The RIAA Casts Gloomy Web

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates. Bottom line - Webcasters will now have to pay $500 per station annually, and about 1.28 cents per listener hour, retroactively to the beginning of 2006.

For Live365.com, a service that allows individuals to legally run small Internet radio stations, the decision could be a backbreaker. In the Internet business, it's hard enough to predict the future, but when you also have to predict the past, it can feel like a real rift in the space-time continuum. "Live365's royalty obligation for 2006 is running in the range of $350,000 per month, and that's not even addressing the question of the $500 per station mininum!" - RAIN

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Leaders of the Future

High School Student Council Passes Nonbinding Resolution

The Onion makes a funny that's not decidedly biased against Republicans. Now that's news.

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Free Speech in Russia - Please!

"Now that we've killed off all the journalists we didn't like, we're now good to go with that whole free speech thing." (author embellishment)

"Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, officials said..."

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in January that 13 Russian journalists have been murdered in contract-style killings since 2006, making Russia the third-deadliest country for journalists after Iraq and Algeria in the past 15 years.

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