Hey, Bryan! Every consider that you might want to call someone who, say actually knows what they’re talking about and doesn’t have an angry, hate-filled agenda like you? Call the campus Architectural and Engineering Services Department! Talk to the project manager for the building! I did. You know what he told me? In addition to to the usual men and women’s bathrooms, new campus buildings are going to include UNISEX bathroom, as required by that radical activist screed, the 2003 International Building Code. And you know who these bathrooms are intended for? Disabled people and parents with young kids…hmmm…what do they call these people - these groups who demand ’special rights?’ Oh yeah, we call them families. BSU is building additional bathrooms for disabled folks and families. Alert the media!

According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, Idaho housing values jumped at an annualized rate of 20.79 percent and 20.89 percent in the first two quarters of 2006, respectively, before cooling to 17.57 percent and 13.99 percent in the final two quarters of the year.

But our winners: The Sports Information Department at the College of Southern Idaho. Its media guide for its women’s softball team, presents answers to either/or questions from each of its players…
You know: Hamburger or Hot Dog… Mountains or Beaches… Vanilla or Chocolate…
“Shaven or Unshaven.” Women’s Softball team… Shaven or Unshaven… Must be referring to the bat barrels. Shaven or unshaven bat barrels. Shaven or unshaven…
The College of Southern Idaho, Sports Information Department is Wednesday’s Worst Persons in the World!

From Eye on Boise:

House GOP leaders pulled one of the six highway projects – the Orchard to Isaacs Canyon project on I-84 – out of the program at one point in negotiations on the bill because it benefits a district represented by Democrats, senators said in their debate against SB 1245, the GARVEE bonding bill that just was killed in the Senate on a 23-12 vote.

“There was one of those six projects that was removed altogether,” Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, told the Senate. “Why? Because the senator and the representatives from that district were from the wrong political party.” He added, “It’s time for us to step back.”

…Cameron said he heard the project was removed “because it’s in Elliot’s backyard.” Sen. Elliot Werk, D-Boise, is one of two Democratic senators on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, which approved the bill earlier on a split vote.

Why is this relevant to Idaho? We have NO community radio, and next to no independant, locally-owned stations left. For many of us music fans, internet radio is our main conduit to good, new music, whether it comes from local indie bands or from Romania. What to do? WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN! Here’s some help from the groovy SOMA FM:

Over-the-air broadcasters are exempt from paying royalties on the sound recording copyright, but internet radio stations are not. These royalties were legislated by the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 (aka the DPRA). The reason was that it was then thought “digital” broadcasts were “perfect copies” of an original work and should therefore be treated different from over-the-air radio broadcasts. The law was changed so that only over-the-air broadcasters were exempted from royalties on the performance of sound recordings. The DPRA is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption — that “digital transmission” allows unlimited perfect digital copies of the original work. On the contrary, internet radio stations do not distribute perfect digital copies of the original copyrighted performance; instead, they use MP3 and WMA formats. Such broadcasts are drastically “compressed” and nowhere near a perfect digital copy. They also segue songs together, and make announcements over the beginnings and ends of songs. It’s just like over-the-air radio, and in many cases, the audio quality of the internet broadcast is inferior to an analog FM broadcast!

Due to all the corporate consolidation in over-the-air broadcasting, it no longer provides a free flow of ideas and information. Internet radio has responded to fill that free flow of ideas, and there are thousands of internet radio stations with loyal audiences who look to them to discover new music. Many of these are advertising-free, and support themselves through listener donations. But if SoundExchange gets its way, advertising-free internet radio will come to an end, and only the largest corporations will be able to legally operate internet radio stations in the United States. US listeners seeking a diversity of viewpoints will be forced to turn to international broadcasters.

Achieving parity with over-the-air broadcasters seems to be the only fair solution for internet radio broadcasters and listeners. This can be done by amending 114(j)(3) of the Copyright Act to change the definition of “broadcast transmission” to include internet radio broadcasts, aka eligible nonsubscription transmission, as defined in Sec. 114(j)(6).

If amending the Copyright law is not feasible, then at a minimum, these royalty rates must be reduced to something reasonable; for example, 5% of revenues is in line with what broadcasters pay to composers (through ASCAP and BMI). It seems that the rates that the CRB has ruled for internet radio “sound recording” royalties is grossly out of line.

This is the only way that internet radio operators can achieve parity with their over-the-air peers, and the only way to insure a “marketplace of ideas” - an idea important to our democracy.