Decius and i were talking about this last night. Here's the summary... last year, congress set a royalty rate of 0.07 cents/song/listener that webcasters would have to pay. This deal was negotiated by a consortium that represented primarily large webcasters. small webcasters felt this was bs and would put them out of business (which it did, in many cases) and eventually, a new deal was struck that would allow small stations to avoid that rate. However, it didn't set a new rate, just permit the small webcasters to negotiate their own deal. That's almost the same thing because, lets face it, negotiating with RIAA is a huge pain, if not expensive in it's own right, making it far from feasible for most small webcasters.

So now, the Webcasters Alliance is striking back at the RIAA on behalf of small webcasters, suing them on a claim of antitrust for trying to push independents out of the game.

Small Webcasters sue RIAA | CNET News.com