Thousands of US webcasters plan to hold a "Day of Silence" to draw attention to their industry's plight and protest an impending dramatic escalation of the royalty rates they will have to pay copyright holders.A recent Copyright Royalty Board(CRB) ruling is expected to effectively wipe out medium and small-size webcasters from the internet radio landscape, and SaveNetRadio.org has organized a national "Day of Silence" to raise awareness of the situation and rally support for their cause. They are incensed over the pending 300% royalty rate, in some cases, increase for online music webcasters, and hope to use the industry-wide daylong internet radio blackout to raise awareness of the threat the new rates pose to the future of internet radio and rally support for legislation pending in Congress. "Webcasters of every size and from every corner of the country will stand united tomorrow to protest a very real and fast approaching threat to their livelihood,” said Jake Ward, a spokesperson for the SaveNetRadio Coalition. “With nearly a half million emails and phone calls from webcasters, listeners, and the artists they support sent to Congress in just the last two months, this national grassroots campaign has certainly captured the attention of lawmakers, but there is more to be done and time is running out," he continued. During the National Day of Silence webcasters will urge their listeners to contact their congressional representatives and ask them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act (IREA) (H.R. 2060 in the House and S. 1353 in the Senate)and preserve the future of Internet radio. Tomorrow they hope that the silence of tens of thousand of webcasters will make the call to save Internet radio heard loud and clear. The "Day of Silence" is expected to include major players like Yahoo! LAUNCHcast, Pandora, Live365, MTV Online, NPR-member and other noncommercial stations, and many terrestrial broadcast groups that currently stream their signals on the web.
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