The music industry is acting in its all too typical ham handed fashion - and trying to offer "protection" to small webcasters:

SoundExchange, the nonprofit group that collects the fees on behalf of hundreds of major and independent record companies, said on Tuesday that it would give "small" Webcasters the option of paying "below market" royalty rates on the songs they play--that is, by keeping the required royalty rates essentially the same as they are under a 2002 law called the Small Webcaster Settlement Act.

"The net result of this proposal is that small Webcasters would be guaranteed no increase in royalty payments for 13 years, from 1998 to 2010," SoundExchange general counsel Michael Huppe said in a statement.

I'd love to know how they define "small" - and who gets to define what category a given site lives in? These guys need to let go and understand that the web is changing their business - and trying to cling to an outdated business model just isn't going to work.

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