A LANDMARK YEAR FOR STREAMING MUSIC — The Copyright Royalty Board is set to return to the spotlight as it decides the rates that digital music services like Apple Music and Google must pay songwriters and music publishers for their work through 2027. The board, part of the Library of Congress, determines the rates for five-year periods if the groups can't reach agreement on their own. — Why it matters: After many years of foundering amid consumers' transition from physical discs to digital downloads, music revenues hit an all-time high last year of $15.2 billion. That's a new record, above the $14.6 billion from 1999 in the heyday of CDs, according to Radio & Internet News . But, although streaming subscriptions have boomed, the amount of money the streaming services must pay to provide that music remains at the same level from 2017 amid litigation over the royalty rates. How much a particular service like Spotify or Amazon Media pays is based on factors like its number of subscribers and its revenues. More than 50 services, from big players like Pandora to the Smithsonian's nonprofit folk music site , are subject to the board's royalties. The money is paid to the nonprofit Mechanical Licensing Collective, created by Congress in 2018 as part of the Music Modernization Act, which then distributes it to music publishers and songwriters. — A long process : The proposed rates for 2018 to 2022 will likely amount to somewhere between 10 percent and 15.1 percent of a streaming service's revenue. The board had set a rate for 2018 through 2022 that significantly increased the money that digital services would pay, but a federal appeals court overturned that in August 2020. Since then, the copyright judges have been working to come up with a new rate that accords with the court decision. In the meantime, the board has also started its proceedings for 2023 to 2027. Music publishers have proposed an even larger rate increase, amounting to 20 percent of streaming service revenue. If all goes according to plan, the board will have a proposed rate by the end of this year. Garrett Levin, president and CEO of the Digital Media Association, which lobbies for six of the biggest streaming services, said finalizing the board's rates could help with some of the "cognitive dissonance" within the music industry right now. "You are seeing tens of billions of dollars generated by streaming services paid out to rights holders and seeing individuals repeatedly expressing frustration with how little money is making it to them," he told MT. QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Corporations, at least in social media land are optimizing, maximizing revenue. You maximize revenue, you maximize engagement. To maximize engagement, you maximize outrage." — Eric Schmidt, who was Google's CEO when it bought YouTube, now a prominent player in the social media space, on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard. FACEBOOK SUIT ON BOOGALOO KILLING TO TEST TECH'S SHIELD — The sister of the federal officer who was slain while providing security outside the federal courthouse in Oakland, Calif. has filed a wrongful death suit against Facebook, accusing it of promoting groups that advocated violence and connecting the men charged in the killing. Dave Patrick Underwood, a Department of Homeland Security officer, was killed in May 2020 while standing guard outside the federal building during a protest in response to George Floyd's murder by police. The alleged shooters met in a Facebook group devoted to the anti-government extremist "boogaloo" movement, members of which advocate violence against federal officers, according to the FBI. The lawsuit, filed in California state court, alleges that Facebook actively promoted these violent groups, despite these dangers, which led to Underwood's death. Lawyers for Underwood's sister said they expect Facebook and parent company Meta to invoke Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the provision that shields tech platforms from liability for the material they host. But those protections don't cover Facebook's active role in shaping what kind of content its algorithms promote, the lawyers maintain. The case won't be the first to make that argument, but will be the first to make use of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's leaked documents to argue that the company knew about its problems with extremism but didn't do enough to combat it. Meta's response: After Underwood's killing, the company said in June 2020 that it was limiting groups associated with boogaloo, and it later banned such groups from its platforms . "We've banned more than 1,000 militarized social movements from our platform and work closely with experts to address the broader issue of internet radicalization," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told MT. "These claims are without legal basis." SOCIAL MEDIA SAFETY CONCERNS — Black, Hispanic and and Asian Americans are more concerned than white Americans about how their social media comments could lead to real-life harm, according to a Knight Foundation/Ipsos survey released on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Asian (40 percent) and Hispanic (42 percent) individuals said they were concerned their social media posts could lead to violence or harassment specifically. In other findings from the survey: — More Republicans said they'd had their social media posts removed than Democrats, according to the survey. — Americans have little trust in the social media platforms themselves. Only 17 percent of respondents said they trust the companies a great deal or a fair amount. Even the U.S. government got more than twice that, with 38 percent of respondents' trust. — 70 percent of Americans correctly stated that the First Amendment doesn't prevent social media companies from penalizing users who make offensive statements. About 60 percent knew that banning a user from a platform doesn't violate the First Amendment. WILL A PRIVACY BILL GET SIGNED INTO LAW IN 2022? — That question was posed to an in-person privacy panel at CES on Thursday, but even as we enter the second half of the 117th Congress, not one person answered "yes." "All of the ingredients are there — we just need to now work with it and get it done," said Asad Ramzanali, legislative director for Silicon Valley-area Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), whose Online Privacy Act with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) is one of several privacy bills up for consideration this session. Lawmakers "should be taking this as a bigger priority," he said earlier. But the leader of ResMed, a health tech company and major provider of ventilators during the pandemic, questioned their ability to get it done. "How many of our members of Congress have you seen the testimony of, with Mark Zuckerberg or whoever, and they don't even understand the questions that they're asking or the answers?" said chief medical officer Carlos Nunez. "We need our legislators to become more educated on these topics so we can cut through these difficult discussions and get to a resolution." And former acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, also expressed doubt. If Congress can't get the job done, "we end up with [an] FTC rule that can only do basically what the FTC can do now," she said, "and a continuing patchwork of states." Our pop-up CES newsletter, which'll come out one more time tonight, has all the policy tea from Vegas. Check out more of Thursday's highlights from POLITICO's Alexandra Levine and John Hendel, who is there on the ground. — Up next: Former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) is joining a panel today on how industry and government are working together to ward off cyberattacks, and female Senate leaders are joining a roundtable on this year's top tech policy issues. | 
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