Unsurprisingly, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has refused to delay the start of new royalty rates proposed by the US Copyright Office. The new rates will go into effect on Sunday, but are retroactive meaning that overnight all Web radio stations will owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in accumulated payments. As noted, the amount of these fees exceeds the revenue generated by all stations other than big commercial broadcasters.

I guess we'll find out next week which Webcasters are hosted outside the US and thus potentially able to escape this crash-and-burn. The Internet Radio Equality Act of 2007 is still alive and slowly wending its way through Congress but there's no hope it will arrive in time to save the present landscape from clear-cutting.