of some of these terrible dictators in countries like Sudan. They terrorize people, they make life miserable for others, yet no one seems ready to remove them from power.

The RIAA is $#!%.

Even under the old royalty ruling that set royalties at 10-12% of revenues for internet radio stations was much higher than the rates that satellite radio pays. XM and Sirius pay less than 7% of their revenues to SoundExchange.

The Internet Radio Equality Act sets the standards for determining royalties to be the same for net radio as they are for satellite radio.

One other thing your Podcast missed, is that the RIAA wants internet radio stations to direct license with the record labels. They don't want anyone to use the highly-priced "Statutory" license. Direct licenses give the RIAA member labels much more control of what music is played. They are already doing this with some online music services. The music they want to push, they let the internet radio services use for free. They make private deals to encourage major-label music only to be played on net radio stations. This is the true reason they're pushing for a statutory license rate that's so high is so they can force all broadcasters to move to a direct-licensing deal.

If net broadcasters make direct licensing deals with the majors and then they will be legally allowed to ONLY play major label music to their customers.

So much for independent radio, where the music choices are made by music directors and DJs based not on economic issues, but based on what is truly the best music available.