From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Newsweek's top story today exposes the desperation of the telecommunications companies in light of cases like EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T, which accuses the telecom giant of assisting in the illegal surveillance of millions of Americans. The telecoms and the Administration are heaping pressure on Congress to get a 'get out of jail free' card for their role in helping the government spy on their customers:

"The campaign—which involves some of Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms—has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed. If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community—or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant."

The telecom's worries are telling. Our case is representing a class of U.S. residential customers, and does not include any terrorists - just ordinary folks who use the phone and email. The per person penalties are quite reasonable - If the telecoms were not spying on millions of innocent Americans, there is no way for the liability to become "crippling."

Moreover, the Administration obtained prospective immunity in the so-called Protect America Act earlier this year. If the telecoms are only operating under the extremely broad parameters of the PAA, there is no liability reason to stop cooperating moving forward. And yet they are so worried about liability, they threaten to terminate their cooperation.

To achieve in Congress what they could not achieve in court, the telecoms are not holding back:

"Among those coordinating the industry’s effort are two well-connected capital players who both worked for President George H.W. Bush: Verizon general counsel William Barr, who served as attorney general under 41, and AT&T senior executive vice president James Cicconi, who was the elder Bush's deputy chief of staff.
Working with them are a battery of major D.C. lobbyists and lawyers who are providing "strategic advice" to the companies on the issue, according to sources familiar with the campaign who asked not to be identified talking about it. Among the players, these sources said: powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (who represent AT&T and Verizon, respectively), former GOP senator and U.S. ambassador to Germany Dan Coats (a lawyer at King & Spaulding who is representing Sprint), former Democratic Party strategist and one-time assistant secretary of State Tom Donilon (who represents Verizon), former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick (whose law firm also represents Verizon) and Brad Berenson, a former assistant White House counsel under President George W. Bush who now represents AT&T."

From BBC:

Somali transitional government forces have laid siege to an independent radio station in Mogadishu for several hours. Shabelle reporters said soldiers deliberately targeted their office, firing shots through the windows.

One of the radio administrators, Jaffar Muhammad Kuukay, is quoted as saying that bullets damaged equipment and injured at least one person. Government troops had previously raided Shabelle Radio and detained 18 journalists after a grenade was thrown.

Both Shabelle and HornAfrik have been critical of the Ethiopian-backed transitional government and the Islamic militants who have been trying to topple the administration. "We do not know why they are targeting us," Mr Kukay said.

"On Saturday, they said a grenade was thrown at them from the Shabelle building. But now I do not know what they want." Shabelle and two other independent outlets, HornAfrik and IQK Koranic Radio, were briefly banned and taken off air in January and in June, prompting criticism from press freedom watchdogs. Last month, the owner and a radio presenter of HornAfrik were killed in separate attacks by unidentified gunmen.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused the transitional government of intimidating and persecuting Somali reporters. Joel Simon, the CPJ's executive director, said in a statement: "We call on the government to stop this harassment and to move its forces away from the main gates of the Shabelle Media Network offices."

From Daily Wireless:

Bridge Ratings says traditional and satellite radio will take a significant hit in listening about a decade after WiFi and WiMax technologies are available in-car.
Bridge Ratings surveyed consumers and device manufacturers and projects that WiFi in-car should reach more than 50 percent of the U.S. population after nine years of market availability.

According to Bridge, of the estimated 30 million users of wireless access technology in the U.S., 75 percent (23 million) have wireless-accessed Internet radio. In fact, 48 percent of those accessing the Internet via wireless technology seek out Internet radio. The number of Internet radio listeners accessing wirelessly will grow to 77 million by 2010 as wireless technology penetrates the U.S. lifestyle. The gating factor may be how quickly auto manufacturers are able to equip new cars. By the fifth year of in-car WiFi acceptance, traditional radio can expect to see the amount of time spent listening to fall below 19 hours a week; by year eight, when Bridge projects that more than 23 percent of the public will have adopted wireless Internet technology in-car, weekly time spent listening to traditional radio will fall below 18 hours per week.

