Goodbye Net Radio, We Hardly Knew Ye

Today was a sad day for those of us that actually care about music. The Court of Appeals denied a motion that would push back the the new royalty payments for online broadcasters. I know that I sound like a broken record, but I do not see how anyone in their right mind can think that this is a good idea. Exactly what part of this is going to beneficial to anyone? It isn't even like it is something that will benefit the music industry. All they are going to do is kill off a revenue stream. Internet radio is far, far from piracy, but I have to wonder if that is how they see it. In all honesty, the only difference I can see between net radio and terrestrial radio is that with the net I am able to listen to a wider variety of music. Apparently, that's a bad thing. I'm still hoping for some kind of 11th hour save here, but I'm really thinking it isn't likely. And I understand that this isn't going to wipe out every single net radio station overnight (for instance, Pandora has already said they could pay the bill, but don't know if their business plan is actually viable afterwards), but it will be killing off a lot of the smaller stations. The kicker to all this is that the ones being punished are the ones that are trying to be legit in their broadcasting. If you're just sending out a rogue signal, you couldn't care less about this. Once again, the entertainment industry demonstrates their complete lack of intelligence.