Edwards supporters are either more motivated by policy or ideology - seeing Clinton as a DLC-type first of all, with gender less important, for instance - or, possibly, the kind of people who actively want a white male President. (I like Edwards and I certainly don't think he's courting that group but it'd be foolish to pretend they don't exist.)

One way to deal with gerrymandering and also increase the number of parties would be to use "super districts", where within some geographical unit, you can vote for multiple candidates, and the top 5 vote-getters are seated. (or whatever number)

We definitely need a bigger House. Not that I have much hope that it will ever happen...

i hope that organizations like Free Press will start to speak out about copyright and patent policy as well. it's all part of the same ball of wax - locking in control.

"This fact needs to be made clear to the broader public" - heh. famous last words. i believe we can count on a media consensus that everything that goes wrong will be the fault of those San Francisco Democrats.

I'm not sure if this fits in with the kinds of things that you're talking about, but one thing leaps to mind: Unions. Unions have been being slapped around and bogeyfied for years. They DO have some specific legislative goals that were quite clear before the election. We should go all out supporting them. Unions have a lot of the skills and resources that the netroots lack. They're definitely off the Internet and out in the world. I can't think of better allies to court.