By the ninth year of market availability the combination of natural market growth (1-2 percent per year) and a more effective effort at selling its Internet radio channels, traditional radio revenues could reach over $26 billion.

This can’t be good news for the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), with nearly 7,000 members including close to 6,000 stations in the U.S., and over 1,000 associate members in networks, representative firms, sales, and international organizations. Their figures indicate a combined local and national annual radio advertising revenue around $10 billion for the first half of 2007.

For the next eight days, you can watch a live undersea camera via the Aquarius underwater ocean laboratory in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The laboratory is deployed three and half miles offshore, at a depth of 60 feet, owned by NOAA, and is operated by the NOAA Undersea Research Program’s (NURP) Undersea Research Center at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Cameras operate around the clock from inside and outside the research craft during missions, and sometimes divers go for swims with helmet cameras turned on. Watch here.

Underwater nature enthusiasts should also note the Nature Network, which has the OrcaLive feed of whales in Johnston Straight in the waters off Canada. The whale radio ends Oct. 31, but then they sink a camera in the South Pacific to watch sea turtles.
--Tom Roe

Click on link in headline to watch video demonstration of a simple, or foxhole, radio made out of a paper tube, wire, paper clips, a razor blade, and a pencil. (Image via Boing Boing.)

From Bre Pettis in Make magazine:

During World War II, GIs in the field built really amazing simple radios to listen too. These were made with materials that they could get their hands on and were small enough to carry around in a big pocket. You can modify this design if you want to set it up so that it's tuneable too!

From Regine in We Make Money Not Art:

A few notes from Conflux Festival day one which runs until Sunday in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The HQ is at the gallery The Change You Want to See, a space for projects at the intersection between art, activism and academia.

Christina Ray introduced this edition of the annual festival for psychogeography by reminding that it started in 2003 when a bunch of friends decided to set up an event where they would invite other people to come and explore the city with them. Conflux gathers artists and also people who wouldn't call themselves artists such as architects, activists, researchers, etc. This year there are over 100 artists selected. I'm not going to blog everything, just a few projects i particularly liked.

Here's my pick of the day:

free103point9/31 Down Radio Theater (Ryan Holsopple, you might remember his pay phone murder mystery project, Canal Street Station) presented Supplied by the Public which is currently working as Conflux radio station. The content of the radio station is made of calls from participants of the festival.

The calls (from public phones, cell phones, home phones) are streamed in real time over the Internet. The stream is also broadcast on a low power FM transmitter to the local area of the event for people to listen to via a wireless radio. The calls are archived and will repeat when no active calls are being broadcast. The project is inspired by Max Neuhaus's telephone/radio work, Public Supply (1966).

From Broadcast Law Blog:

In a very unusual process - one that is probably unprecedented - the FCC last week announced that it is opening a window for parties to file applications for a new AM station to serve Rockland County, New York. AM stations are traditionally made available for filing on an on-demand basis - when the FCC accepts applications for new stations, parties can file in any location in the country, specifying any city of license that they select, as long as the station that they propose will not create interference to existing stations. This is unlike FM and TV, where there is a two step process - new channels are first allotted at specific locations based on a party's request, but that party gets no rights to the channel. Instead, after the allotment has been made, anyone can file for in a specified window seeking a construction permit to build the new station. In this window, the FCC has adopted a unique process for an AM stations, a process much more like that used in FM and TV. The Commission had been asked by a party for permission to operate a new station in Rockland County. Instead of simply permitting that party to build a station without competition, the FCC decided that a new station was necessary to provide emergency information about the nuclear power plant in the Rockland area, but determined that anyone could file for that channel. Applications for the channel (1700 AM - on the expanded band, for which there have been no applications for almost 10 years since the first set of expressions of interest were taken), will be accepted from October 1 through October 5.

In order to give parties the ability to prepare applications, the FCC is imposing a freeze on the filing of minor change applications for AM stations throughout the country during the filing window. Any minor change application that is filed during the window will be returned. So if you are planning an application for a technical change to your AM station, you need to plan to avoid that filing window.

