This isn’t the small tribute the stations have long paid to songwriters. The money will go instead to the performers and copyright owners. (Those are sometimes, but not always, the same thing.) It would essentially be an extension of a fee already paid by Internet, satellite, and cable radio stations—indeed, the industry’s basic argument for the measure is that it will close a “loophole” that has allowed traditional outlets to escape the payment. The musicFIRST Coalition, a lobby created two years ago to push for such a bill, has accused broadcasters opposed to the legislation of believing that “AM and FM music radio stations should continue to get special treatment, that AM and FM music radio stations do not have to play by the rules, and that AM and FM music radio stations should enjoy a competitive advantage over other music platforms.”

But it’s not as though this is an inexplicable inconsistency in the law. The disparity didn’t exist until 1995, when Congress passed the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act at the behest of the very forces that now decry the separate-and-unequal system that bill created. W. Jonathan Cardi, an assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky, summarized the record industry’s argument for the act in a 2007 article for the Iowa Law Review:

without some ability to control the digital performance of their recordings, they would be less able to prevent infringements of their existing reproduction, distribution, and derivative work                        rights. The labels maintained, for example, that if online services could freely transmit recordings in any manner they pleased, such performances would facilitate the creation of infringing                      reproductions on users’ computer hard drives.

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Courtesy of Reasononline/Jesse Walker