Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

Copyright law is packed with strange features, but here's one of the strangest: webcasters, satellite radio, and those music stations transmitted through your cable connection all have to pay performance rights both to the composers who wrote the song and the performers who played it. Terrestrial AM/FM radio stations, though, only pay the composer; the performer is allegedly getting "free promotion" and doesn't see a cent.

Howard Berman, the California Democrat who now heads the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, wonders if it's time for everyone to pay the same fees. "Is it finally time for a performance right to extend to terrestrial radio?" he said this morning.