Applications that are submitted in the window not only have to specify a community of license in Rockland County, but also must propose a coverage area serving the majority of the Rockland County portions of the evacuation area around the nuclear plant. Also, as a station operating in the expanded band, power is limited to 10 kw daytime and 1 kw nighttime. The initial application will be an auction "short form," filed pursuant to instructions that can be found here. If there are not differences between applicants that result in a decision under Section 307(b) of the Communications Act (evaluating the need for new radio service by the cities of license and coverage areas that will be served by the competing applicants), then the winning applicant will be selected by auction.

While certainly the Rockland County area has needs for local service, it would seem that this ad hoc AM window could set some dangerous precedents. Unlike FM stations that can be spaced as little as 65 miles apart on the same channel, AM stations can preclude operations on the same channel for hundreds of miles. By making a special decision to place a channel in Rockland County, the FCC may have precluded use of the channel in other communities around the country, without any evaluation of the needs for service in any of those other communities. These communities could be coastal communities that need to get alerts about hurricanes or other coastal storms, or communities under dams or near chemical factories or train tracks where dangerous conditions can arise. Will the Commission make channels available in each of these communities, or is there something so unique about this county that this special action is warranted? We will see whether this is a one-of-a-kind action, or the start of a new process of allotting new radio stations to dangerous communities.

From Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing:

VeriChip -- and other vendors -- have been busily implanting radio-frequency ID (RFID) chips in human and animal subjects ever since the FDA approved the process. But a series of studies conducted from 1996-2006 noted a high incidence of dangerous tumors arising at the sites of RFID implants -- something the FDA apparently did not consider when it approved the procedure.

Cancer or no, I wouldn't go near an RFID implant. These things don't have off-switches. They don't have disclosure policies. They don't have logs, or even notifiers. That means that you can't stop people from interrogating your RFID, you can't choose who gets to interrogate your RFID, you can't see who has polled your RFID -- and you can't even know when your RFID is being read. You wouldn't carry normal ID that behaves this way, but from London's Oyster Card to the DOT's FastPasses to the new US passports, these things are being stuck to our person in ever-greater numbers.

And while manufacturers claim that these things have inherent security because they can only be read from a few centimetres away, hackers have already ready them at more than 10m distance.

Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in people.

To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.

Several reports from radio engineers posting to the New York Radio Message Board say that "pirate" radio activity in New York City is busier than ever. In Brooklyn, for instance, there are reports of FM stations on 91.9, 94.3, 95.1, 95.9, 96.5, 96.7, 97.5, 99.1, 99.3, 99.7, 99.9, 100.7, 101.5, 102.3, 103.1, 103.9, 104.7, 105.5, 106.1, 106.3, 107.1, and 107.9.

WHUT, the hip hop station on 91.9-FM evenings between 10 p.m. and midnight, is as strong as ever. A Hasidic pirate is allegedly using the 91.9 frequency (heard as far away as Westchester County) much of the rest of the week, and also airing on 1710-AM. Reportedly a station called "Red Hot Radio" is on 102.3, and it and another station on 95.1 are microcasting from E. 35th St. and Avenue H in Brooklyn.

Across the Hudson River from NYC, in Newark, New Jersey, there are reportedly pirates on 96.5 and 99.9.
--Tom Roe

DEAI/setkání Association hereby opens a call for submissions for proposals of individual or collective artistic exhibition projects for Gallery Školská 28 during the year 2008–9 and a call for submissions for project proposals for artist's residencies at Open Studios Prague Dolní Počernice, an international residency program for artists and theoreticians for the year 2008–09. Deadline for submissions is October 1, 2007.

The kind of proposals sought for exhibitions and residencies is fairly open in terms of theme, medium, and the activities involved in proposed projects. However, the proposal must take into account the technical and functional limitations of the space, as well make sense within the space's historical exhibition record and sensibilities. This call is open to both Czech and foreign artists. For projects where long-term preparation and studio space are required, it is possible to combine a Gallery Školská 28 exhibition with an Open Studios artist's residency.

