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I don't mind Walmart discounting albums or anything, but keep in mind that Walmart only sells you what they see fit.

Here's a few links to keep you busy as you praise Walmart for "puttin' it to the RIAA". Keep in mind that this is also the biggest company (Well... next to the military) to mandate RFID tags on everything.

So not only do you get to choose from a limited selection of CD's (those deemed acceptable by Walmarts censors), but soon you'll potentially be able to have Walmart scan you as you shop to see what other items someone in your demographic is purchasing. Or in Walmart terms, "Shoppers who purchase band XXX from our censored music selection, are also likely to purchase items YY and ZZ".

Ain't it great to be a number with big brother determining what you can have!

Walmart CD Censorship
Market censors and market mechanisms
Censored magazines, banned music and pseudo-Christian fun at America's scariest retailer

The cheap CDs come with some hidden prices; secret censorshipand coercive censorship. Wired article here

The last article I've seen specifically said that Walmart accounts for only about 10% of CD sales in the US. I think most of the complaints is mostly the "artists" don't have the "artistic integrity" they claim to have, and it bugs them. Heck, it would bug me if I'm willing to sell my integrity for a 10% raise.

http://www.massmic.com/walmart.html

"Tool spokesman Mike Cubillos, aware that an album can lose up to 10 percent of its sales by not being carried by the chain."

The article is a few years old though.

>Copyright law is supposed to protect the holder of the copyright, whether that be th eoriginal creator, RIAA member companies or the publisher.

Depends on the territory. In the US, the intent is explicit: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;. I'll be explicit; US copyright was intended to protect authors from publishers, from having their work simply taken and copied without their permission. It's a sad state of affairs when we assume that publishers own the rights.

>Musicians are not work for hire simply because the RIAA member companies pay them advances on future royalties

Where did I say or imply that? Perhaps you should do some research.

I think all reasonable human beings should be expected to draw the line somewhere. Here's why you shouldn't shop at Walmart, ever:

• They abuse their employees (see also NYT article)
• They destroy the social fabric of neighborhoods
• They engage in capricious censorship (see more here)
• They purchase from overseas suppliers with ZERO regard for the sweatshop conditions under which the materials were manufactured. Even Nike agreed this was reprehensible.

Wal-Mart has asked artists and their labels to clean up records for years, but the issue crystallized with a recent New York Times article and the retailer's banning of Sheryl Crow's new album because of the lyric: "Watch our children as they kill each other with a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores." Crow refused to change the verse. Her' new single, "Every Day Is a Winding Road," is stocked by Wal-Mart, and so is her' previous album, but the new self-tided disc is not.

[and later on, talking about other bands coerced by Walmart;]

The Butthole Suffers agreed to change their name to B*** II*** Surfers on CD jackets. John Mellencamp recently agreed to airbrush out images of Jesus Christ and the devil on his latest CD, "Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky."

In general, not carrying an item is not censorship. However, the case is a bit fuzzier when your record label's single largest distributor calls up and tells your producer that either you change the lyrics in your album or they drop the thing altogether.

Same goes for mass-market book and magazine publishing, video games, you name it.

An old article from the Boston Globe

Rock Out Censorship calls for a boycott of WalMart

Here's a page of helpful links about WalMart and its practices in a number of areas.