For anyone who dosen't know, typical crap laws may kill another good thing. Instead of bringing up too many details about it here, I'll post a link to one of the main resources about it, at http://www.saveinternetradio.org/

I woke up this morning to the begining of a 12 hour broadcast to inform people about it. For the past 3 weeks now, I have been listening to more and more internet radio because I actually have a choice in what I want to hear. Unlike FM around here, it's a valuable resource for me since I can easially stream it off my broadband connection. And instead of 10 or so stations, all playing the same crap, internet radio via iTunes offers me tons of stations to choose from, and things like artist/song display. That alone has led to me buying 2 CDs already. In 3 weeks, thats not bad.

As with other internet legislation of this kind...wont this just force these to operate outside the US? The demand is obviously there and growing. I would think the USA based ISP would want to be able to host these sites. I bet they are big bandwidth hogs.

It will still affect hundreds of US based stations that broadcast both over the air and net. Plus, with things like a version of the DMCA for the EU in the works, it's only a matter of time before this spreads to a major portion of the internet using world.

Just looking at their site made me wonder wether the group in question were originally called the Copyright Royalty Arbitration Panel but then realised what their acronym would be.

I suppose it a bit like the Cambridge University National Trust!

Agreed. I sent my fax to Mrs. Clinton

this is Perpetual Everlasting Never-ending Infinite Stuff.

The possibilities are endless.

And this is where China comes in - although they have a low Internet takeup percentage, their sheer numbers mean that very soon they will be the biggest internet mass. And traditionally they haven't exactly agreed with everything the US does or says.

I reckon they'll be more than happy to have this sort of thing bringing in cash - and cocking a snook at the west at the same time.

I doubt it. The chinese government wouldn't be able to control all the information. Then all the chinese people would realize that China is the 2nd richest nation in the world, yet the chinese people are among the poorest.

Well in 2000, the US had 7,800 ISP's with 148 million users, and China had 3 ISP's with 22 million users.