France Opens UFO files!

Well, great! UFOlogist worldwide rejoiced as France releases and puts online, their documents pertaining to UFO sightings. This includes the ridiculous as well as the hard to explain. Must be some pretty cool crap there.

Do you think there is life outside of our measly planet? Leave a comment.

Check out the website here: www.cnes-geipan.fr

Internet radio is threatened before it can even take off!

I just read that the future of free streaming radio online is about to be sunk before it ever starts.

According to the website: www.saveourinternetradio.com

On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 - plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009.

There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money. That’s over $11 per listener per month in 2007. No Internet radio station currently operating comes even close to that kind of income. Also keep in mind that 1000 listeners is not a large number. Popular stations like Radio Paradise, SOMA, Digitally Imported, radioio, etc have many times that many listeners.

In other words, if they are allowed to stand these rates are a death sentence for independent Internet radio stations. The only stations that would survive would be those who can afford to operate at that kind of loss, such as AOL (who would owe over $20,000,000 in 2006, far in excess of their income from radio).

The reason this concerns me is because my internet radio is the only thing that keeps me sane at work. It helps me block out the mind-numbing banter my colleagues engage in daily. Blah blah blah. Crap crap crap. I'm listening to the best rock station ever right now. WJRR in Orlando - Real Rock 101.1

If you think this is a tragedy and that it should be stopped, use the internet in another creative way and register your opinion using this online petition.

While we're at it, if you would like to use the power of the internet for your next community fight, try using www.PetitionOnline.com. It's time for the people to start taking back control!