Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

Issues

Technology

Inslee Statement on House Passage of the Small Webcaster Amendments Act of 2002

7 October 2002

Said Inslee, “Today Congress took an important step in avoiding the possibility that hundreds of webcasters will go out of business as a result of extremely high royalty rates set by the Librarian of Congress. The House passed the Small Webcaster Amendments Act of 2002 (H.R. 5469), a bill that lowered the royalty rates small webcasters are required to pay for streaming radio over the Internet.

In August I introduced the Internet Radio Fairness Act (H.R. 5285) to protect small webcasters from the extraordinarily high royalty rates imposed by the Librarian of Congress. Since that time, I have been working with Chairman Sensenbrenner and U.S. Reps. Boucher and Nethercutt to avoid hundreds of webcasters from having to shut down their businesses due to exorbitantly high royalty rates. I am happy to say today that Congress took a very important step toward saving a number of webcasters and protecting this nascent industry.

Prompted by momentum behind U.S. Rep. Inslee's bipartisan legislation, "The Internet Radio Fairness Act," and the subsequent legislation introduced by the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee James Sensenbrenner, opposing sides in the debate over internet radio began negotiations this past week to work out a compromise. Although all sides did not reach complete agreement, Chairman Sensenbrenner crafted reasonable legislation for many webcasters and passed it on the floor of the House today.”