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?