Let the Chipping Away Commence!

It seemed to take a long time, but it's finally happened. In what's proven to be a very busy week for those folks in the long black robes, the conservative U.S. Supreme Court has finally started chipping away at limiting corporate-funded broadcast ads, separation of church and state, voluntary affirmative action and antitrust laws. These new decisions go cozily hand in hand with the recent upholding of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

If it weren't so vital to the citizens of the United States to fight against these injust justices, I'd be tempted to sit back with some buttered popcorn, Twizzlers and SnoCaps and watch the show. Because, my friends, this is only the beginning of the epic foulness to come.

ACTION ALERT: Help Keep Internet Radio Alive!

The giant corporate music labels have decided that going after college kids downloading music from peer-to-peer networks and Digital Rights Management (DRM) aren't enough to keep the average music listener from cutting into their huge profits. Now they've strong-armed the Copyright Review Board into hiking fees for each song streamed by webcasters:

The new fee structure would change the basis of the payments to a flat fee for each song streamed on a per-user basis. Thus, in 2007, every song sent to every listener would net SoundExchange $0.0011, regardless of whether the broadcaster made any money by doing so. But that's probably not the worst of it. The fees are scheduled to more than double over the next five years, and apply retroactively to the start of 2006. Under this plan, it's hard to imagine that Internet broadcasting will make much financial sense without a dramatic increase in commercial time.

Luckily, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA), along with Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), has introduced H.R. 2060 - the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would overturn that recent ruling.

If your representative is not one of the co-sponsors, I urge you to sign FreePress' petition and let your Congressmember know how important it is to keep internet radio alive.

Won't Somebody Think of the Vegetables?

Those poor defenseless fruits and vegetables have got a champion in the form of California State Assemblymember Audra Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks). For years, whenever some thoughtless critic of conventional farming methods dared to point out that pesticides were deadly to humans as well as pesky insects, or that genetic manipulation of produce might not be entirely healthy for consumers, or that maybe, just maybe, leafy vegetables with E. coli could make some people very sick and, occasionally, very dead, consumable flora have had no one to turn to to defend their rights.

But now Assemblymember Strickland has donned the red cape and leotard with the big "S" (for Super Assemblymember) and leapt to the defense of commercially grown produce (and their big bucks growers), drafting AB 689, the "Perishable agricultural product defamation" bill, which would allow growers to sue anyone who dared libel spinach and tomatoes and squash (amongst other innocent, health-depriving - vegetation) as being not entirely good for the populace at large:

This bill would allow a producer of a perishable agricultural
product, as defined, who suffers actual damages as a result of another person's disparagement of the producer's product to recover those actual damages if certain facts are found to be true. [Emphasis mine] The bill would define "disparagement" for these purposes as a false and unprivileged publication regarding a perishable agricultural product that clearly impugns the safety of the product. The bill would require the plaintiff to bear the burden of proof as to each element of the cause of action.

Should this bill be passed, California would join such forward thinking states as Texas and Georgia (as well as eleven other states) in protecting those who have, until now, had no voice: multi-million dollar agricultural interests.

May the cucumbers bless Ms. Strickland...