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Were the differences well within the error bars? I'm going with the latter until someone pastes a link with meat on its bones.

I just tried that with Firefox 1.5. Beef took me to http://www.beef.org/, while marmalade took me to the wikipedia page on marmalade. Both pages were the I'm feeling lucky result for Google.

Redundant post, so I'll redundantly post my reply to the original.

Is that this was one huge tax write off for the RIAA. They get to declare full retail price on these CD's on taxes, AND they clear out inventory


Huh? What CDs? What inventory? The RIAA is just an industry trade association like the American Plastics Council, or the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. I don't think the plastics council nor the beef council have inventories of beef, plastic, or CDs.

When are people going to realize that the RIAA does not really exist? They are merely a bunch of lawyers that can't get a real job, so they create this thing called the RIAA and guess what? They get paid either way. For a lawsuit against them, for all of these bogus lawsuits against everybody, the lawyers (aka RIAA) will get paid win, lose, or draw.

If I get contaminated beef, who would I sue? Not the beef's trade association, it would be the store or the beef plant that made the bad product.

If I get caught stealing something from the store, the store does not take me to court, they report it to the "proper authorities", and the store people only show up as a witness. I would doubt that there would ever be a trade organization involved.

If I get caught "stealing" music (yes, go on a tangent about this, I dare you), some group of lawyers (RIAA) come after me. Why can't they just report it to the "proper authorities"? I mean, on every movie I have watched at home the fucking FBI says that they will practically kill me if I do anything that violates the copyright on the video. How difficult is it just to turn over the people? That is what everyone else does.

Redundant post, so I'll redundantly post my reply to the original.

Is that this was one huge tax write off for the RIAA. They get to declare full retail price on these CD's on taxes, AND they clear out inventory


Huh? What CDs? What inventory? The RIAA is just an industry trade association like the American Plastics Council, or the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. I don't think the plastics council nor the beef council have inventories of beef, plastic, or CDs.

When are people going to realize that the RIAA does not really exist? They are merely a bunch of lawyers that can't get a real job, so they create this thing called the RIAA and guess what? They get paid either way. For a lawsuit against them, for all of these bogus lawsuits against everybody, the lawyers (aka RIAA) will get paid win, lose, or draw.

If I get contaminated beef, who would I sue? Not the beef's trade association, it would be the store or the beef plant that made the bad product.

If I get caught stealing something from the store, the store does not take me to court, they report it to the "proper authorities", and the store people only show up as a witness. I would doubt that there would ever be a trade organization involved.

If I get caught "stealing" music (yes, go on a tangent about this, I dare you), some group of lawyers (RIAA) come after me. Why can't they just report it to the "proper authorities"? I mean, on every movie I have watched at home the fucking FBI says that they will practically kill me if I do anything that violates the copyright on the video. How difficult is it just to turn over the people? That is what everyone else does.

tax write-off on unsold product

Huh? What product? The RIAA is just an industry trade association like the American Plastics Council.

When are people going to realize that the RIAA does not really exist? They are merely a bunch of lawyers that can't get a real job, so they create this thing called the RIAA and guess what? They get paid either way. For a lawsuit against them, for all of these bogus lawsuits against everybody, the lawyers (aka RIAA) will get paid win, lose, or draw.

If I get contaminated beef, who would I sue? Not the beef's trade association, it would be the store or the beef plant that made the bad product.

If I get caught stealing something from the store, the store does not take me to court, they report it to the "proper authorities", and the store people only show up as a witness. I would doubt that there would ever be a trade organization involved.

If I get caught "stealing" music (yes, go on a tangent about this, I dare you), some group of lawyers (RIAA) come after me. Why can't they just report it to the "proper authorities"? I mean, on every movie I have watched at home the fucking FBI says that they will practically kill me if I do anything that violates the copyright on the video. How difficult is it just to turn over the people? That is what everyone else does.

They are not a law enforcement agency, can they say that the laws regarding copyright don't apply to us since we own the copyright?

I've been trying to figure out who the RIAA really is. No, they are not a law enforcement agency. And to my knowledge, they are _not_ the copyright holders either. Their members are the copyright holders. These members pay a voluntary fee (tax if you will) to the RIAA. The RIAA is an industry trade group. Other industry trade groups that you might be familiar with in the US are the National Cattlemens's Beef Association (the "Beef, it's what's for dinner" people) and the American Plastics Counccil.

Note that the latter two orginizations end in .org, while the RIAA ends in .com. In fact, the RIAA has bought the riaa.org domain, and it redirects you to the .com domain.

If you look at the pres releases by the RIAA, they have been into this suing thing for a long time, or at least back to 1996 where their archives begin.

I believe that the RIAA does quite well financially, and they actually probably like piracy and whatnot, becauase it gives them something to do. Otherwise they would just be the people making parental warnings and issuing awards for high selling albums. Think of which makes more money. Lawsuits or warnings and awards. Remember, the lawyers get paid if they win, loose, go to court or not.

If the RIAA were interested in music and getting people to buy music, then they would change their product. I mean remember the beany baby phenominon? People will buy just about anything. People obviously want music, they download it, right? Also, these people have no emotional attachment to their mp3 collection. I would be that the percentage of people do not have backups of their mp3s, nor would care to terribly much if they lost them all in a hard drive failure. I know of people that have been very upset when their CD collection was stolen or otherwise lost.

Why cant the RIAA do things like making meaningful reissues of older material? Things that come with books, extra tracks, live material, etc, etc? Kinda like SCO. They could a) sell a product or b) make money through lawsuits and press releases.

The RIAA lives of the customers who buy "legal" music (they never remember the Creative Commons license, isn't that curious?).

Excellent comment. In fact, the part about the "legal" music is almost taken verbatim from their about us page.

They are not interested in the earnings of the artists, of course; they only stand for their own earnings. Take into account that a musician earns more money playing in concerts, than selling discs.

This is what I've been thinking about lately. Who else is remotely similar to the RIAA or the MPAA? Technically, they are classified as an industry trade group. And that industry trade groups are put together by a group of corporations that are in a common industry for the purpose of government legislation and public relations. Other industry trade groups are the American Plastics Council and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

These other two organizations I know of though their TV comercials where they have slogans like "Beef, Its whats for dinner", or the plastics ads where they show how our lives have been improved with the advent of plasic materials.

Now, lets think of my interaction with the RIAA and the MPAA. Its been on the news, and how they are pissed off that people are downloading files, then suing these people, etc.

The RIAA and MPAA do not have a product. They are not a corporation. They cannot ever loose money. They are given money from membership fees from thier members. These fees are solely based on the market share and size of the corporation. They are like a voluntary tax!

Does this remind you of another organization that is purely based upon lawsuits and pres releases? You can find them by searching google for litigious bastards.

Dont worry about these guys. They will not be around too much more. SCO is almost out of amunition to prove thier existance, and being that the RIAA and MPAA have no more amunition than SCO, they too will just disipear.