The US's House Of Representatives have passed a bit of legislation that gives internet radio companies and the US music industry's digital royalties body SoundExchange more time to negotiate new royalty agreements.
As previously reported, US Congress had set a deadline for a voluntary agreement to be reached between the webcasters and the labels, otherwise copyright regulators would prescribe a settlement. Despite initial disagreements, both sides say their negotiations are now getting more positive, but that they need more time to hammer out the details. Several congressmen duly proposed last week to extend their deadline.
Pandora boss Tim Westergren, who is involved in the negotiations, claimed at the weekend that the National Association Of Broadcasters, who represent traditional radio stations, were trying to stop the deadline for agreement from being postponed because they wanted the Copyright Board to enforce a royalty arrangement that the webcasters say isn't viable, because that would weaken the webcasters who are, of course, competitors to the NAB's members.
Whether that was true or not I don't know, but the House Of Reps nevertheless agreed to extend the deadline until 15 Feb next year. So, that's nice.