Internet Radio Danger Deja Vu all over again

A little over a year ago we blogged here on wetmachine about the mean nasty RIAA evildoers and how and why they were planning to kill Internet radio because the RIAA is an organization dedicated to promoting corporate control of everything you can hear, and thus hates Net radio because it makes them burn, burn, BURN when you hear new music and artists are fairly compensated and everybody is happy.

Last year I thought we had put them in the box, but oh noes! they’re back like Freddy Kruger, as I found out by this letter from Tim from Pandora, asking for support in getting Senators to support an important bit of legislation under discussion RIGHT NOW. Go to SaveNetRadio.org for info on how to help save Net radio by giving the right message to your senators.

Information on how to contact Massachusetts Senators is here. I just called them. Kennedy’s office says they’re looking into it, reading the legislation. Kennedy had not announced a position yet. The guy on the phone told me they’re getting a lot of calls. Good. Let’s give them some more. Kerry is a co-sponsor, so he’s cool.

Please call your senators. If they’re not hip, help them to get hip. If they’re cool, say “thank you.” Please do it right away. It took me about 1 minute, total, for both calls.

Black Monday

As I demonstrated last fall when I predicted a Kerry victory, my powers of prognostication are nothing to write home about. OTOH, I suppose this demonstrates the wisdom of the old saw that you ca’t judge an outcome by oral argument.

We lost Brand X by 6-3. Interesting split that put Scalia and Thomas on opposite sides but, as I have observed in the past, telecom issues do not fall into the neat conservative/liberal divisions everyone is so fond of making.

Grokster also went the other way, with the Court not even remanding for trial.

I will have more later when I have read the decisions. Right now I’m trying to sort things out.

Stay tuned . . .

So much for my career as a professional prognosticator

Well, the only thing I can say in my defense is that a fair number of oher folks believed the same thing on Tuesday afternoon. At 5 p.m., exit polling looked very good for Kerry in almost all battleground states.

While something may turn around in OH, I admit I don’t expect it. It appears that a small but sizeable majority don’t care about economic issues nearly as much as keeping gay people from marrying. Not sure how we survive the next four years economically, but right now, I’m off to get some sleep.