While the Recording Industry Association of America continues hunting and hounding peer-to-peer file swappers with subpoenas, the pur-suers have now been per-sued: the Webcaster Alliance filed suit August 27 to force the trade association to negotiate new royalty rates that won't put small Net broadcasters out of business.
The Alliance has threatened litigation over several months, according to CNET.com, accusing the RIAA of negotiating current rates with "a small, unrepresentative group of Webcasters" aimed at stifling competition.
"This lawsuit is a publicity stunt that has no merit," an unnamed RIAA representative told CNET. "Record companies and artists have worked earnestly to negotiate a variety of agreements with a host of new types of radio services, including commercial and noncommercial Webcasters."
Congress ratified Web radio station royalty rates earlier this year, but the small operators' association said those rates were just as likely to drive the small Webcasters out of business as the previous rates had been.
The Internet structural model calls for Web stations to pay record labels and performers a fee for playing music online at a 0.07 per song rate as of June 2002, CNET said. But Congress later passed a bill with no set amount but a ratification of a deal between the Voice of Webmasters group and the RIAA calling for a percentage of revenues as a royalty rather than a flat rate. Large Webcasters would continue paying the 0.07-a-song rate.
"We have watched the RIAA's actions...(which) have the effect of wiping out an entire industry of independent Webcasters who represent freedom of choice and diversity for Internet radio listeners," said Webcasters Alliance president Ann Gabriel in a formal statement. "It is time for the RIAA to be held accountable for years of manipulating an entire industry in order to stifle the growth of independent music and control Internet content and distribution channels."