Projects will be evaluated by a five-member panel that will include: Prof. Pavel Baňka; Prof. Miloš Šejn, PhD.; the artist Krištof Kintera; Školská curator Dana Recmanová; and one other member yet to be determined. Selected projects will be furnished with physical space and technical and administrative support, according to the needs of the project and its creator(s). Selected projects will be entered into the Program Plan for 2008-09, whose realization is contingent on the financial resources of the year-long program. The panel's selections will be announced on the web page www.skolska28.cz on November 30, 2007.

Submissions must include a brief description of the proposed project, information on the artist's previous work, including images or any other relevant documentation. In the case of artist's residencies, the artist's preferred time period and length of time for the residency should be included. Submissions may be personally delivered Wed.–Fri. from 1 to 5 p.m. to Communication space Školská 28; or by post to this address: O.S. DEAI/setkání (KP Školská 28), Dlouhá 33, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic. Please clearly mark your parcel with the designation "2008." We do not accept proposals by e-mail. Your portfolio will be returned to you following the selection of projects, not later than the end of November. Please direct any questions concerning this call or the programs mentioned in it to Dana Recmanová by e-mail or personally by appointment. skolska28@skolska28.cz, tel. (+420) 731 150 179.

From Boing Boing:

California's senate passed a bill last week that bans the forced RFID tagging of humans (think: prisoners, employees, pedos out on the street who've done their time). The state senator who sponsored the bill described that scenario as the "the ultimate invasion of privacy." The bill is on its way to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk now; if it is signed into law, California would become the third state with such a ban on the books (along with Wisconsin and North Dakota).

Snip from Ars Technica post on this story:
"Senate Bill 362 'would prohibit a person from requiring, coercing, or compelling any other individual to undergo the subcutaneous implanting of an identification device,' and a similar version has already passed the state Assembly. Joseph Simitian, who came up with the idea, laments the fact that the RFID industry does not appear to find his idea a good one.

'I think it's unfortunate and regrettable that the industry hasn't come out in support of SB 362,' he said in a statement after the bill passed the Senate. 'I understand why we're having a robust debate about the privacy concerns related to RFID, but at the very least, we should be able to agree that the forced implanting of under-the-skin technology into human beings is just plain wrong. I'm deeply concerned that this isn't a given for the industry.'

You need space in lower Manhattan. LMCC has it. Swing Space is the missing link between temporarily vacant real estate and the artists who need that space to develop, create and present their work. Find out how we can hook you up with so you can make art happen. The application deadline is September 28, 5 p.m. Information sessions September 6 at 7:30 p.m. and September 12 at 4 p.m. RSVP required.

Bldgblog is looking for field recordings by phone. So if you're anywhere that seems sonically interesting over the next few weeks – a waterfall, a migratory bird preserve, a shuddering freight elevator, the Cornish coast, a screeching Red Line train, the International Space Station, a secret meeting between Bush and Ahmadinejad – feel free to give us a ring: +1 (206) 337-1474. You'll be connected to a voicemail account where you can simply hold your phone up high – and proud – and record whatever it is that you're listening to. Meanwhile, feel free either to leave a brief explanation of what it is we're hearing, or even call back and explain what sounds you've left for us to sort through. And then the best of the best will be played live on the radio in New York City – and podcast round the world – via DJ /rupture's weekly radio show on the incomparable WFMU, 91.1-FM.

The basic idea, if you're curious, is to open up the artistic possibilities of field recordings to anyone with a telephone – whether that's a mobile phone, a public phone, or even a phone attached to the wall in your kitchen. The results should prove that you can acoustically experience a landscape through the telephone. Tele-scapes. As it is, mobile phones in particular present us with an untapped microphonic resource; these roving recorders encounter different environmental soundscapes everyday – the insides of lobbies and elevators, cars stuck in traffic, windy beaches – yet we're so busy using them for conversation that we overlook (overhear?) their true sonic possibilities. The telephonic future of environmental sound art is thus all but limitless – and putting some of that on the radio is just fun.

This program is predominantly for groups with budgets of between 5K and 25K. Applications are rolling. The selection cycle for Fall of 2008 ends on October 1, 2007. The selection cycle for Winter/Spring 2009 ends on January 1 2008. 3-4 artists will be chosen per season. The 3/4 artists are selected one year in advance of their season and spend the year as a cohort meeting regularly to discuss both their artistic and business challenges and successes. Residents are required at some point in their residency to open their studio to the public.

