As explained by Lee Gomes in "Web Radio Battles Efforts to Expand Royalties for Music" in the Wall Street Journal.

There are two separate copyrights for every piece of recorded music. Who knew? One for the musical composition (covering composers and songwriters), and one for the recording of a song (for record labels and musicians).

Usually the labels and musicians negotiate royalties, but the songwriters and composers have to make do with fixed payments, via a system mandated by Congress.

In the U.S. the labels and performers don't receive royalties for radio play, but songwriters do. This exemption has saved radio stations billions. "Every congressional district has a radio station, but only three of them have record labels," according to Chris Castle, a music lawyer.

I know that David K Levine isn't related to Justin Levine, but could you confirm that William Stepp isn't related to Bill Stepp please? If they are one and the same then please make it clear, or better still, use just one name. Ta. :)

William and Bill are the same guys, at last report. He also goes by several other names, e.g., the Wild One (bestowed by the Lamb Chop and seconded by Flair), Willie (by his friend Russ), Steppster (probably Paul "Mad Dog" Majane), the Steppster, and others too bizarre to mention.

William Stepp and Bill Stepp are both listed as authors on this site, and it could have been that William was the elder (too busy doing research to do anything but post articles), and Bill the younger (too busy commenting to post articles).

But at least I now know. But, for the benefit of those who visit this site less frequently, it may be less confusing not to list both William Stepp and Bill Stepp as authors?

Identity is quite valuable. You have every right to maintain multiple identities, but it should at least be clear as to whether B & W are supposed to be treated as distinct identities or not.

Funnily enough I was writing about identity only the other day... See Ideating Identity.

They are the same. The fault is mine: some sort of computer glitch made it difficult for Bill to log in, and creating a new account while deleting an old seemed to contribute to the problem, so he has two accounts.

I figured everyone would figure Bill/William are one. According to my IP police blotter, we're the same guy.

"Consider him armed with libertarian ideas and dangerous to IM-ists everywhere."

Some authors have simple ID numbers, some have long ones. William has ID 4, Bill has ID 970606000000000171. I wouldn't be surprised if the long numbers correspond to commenters who've been promoted into authors.

Something is fishy there, as if there are two different ways that authors can be created.

Anyway, although it may be fun and prestigious to have two names, I think it would be for the best to consolidate the two. Nothing stopping Bill/William creating another more distinctly named identity like Guy Foot, say. ;-)