I was applauding more to the fact that something that was completely unfair, anyway you look at it, was defeated.

I would be quite happy, if they adopt the exact same payment system that radio stations use.

Over the past few years, all of us have watched how the internet has changed our lives. It is more than, as Kevin Smith put it, a place where techo-geeks go to bitch about movies and share porn.

The internet has and will change the way you look at entertainment. If you try to change the establishment, the powers that be, will fight to the bitter end. The day will come when you never need to go to a record store. Pay a fee, download it and burn it, and you have a CD. You will watch TV on your computer.

You have to look to the future. In the past few years, Napster took music and brought it, right or wrong, in your house. No more going to a mall, looking for the CD, comparing prices, buying it and such. A website, called icravetv.com, took a loophole, broadcast buffalo tv stations on the internet. The loophole you ask? Canadian law at the time did allow someone to rebroadcast tv just as long as you did not alter the signal.(like add your own commercials) He was shut down. Now you have webcasters who, right or wrong, broadcast music on the web.

Some might call these examples criminal acts.

Personally, I see them as visionairies, who are showing what the still growing multimedia internet can do.

To bring this post back to its original point, the internet, along with better technology, has changed the way we do things. Say you like a favorite channel, (for me, WCSX 94.7 Detroit) And in a few years, I can drive a car to California, listening to that one radio station all the way, thanks to webcasting. Perhaps i fly to Europe, I can listen to it there.

Now, if I like a certain musician's music, I always try to buy it directly from the musician.(Tom Lewis is a good example, I can buy his CD's from a local store if I order it, but I'd buy it from him, even if it costs a little more(it never does) because I know all the profits go directly to him. When this technology gets more widespread, sooner or later, some major stars, who have already made a name for themselves, probably could break away from labels and do their own thing. Start their own label. And I'm sure this keeps label execs up at night. In fact, I would love it if it comes to the day that major labels become extinct. But as we all know, they are not going to go gentle into that good night.

IMO, webcasters should and probably will be under the same payment plan as radio. This will kill off some small market guys, unfortunately, but equality is the main issue here.

*stepping off soapbox*
Steve