Each resident group that comes in to 3LD is expected to pitch in financially to the continuance of the facility. All artists pay a licensing fee extrapolated from a sliding scale dependent on a two-year financial history. This is a collective approach to ensuring that space and equipment can continue to be available to artists who need it. Studio C artists will be given residencies between 4 and 6 weeks @ $700 per week. 3LD will not fundraise for resident artists, however 3LD will work with them to devise a schedule and strategy based on each groups particular history and goals that if followed should result in organizational and financial growth. Any income earned by the artists while they are in their studio, the artists keep. Each group will manage their own box office through our account at TheaterMania, and will retain all earnings from any public showings. At the time of signing the license artists must pay 2 weeks worth of the fee. The day of load-in artists must provide a security deposit in the amount of one weeks fee. Please send any inquires and applications to:
Ms. Morgan von Prelle Pecelli
Artistic and Development Director, Emerging Artists
3-Legged Dog Art and Media Center
http://www.3ldnyc.org
80 Greenwich Street, NYC
t. 212.645.0374
m. 917.723.9642

The Media Access Project (MAP) and the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) filed ex parte comments with the Federal Communications Commission on Aug. 28, raising concerns about M2Z's application to provide free wireless service on a national basis. "Though MAP and PISC believe M2Z's application could provide significant benefits to the American people, the proposed license conditions do not adequately ensure that M2Z would operate under open device rules or network neutrality rules of sufficient stringency to confer the full benefits of innovation and free expression to the public," according to MAP. Read comments here.

Eyebeam is now accepting applications for Winter 2008 residencies. In addition to our preexistent residency program, this season we're very pleased to announce an additional opportunity for artist support: the inaugural Commission for Resident Artists, underwritten by Dewar's. Details about the commission, which will offer an additional subsidy to two residents a season, are detailed in a separate section below. The application deadline for the Winter 2008 residency season (which runs from January – June) is September 17, 2007. All applicants will be informed of their status by November 2007.

Eyebeam residencies support the creative research, production and presentation of initiatives that query art, technology and culture. The residency is a period of concentration and immersion in artistic investigation, daring research or experimental production of visionary expression, applications and projects. Past initiatives have ranged from moving image, sound and physical computing works to technical prototypes, installations and public interventions. The ideal resident will both contribute to and benefit from the collective environment at Eyebeam, and will embrace the spirit of openness shared across the organization: open source, open content and open distribution. Residents are encouraged to participate in public events including workshops, demonstrations of research in progress, panel discussions, and on-line releases, in addition to regularly scheduled open studio events. Therefore, we do ask that artists include in their proposal examples of how they might like to contribute to Eyebeam's public programming. The program term is from January to June with the potential for extension and/or re-application. Residents will be selected from an open call, based on the quality of the work or research being proposed, the availability of the necessary tools and skills to support the work, and in consideration of the overarching research themes and activities of the organization.

Eyebeam's research themes bring together creative practitioners and expert external participants to develop new research leading to possible public outcomes including seminars, public discussion and exhibition. Research themes for 2008 include (though will not be limited to):
Energy, Technology and Sustainability
Urban research, urban interventions and media in public space
Artists and creative technologists interested in these research areas are particularly encouraged to apply for residencies.

Residencies include:
$5,000 honorarium
24/7 access to Eyebeam's Chelsea facility in New York City, including equipment and technical expertise from Eyebeam staff and Fellows. The potential for collaborative exchange with other residents and Eyebeam fellows, as well as support from interns Residents are encouraged to work onsite at Eyebeam for as much of their residency as possible, in order to both contribute to and gain from the collective, collaborative context of the labs. International applicants are welcome to apply, though Eyebeam will not cover additional travel or accommodation expenses. We are, however, happy to work with selected applicants, to help them to secure funds to cover these expenses. International residents are responsible for securing their own visas for the residency period. International applicants are encouraged to apply now for Summer 2008 residencies. Up to three residencies will be offered in Winter 2008.
http://eyebeam.org/production/production.php?page=aircall

Transom features this conversation from November 2006 at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at New School for Social Research, between activists and artists about radio as a community tool in emerging countries. Panelists included Pete Tridish, founder, Prometheus Radio Project; William H. Siemering, President, Developing Radio Partners; Khin Phyu Htway, student, The New School and contributor to Voice of America, Burmese Service; Gregory Whitehead, writer and artist. There is also an mp3 of an opening Whitehead performance.

