CARP modified

Since I've written about CARP before it seems appropriate that I comment on it now. (CARP, incidently, is the royalty system set by the US Copyright Office that sets a fixed rate for web radio.) It seems there's been a small carve out for small webcasters that sets rate according to complicated accounting defitions of costs and percentages etc. (details here). These ammendments may help some small webcasters, but they don't do much to inject competition into the online distribution of streaming music, because the (lower) rates are still fixed, and not ceilings. Sadly, I heard neither the RIAA nor webcasters argue for a rate structure that just set the ceiling, and let content owners compete for distribution.