The rhetoric of protecting creators' interests has been pulled out of the cupboard, dusted down and paraded in front of courts, authors, musicians, lawyers and the public since copyright began.
The RIAA and Apple are looking to have the royalty percentage that is owed to songwriters reduced. The mechanical copyright royalty is a major source of income for many musicians, because typically they earn very little from sales of recorded music. Collecting mechanical copyrights isn't a straightforward operation which is why most musicians sign up with a publisher who deals with all that, but takes (usually) 50% of the mechanical royalty as payment. As you can work out for yourself, if the mechanical royalty is reduced, then the amount due to the songwriters gets whittled down even further.
According to the report (see above link) the main complaint seems to be from the recording side of the industry who claim that the music publishing industry has "gotten fat" whilst the recording industry has suffered.
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