Transom describes the conversation this way:

Using radio to create community, creating community radio. Why expect radio to do this? It's malleable, anonymous, inexpensive to build, easy to transmit and receive, relatively speaking, even when the simple act of owning the box is punishable by an indefinite jail term. Radio is always possible. It is the link between local community and the global community. Radio creates a dimension in which various communities can meet, exchange, discuss and develop ideas, transforming the way we define notions of geography and public space. What political, cultural and humanitarian goals can be served by this medium exclusively? How does radio function as a tool for shared information? We started with a presentation from Gregory Whitehead called, "Here Comes Everybody" and then moved to a panel discussion. The panel, and audience of fifty, focused on different ways of using radio as a kind of glue for creating community both here and abroad.

From Broadcast Law Blog:

Yesterday, SoundExchange sent to many small webcasters an agreement that would allow many to continue to operate under the terms of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act as crafted back in 2002, with modifications that would limit the size of the audience that would be covered by the percentage of revenue royalties that a small webcaster would pay. A press release from SoundExchange about the offer can be found on their website by clicking on the "News" tab. This is a unilateral offer by SoundExchange, and does not reflect an agreement with the Small Commercial Webcasters (the “SCWs”) who participated in the Copyright Royalty Board proceeding to set the rates for 2006-2010 and who are currently appealing the CRB decision to the US Court of Appeals (see our notes on the appeal, here). The SoundExchange offer, while it may suffice for some small operators who do not expect their businesses to grow beyond the limits set out in the SWSA (and who only play music from SoundExchange artists - see the limitations described below), still does not address many of the major issues that the SCWs raised when SoundExchange first made a similar proposal in May, and should not be viewed by Congress or the public as a resolution of the controversy over the webcasting royalties set out by the CRB decision.

The proposal of SoundExchange simply turns their offer made in May, into a formal proposal. It does not address the criticisms leveled against the offer when first made in May, that the monetary limits on a small webcaster do not permit small webcasters to grow their businesses – artificially condemning them to be forever small, at best minimally profitable operations, in essence little more than hobbies. The provisions of the Small Webcasters Settlement Act were appropriate in 2002 when they were adopted to cover streaming for the period from 1998 through 2005, as the small webcasters were just beginning to grow their businesses in a period when streaming technologies were still new to the public and when these companies were still exploring ways to make money from their operations. Now that the public has begun to use streaming technologies on a regular basis, these companies are looking to grow their businesses into real businesses that can be competitive in the vastly expanding media marketplace. The rates and terms proposed by SoundExchange simply do not permit that to occur.

To receive investment necessary to grow, the SCWs cannot be limited to $1.25 million in revenue. No investor will invest in a business which, when it reaches an artificial revenue threshold, essentially is forced to go bankrupt – as all projections show that the CRB royalties would exceed total revenue of a SCW even if it makes more than $1.25 million in revenue.

The new restriction added in this offer by SoundExchange, one that requires a small webcaster to pay at the CRB rate for all listening that exceeds 5,000,000 aggregate monthly tuning hours, would already have some SCWs paying substantial sums in addition to the percentage of revenue royalty. And, at the growth rates projected for some SCWs, the amount necessary to pay such overages could exceed the $1.25 million revenue threshold – exceeding the amount of revenue that a small webcaster is allowed to earn under the SWSA provisions.

