Record Companies Sued Over Charley Pride CD

DevNova writes: "This posting describes a woman in California suing Fahrenheit Entertainment, Inc. and its label Music City Records over CDs she has purchased which use a proprietary music encoding scheme that prevents them from being listened to without the user identifying themselves. These CDs won't play on standard CD players, are not encoded in the popular MP3 format, and will not play on a computer until the user enters personal information. A large part of the suit is that Fahrenheit discloses none of this information on the packaging."

Comments

nope, sorry.

[garcia]

There is definitly no way that any company should be able to collect information about a person that has purchased their CD. If this was a promotional CD I could see the point but if you purchase something it becomes yours (and you are free to do w/it whatever you wish) you paid a fee to give you rights. They are invading your privacy.

The fact that they are hiding this from view is an obvious attempt at actually selling the CDs. No one is going to buy the god damn things b/c of this crap. Hell, I hate to shop at Radio Shack b/c of the fact that they ask for my private information and seem to feel it is their god given right to have it. (No, I will NOT give them any of my info even if I purchase my items w/a CC -- this usually really irritates the clerk -- the information they need is how much the item costs, how much I paid, and that's it)

I am sick and tired of this crap. If I don't want to be known I don't have to be. Once you buy something you own it. That's it. Their ownership of the item stops when money exchanges hands.

Fuck that.

Re:Summary not correct

[garcia]

not the point. It would be like having a DVD not work just b/c you are playing it in a PS2. Before this year I *rarely* used my stereo (I had nothing more than a shitty old boom-box) and I *always* used my computer to play my music CDs.

This is my right as a consumer to use whatever device I want. Doesn't matter if I can use this device to copy it (remember? I own the CD)

Tough noogies.

Nice suit, but...

[Masem]

If you take a look at the last few lines of the linked article, and most the suit, in fact, it talks about how this is all falling under deceptive practices for not labelling the CD package as containing a non-standard CD format or having a privacy notice on the CD.

I'm worried that all the recording companies will do is add in the fine print at the bottom of the back side cover that says something like "This CD is protected by the use of the FairUseSucks System and may not play on computers without entering personal information. Please visit www.weownj00.com for our privacy policy; opening of this package indicates your agreement to this policy". Bingo, they have just gotten out of a lawsuit.

At this point, one would then need to envoke the infamous time-shifting case to fight back for fair use.

Easily fixed

[fobbman]

Day One

"Hi, I bought this CD yesterday but cannot get it to play on my PC at home. The other CD I bought yesterday plays fine, so this must be defective. Can I get a replacement?"

Day Two

"Hi, I got this replacement for a CD that wouldn't play on my PC yesterday and this one seems bad, too. Might be a bad production run of CD's. Can I try another?"

Rinse well, repeat as necessary until all CD's of that recording are sent back to label marked "defective".

Re:Easily fixed

[2nd Post!]

What happens when the manager pops the CD into a player and it doesn't work? As an example, many DVD player drives are stock EIDE drives with new faceplates. If, for example, the box the manager pops the CD into is, say, a DVD 5.1 boombox thing... it may not work after all.

Don't own the CD?

[pq]

If I'm not mistaken you do not "own the CD" but purchased the right to listen to it on an audio device.

Really?
Think of this: if you went to the record store and told them that you dropped and broke your CD, here are the pieces and the receipts, and could they please replace it - do you think they'd give you a new CD? Or would they laugh you out of the store? Suddenly, it looks like you bought something physical after all, and not the license to listen to the music on the CD, doesn't it...?