Worthy Mouse Clicks

Play the web is the trademarked phrase that the makers of Songbird
put front and center on their website. You can do a lot more than play
the web with Songbird though. You can play the web and manage media on
your computer.

I discovered Songbird recently and I’ve been very enamored with
their free, open source media player. While iTunes and Windows Media
Player seem to be all about selling music, Songbird is about
discovering and playing music.

That’s why I took some time to record a video tour in the Awakened Voice Learning Center. Head over there to get the QuickTime version or just watch the player below.

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Posted on June 12, 2007, Printed on June 13, 2007http://www.alternet.org/story/53843/

EXCERPTS:

Last Friday, a small but vocal group of hardliners hijacked the
national debate over immigration and, in all likelihood, derailed the
effort to reform a system that Americans from across the political
spectrum agree is dysfunctional. (George Bush has said he hopes to restart the negotiations, but most observers agree that a deal is not likely.)

The bill — which began as a compromise that everyone hated — was killed
in the Senate, smothered under the weight of a flurry of unpopular amendments
offered up by a small group of Senators, including some of the
chamber’s most reactionary, before the national debate was even under
way.

…Immigration hardliners’ views of immigrants themselves are harsher than Main Street’s. According to data compiled by the Pew Research Center, Americans’ attitudes toward immigrants from Latin American and Asia are more positive
now than in the 1990s, “even as concern over the problems associated
with immigration has increased.” Most people view both groups as “very
hard working and having strong family values.” Pew notes that
“Impressions of Latin American immigrants, in particular, have grown
much more positive, with 80 percent describing them as very hard
working compared with 63 percent nearly a decade ago.”

Immigration hardliners are not only Republicans — there are Democrats who are indistinguishable on the issue in rhetoric as well as substance — but only one party is captive to their views.

Amnesty: a handy fiction

All of these data point to a serious problem for immigration hardliners:
Although there remain very serious differences about the specifics
regarding immigration, most Americans favor at least the broad
principles of comprehensive reform. The hardliners can’t win an honest
debate on the issue, and apparently they know it. That’s why they
insist that the Senate proposals were based on offers of “amnesty.”

It’s no more accurate to call the measure contemplated last week in the
Senate an “amnesty bill” then it is to call it a rhinoceros; while an
amnesty implies simply granting people legal status, the Senate
proposal would have required undocumented immigrants who can prove they
have been working and paying taxes in the country for an extended time
to then fork over $9,000 in fines and application fees (for a family of
four) and that would only get them to the back of the line, with a
four-year “Z” visa. Then, after those four years were up, the head of
the household could return to his or her native country and file an
additional application — paying an additional $4,000 penalty in
addition to application fees. If they pass a health screening, an
English proficiency test and another test of American civics, then they
become legal. But only after the backlog of existing applicants is
cleared — no “cutting in line.” All of that for people who have
committed a misdemeanor

….

In fact, a principal reason that there was so little passion on the part of the
compromise’s supporters was that it had a number of provisions in it
that were designed to mollify the hardliners but ended up creating a
bill that alienated potential support from the center and from the
left. Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas
Society/Council of the Americas, told the New York Times that the bill had been “born an orphan in terms of popular support.”

Trying to bring immigration hardliners around was always a fool’s errand:
They’ve shown time and again that they won’t accept the humane,
comprehensive approach to immigration that most Americans favor.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

The SaveNetRadio coalition is made up of artists, labels, listeners,
and webcasters. Please contact us if you are interested in sponsoring
an event, making a donation, or would like to become a leader in the
fight to save Internet radio. The recent ruling by the Copyright
Royalty Board to increase webcasters’ royalty rates between 300 and
1200 percent over the next 5 years jeopardizes the industry and
threatens to homogenize Internet radio.

Artists,
listeners, and Webcasters, have joined our coalition to help save
Internet radio. The coalition believes strongly in compensating
artists, but Internet radio as we know it will not survive under the
new royalties. We need your help. Please take a moment to call your members of Congress
to let your representatives know how much Internet radio means to you.
Together, we can force Congress to create a structural solution for
this problem and create an environment where Internet radio, and the
millions of artists it features, can continue to grow for generations
to come.

About the Issue

On
March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound
recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet
radio’s royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby
jeopardized the industry’s future.   

At the request of
the Recording Industry Association of America, the CRB ignored the fact
that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio
pays, and multiplied the royalties even further.  The 2005 royalty rate
was 7/100 of a penny per song streamed; the 2010 rate will be 19/100 of
a penny per song streamed.  And for small webcasters that were able to
calculate royalties as a percentage of revenue in 2005 – that option
was quashed by the CRB, so small webcasters’ royalties will grow
exponentially!

Before this ruling was handed down, the
vast majority of webcasters were barely making ends meet as Internet
radio advertising revenue is just beginning to develop.  Without a
doubt most Internet radio services will go bankrupt and cease
webcasting if this royalty rate is not reversed by the Congress, and
webcasters’ demise will mean a great loss of creative and diverse
radio.  Surviving webcasters will need sweetheart licenses that major
record labels will be only too happy to offer, so long as the webcaster
permits the major label to control the programming and playlist.  Is
that the Internet radio you care to hear?  

As you know,
the wonderful diversity of Internet radio is enjoyed by tens of
millions of Americans and provides promotional and royalty
opportunities to independent labels and artists that are not available
to them on broadcast radio.  What you may not know is that in just the
last year Internet radio listening jumped dramatically, from 45 million
listeners per month to 72 million listeners each month.  Internet radio
is already popular and it is already benefiting thousands of artists
who are finding new fans online every day.

Action must be
taken to stop this faulty ruling from destroying the future of Internet
radio that so many millions of listeners depend on each day.  Instead
of relying on lawyers filing appeals in the CRB and the courts, the
SaveNetRadio Coalition has been formed to represent every webcaster,
every Net Radio listener, and every artist who enjoys and benefits from
this medium.  Please join our fight for the preservation of Internet
radio.

email discuss Pat Aufderheide & Jessica Clark

Download full report

Communicating
about shared issues—whether it’s traffic congestion in the
neighborhood, lower wages for women, or the concerns of the families of
soldiers not receiving adequate body armor—builds a group’s awareness
of itself as a public. In this context, public media are media that aim
to increase public knowledge and cohere and mobilize audience members.

Not just limited to PBS or NPR broadcasts, such media can range from
print publications to documentary films, from community radio
broadcasts to international social networks and beyond. More and more,
as participatory technologies and practices engage audience members to
become media creators, public media projects are not only directed at,
but generated by, their publics.

Want to learn more? Read our new Frequently Asked Questions
document, by Director Pat Aufderheide and Research Fellow Jessica Clark.