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Broadcast.com deal designed to kill competition!
Posted by Mike Darrah on June 24, 2002 at 1:41 PM   (printer friendly)

A "RAIN EXCLUSIVE", Mark Cuban (now owner of the Dallas Mavericks) speaks out on how the Broadcast.com deal with the RIAA was designed to to stifle competition. This deal was the only precident for which the US Copyright Office CARP panel recommended the webcasting royalty rates now finalized by the Librarian of Congress, which are pushing independant webcasters off-line.

As quoted from the article:

The voluntary royalty deal between Yahoo! and the RIAA that the Librarian of Congress announced as his template for the entire industry last week was a deal crafted by Yahoo! to shut out small webcasters and decrease competition, Broadcast.com founder and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban revealed to RAIN on Friday.


The article goes on to point out..
By doing this, Cuban explains, he hoped that low-revenue webcasters would be unable to compete against the well-funded Yahoo!


Please be sure to visit KurtHanson.com to review Mark Cuban's e-mail to RAIN in its entirety!

My question is this... Since members of the media have been pointing this fact out since Sep. 29, 2000 (see Wired article "Webcasters Warned of RIAA Deals" by Brad King) how the hell was this still used as the standard for the royalty rates?


User Comments (These do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of this site)

RyanS  
Date: June 24, 2002 @ 1:55 PM
what a crock of :poo:!

Svensta  
Date: June 24, 2002 @ 2:15 PM
Surprising? No. Then again it is the nature of corporate competitiveness to find an upper hand and use it to crush your opponents. The problem here is that the LAW was based around this agreement! Monopolies and revenue-bases aside, you can't base laws off of business agreements like this!!!!!

captainclorox  
Date: June 24, 2002 @ 8:16 PM
Apparently you can if you buy enough of Congress.

ascela  
Date: June 24, 2002 @ 10:23 PM
I'm still waiting..hoping for the heading: RIAA Killed by...(insert name here) They so so so diserve to die.

W-B  
Date: June 25, 2002 @ 10:41 AM
Only one question about this whole secret "backroom deal" stuff here: Why on Earth does this not surprise me? One more case of multinational corporations acting as if this country were a primitive, backwater Third World banana republic that could be played like a fiddle.

goldenpi  
Date: June 25, 2002 @ 10:55 AM
Of course, everythings backroom-based now. Politics and wrestling, same method :-)

"RIAA annoyed by destruction of universe".