On May 30, 2007 NPR, on behalf of its members, itself, and CPB qualified stations which are not NPR members, filed a Notice of Appeal of the CRB decision with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The hope is that this appeal will postpone the requirement for Internet radio stations to pay the new, detrimental royalties to SoundExchange until the appeal is decided. A postponement would allow other avenues, such as legislation and negotiation with RIAA and SoundExchange, to work for acceptable results for webcasters.
On the legislative front, the Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060) now has 109 co-sponsors which is extraordinary given the amount of time the bill has been in existence. The Senate counterpart (S. 1353) has gained one more co-sponsor.
Also of note, Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA) and Howard Coble (R-NC) sent a letter in May to SoundExchange asking SoundExchange to to work for a resolution to the royalty problem “no later than June 15, 2007.” This letter apparently was the impotus for a May 21st offer from SoundExchange to small webcasters to reauthorize the rates and terms of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002. In their own letter, number of smaller webcasters have responded that this offer is not a long-term solution from their point of view.