LRFA vs. AMFA

They're at it Again

Help! Make them stop!

Q: Slow down! Who are "They"?
A: They are the Consumer Technology Association and the National Association of Broadcasters.
Q: What do you want my help with?
A: Once again they're fighting over the IRFA and AMFA!
Q: I see what you mean! When the Alphabets fight over acronyms, it can get bad! I'm afraid you're on your own here.

Warning: Current Events Ahead.

By the time you read this, the issue may have been long resolved. Then again, it may not have been. The first time I wrote about it was in 2009 in a blog entitled The Beau Brummels Incident which had very little to do with the Beau Brummels. Rather, it had almost everything to do with the fight over whether radio stations should pay to play music. Despite my elegant solution, it wasn't resolved then and we are now observing its recrudescence in the halls of Congress and the Consumer Technology Association and the National Association of Broadcasters.* Unlike the Beau Brummels blog, or the recent detailed reportage in Inside Radio, I'm going to keep it short. Don't believe me? Watch this!

• The LRFA is the NAB-supported "Local Radio Freedom Act"which is trying to prevent extraction of money from radio stations for broadcasting music.
• The AMFA is the "American Music Fairness Act," which is trying extract that money, which the LRFA is trying to prevent, and which is supported by the CTA.
• Many radio stations derive their income from advertisers, who advertise because people are listening to the station because it plays music! Isn't it "fair" that the stations pay the creators of the music from which they derive their sustenance? Of course it is!
• Many musicians are unknown and depend upon radio broadcasters to familiarize the public with their music. They should be and generally are eager to get their work on the radio. They even used to pay for it—remember "payola"? Isn't it ridiculous to ask radio stations to pay them to "advertise" their product? Of course it is!

And there you have it. Both sides are right and righteous. No wonder they're fighting! But there is a solution, and it involves the subject over which everyone is fighting. It's the word "music." Musicians write and radio stations broadcast individual songs. DJs don't say "this is a music by Sterba Curtin and the Cubical Quads," they say "this song is by..." The song or band may be new and want to promote their work. Why not legalize payola and let them pay the station? Or it may be an "old standard" from an artist who has sufficiently popularity and just wants to get paid for his work? Shouldn't the radio station have the obligation to pay, along with the right not to play a song if it's too expensive?

The Solution

Remove "law," "freedom," and "fairness" from the process and turn it into a negotiation between private parties. Every song could have its price—positive or negative—set by the performer for airplay. Every station could decide to play the song or not based on it's value to the station. No more arguments! No more need to further beat this convulsing dalber in the RIKLblog. That's it!

Editorial: Fair Share

Just as my excellent solution to the perpetual airplay royalty problem is likely to be ignored, so shall this, my own editorial in my own blog.**

The words law and freedom really can't live together comfortably, although they often try and even occasionally succeed. Which leaves us the rest of the discussion, fairness, subject to my idiosyncratic if reasonable ministrations. I am tired of hearing about fair, especially in the context of fair share, a concept to which we, The American People, have been subjected for decades and especially in recent years. Fair has a meaning in English with regards to transactions. It means that the parties to the transaction believe that they got an acceptable deal and none believes he was cheated or coerced into undertaking it.

However. when politicians suggest someone should pay their fair share, they actually mean "more." When one pays taxes, fair share should mean that they somehow get back from the government a value roughly equivalent to what they pay. That occasionally happens by accident, but not routinely! How can it, when some people pay billions, some get a free life, and nobody is happy about their taxes! I am not arguing here for a flat tax, a progressive or regressive tax, a uniform tax, or any of the goofy schemes political theorists occasionally propound, not even for a fair tax. The whole purpose of law is coercion, and if taxes were fair, coercion would be unnecessary! All I'm asking, and this shouldn't be too difficult albeit mildly unconstitutional***, is that if a politician utters the phrase fair share in other than a derisive context he should be coerced to put money in the curse jar. How much? His fair share, of course.

* The CTA puts on the CES show, which I attend and about which I have just blogged. The NAB has run its eponymous show which I have managed to attend for many of the past 60 years. I love them both and don't want to see them fight! They are also at odds about whether the Congress should pass a law requiring AM radios in car dashboards. How meddlesome!
** Which blog is arguably nothing but an extended editorial anyway, despite my occasional effort at objectivity.
***ArtI.S6.C1.3 Speech or Debate