Executives at SoundExchange, the much-hated collectors of digital-music royalties, have been caught doing something naughty . Much to the delight of Internet radio stations fighting higher online-music fees, a federal appeals court slapped their wrists for supporting special interest group MusicFirst Coalition. The supposed "coalition," actually an industry front, is lobbying to levy performance royalties on terrestrial radio stations — much like SoundExchange's own mission to collect billions of dollars from Internet radio.

Today, the Internet radio industry, imperiled by a new plan for music-webcasting fees, received a temporary "reprieve". An onerous schedule of royalty payments proposed by SoundExchange, the music industry's Web-licensing arm and okayed by a compliant Congress, is still in place. Basically, nothing has changed. And despite the stalling, nothing really will. Despite widespread claims of the imminent death of Internet radio, both music websites and record labels will soldier on. This is not a war of utter annihilation: It is Spy vs. Spy. Both sides will be around to throw new bombs in each other's direction tomorrow and forever, no matter how dastardly and deadly their assassination attempts are today. The music industry will eventually compromise at some rate that falls short of bankrupting webcasters, and Internet sites will, eventually, turn their attentions away from whining about the rates and toward finding ways to make money. No one ever really dies, but they sure make a lot of noise.