Even more importantly, it must be noted that the offer by SoundExchange does not allow a webcaster to play all music for their 10-12% of revenue as did the Small Webcaster Settlement Act – it only allows them to play music of SoundExchange members. For all music from artists who are not SoundExchange members, the full CRB-determined royalty would have to be paid. Thus, a webcaster will have to assess its music choices, and play only the songs released by SoundExchange members (principally the major labels and some independent labels) rather than the diversity of music from small labels and independent artists, the kinds of music that the statutory royalty was supposed to make easier to play through the “one-stop shop” that a statutory license provides to an Internet radio service.

SoundExchange has informally indicated that it will continue discussions as to the concerns of the SCWs. The only way to resolve these issues is through meaningful negotiations, or through legislation like that proposed in the Internet Radio Equality Act. Unilateral proposals simply don’t address all the issues that have caused so much outrage over the CRB decision. In order for these independent companies to build profitable businesses that will promote music and be able to pay reasonable royalties, something more than what SoundExchange has offered must be available.

The goal of this work is to explore how we can use technology to augment our understanding of bird populations in order to allow these populations to speak to us about their habitat. In particular, in this collaboration between the MIT Media Laboratory and Maine Audubon , we use cellular technology to augment the process by which a group of volunteers collects information for an owl census in Maine.
The methodology was developed in a pilot census of Connecticut's owlpopulation, conducted in the summer of 2006. In this study, we demonstrated that the audio quality of cell phones was sufficient for the discovery and interaction with owls. In this project, the cell phone is used to make the owl call and to record the response. The success of the pilot suggests that this small, portable technology can replace the conventional high-quality audio survey broadcasting and recording equipment.

In our work in Maine we will deploy more cell nodes for calling owls and recording their response. We anticipate that each deployed node will result in several hours of recording per night per phone.

With this project, we hope to gain insight into the social networking processes of collaborative interpretation and annotation of a shared database; knowledge representation for the bird-census domain; and the design issues involved in creating and maintaining a website for community scientific collaboration.

The cellular survey may also provide data which suggest insights into questions about the hearing range of owls, duplication of vocalizing individual responses in adjacent experiment sites, the response rate of owls due to current weather or human presence, and comparison between trigger-based and naturally occurring responses in surveys. In addition, specific signal processing and communication technologies will be field-tested.

From WFUV:

A generous grant from the New York State Music Fund kicks off our next project: An indie music channel for younger fans.

We're very excited to announce that WFUV has been awarded a $500,000 grant from The New York State Music Fund to support the development of a second full-time music radio service. Building on WFUV's award-winning programming, the station will feature established and emerging indie rock, electronica, world, dance and other new sounds, presented in a style that will appeal to music fans in their 20s and 30s. This non-commercial service will be available via Internet and mobile streaming audio and, in the New York area, as an HD Radio channel at 90.7 FM. Scheduled to debut in Fall 2008, it will complement WFUV's existing service, which will continue in its present format. You'll still be able to hear all the programs you enjoy at WFUV.

"This is an excellent opportunity for us to broaden our service and widen our musical offerings as we celebrate our 60th anniversary," said Ralph Jennings, WFUV's General Manager. "We're deeply grateful to The New York State Music Fund for its leadership support of this $1.2 million project and for its investment in the future of New York's independent artists and audiences," Jennings added.

The award was one the largest made by the Fund - which has given nearly 400 grants totaling more than $35 million - and is on par with those made to other leading New York performing arts institutions.

"We're most excited about showcasing what New York has to offer. Our city boasts one of the greatest, and most multicultural, local music scenes in the world," added WFUV Program Director Chuck Singleton, who, along with WFUV Music Director Rita Houston, will oversee the project. "Acts like Antibalas, Forro In The Dark and The Hold Steady have no problem selling out venues all over town, yet they presently don't have a home on the radio in New York City. A second stream enables us to play deserving local acts in the same set as Bjork, M.I.A. or Arcade Fire and, at the same time, better serve New York's musically-adventurous listening audiences by introducing them to something different."

WFUV plans to develop the new service over 2007-2008, working with artists, labels, music writers, web sites, bloggers and venues across the city. The station will also tap an emerging generation of radio talent for its new air staff, young New Yorkers with a passion for hearing, sharing and discussing music. In part, the music selection will be listener-driven.