shouting loudly

In their efforts to prevent the imposition of radically higher copyright royalty rates, webcasters and their sympathizers appear to be gaining decent political and public relations traction.

On Tuesday, thousands of webcasters staged a “Day of Silence” to protest the nearly three-fold fee increases. Organizers estimate that the action helped spark 400,000 calls to Congress.

Today, the House Small Business Committee held hearings to consider the problem. Further, the Democratic leadership of the Committee has posted videos of the hearing on YouTube. I still need to watch them, but I’m assuming that the bill to roll back the rate hikes–HR 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act–was a central part of the discussion.

The bill is doing very well in Congress. It has _123_ cosponsors, including my own Representative, Albio Sires (D-NJ). The companion Senate legislation, S 1353, only has 3 cosponsors, but considering the high visibility and ideological diversity of two of them–Sam Brownback (R-KS) and John Kerry (D-MA)–it’s also on track to grow some substantial support.

If you’d like to learn more or sign the petition, visit SaveNetRadio.org.

(Link credit for this story goes to: Bluegrass Blog and Contentinople, the latter being the coolest name for a blog I’ve heard all month.)