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Lawsuit Over Crippled Charley Pride Music Disks Settled
thumbtack writes: "In a follow up to the /. story
"Record Companies Sued Over Charley Pride CD" last fall, Boycott-RIAA
is reporting in this story
that the case has been settled with Fahrenheit Entertainment, Music City Records, and Sunncomm. They have agreed to a list of 10 items that were the basis of the lawsuit. In addition following the link to the settlement document (pdf) the plaintiffs got a little cash to pay their lawyers as well."
I see this as the most important point:
6. Defendants shall include a warning that the Charlie Pride CD is not designed to work in DVD players or Computer CD-ROM players;
As long as they mark the cd, and people know ahead that the product will not work for them, they can protect all the cds they want to. People will just learn to avoid cds that are marked that way.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I'm curious as to how this might affect future lawsuits. Since it is a settlement, can this case be used as leverage against Universal or others planning the same thing?
They agreed to ten demands and even coughed up lawyer fees. Seems like one of the most powerful weapons one can use is public humiliation. If this went on, more and more of the public would learn about this.
The only problem is they're going to continue using this copy protection. How many other distributors will adopt this or similar protection schemes in the future?
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
You just know that "warning" is going to be in tiny little fine white print at the bottom of the CD mixed in with all the other text no one ever reads.
IANAL, but two points on this:
My understanding is that a settlement is _not_ an admission or wrongdoing. So while this settlement may give moral support to others, it won't give you legal leverage against a music label in the future. (the whole point of a settlement is that it's cheaper and quicker than going to court, and since no legal decision is made, no precedent is set)
Second, it's not clear how much the label can get away with if their CDs give consumers explicit warning. People will just "avoid" CDs that are hobbled? There are five music labels that control the industry, from signing artists to what gets produced and distributed to what gets played on the radio.
Courtney Love, Tom Petty and others are suing those labels on the basis that their contracts for artists are basically identical - and uniformly screw the artist. We could be looking at a parallel situation here.
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
People are still stupid enough to buy it anyways. They don't read warnings simply since they are jaded by the sheer amount they get daily. Not on CD covers (besides, the RIAA would probably print it with a 2 point font) not on styrofoam coffee cups from McDonalds, not on aerosol canisters, not on ladders. Record stores will only have more unhappy customers, like the 45 year old secretary who hasn't a clue about this whole debate and buys Kenny G's greatest hits so she can listen to on her work computer, only to find out that she isn't responsible enough to do it without the permission of the RIAA.
Maybe it is good that the RIAA lost in the long run, but they are now absolved of any liability for stupid people who could potentially help our cause...
On the flipside, this may raise more awareness as to the dirty deeds of the RIAA by creating more unhappy customers.
Remember this is just a settlement, not a victory in a court of law. While it is good news, its also mostly a stalling tactic while the record companies figure out their next move. Personally, I still want to see ALL crippled (in any way) "CDs" segregated from true CDs in every place they are sold.
I think one of the vital contributing factors was that Music City Records provided the CD playing software that would track user habits - NON-ANONYMOUSLY - and use it for free marketing research.
If this had not happened would the RIAA have not lost?
No, it's more than that. The settlement requires the CD maker to put warnings on the protected CD. If a manufacturer has to alert buyers to the fact that this CD won't work on some computers, DVD players and MP3 players then that's going to hurt sales.
And manufacturers are going to think twice before implimenting something that hurts their sales.
The efforts we've seen so far have been low key, trying to put protection on without making a big deal out of it. Forcing such protection schemes to be advertized on the product will be a big disincentive to their use.
If you notice, everything is specific to the single instance of the Charley Pride CD. Who cares? What was really needed was an agreement like this for labeling *ALL* future discs.
Given that... I don't see how this is much of a victory; a draw at best.
--Rob
They settled out-of-court. No admission of wrongdoing, no court precedent, nothing. Out of whatever number of people bought the Charley Pride CD, *one* filed suit that we know of. The payoff to get her to go away was pocket change. They can keep on doing this for a long time, because until they get hammered with hundreds (or thousands) of lawsuits, or someone has the stomach to actually take the case to court, the cost to them to settle a few cases out of court is nothing. Especially if they believe their marketdroids when they are told they're losing millions to pirated CDs.
So no, this wasn't a victory for anything but the status quo.
Look at that post you modded up as "Interesting"! It isn't interesting, it is flamebait. It is most definitely a rip on fans of country music and shouldn't have recieved any positive moderation. I personally enjoy country music and must say that I have ripped and encoded many country CDs for my own personal MP3 collection. I take great offense to people who stereotype the country music listener as in imbred appalacian who is lucky enough to own a trailer and a CD player let alone a computer! Let me be the first to stand up as a proud, intellegent, and critical listener of country music.
Just think if this was a rap cd and you said "do you really think anyone who listens to rap is smart enough to encode it on their computer", people would be all over you. Let's not trivialize the criticism of country music listeners!
Adam
The settlement requires the CD maker to put warnings on the protected CD
Unfortunatly I don't think that protects those (like myself) who buy CDs online. I suppose I could go to a store and buy CDs except for the fact that they don't have any CDs I want (mainly just the popular garbage).
Right of First Sale
4. Defendants shall not impair or limit in any manner the ability and right of consumers to lawfully sell or transfer ownership of the Charlie Pride CD to others who shall have the equal ability to download related digital music files;
What a breath of fresh air. I think this is what the music labels are really after here. Not mass piracy (ala asian copy shops) but abridging first sale rights. And the good news is that in this and the adobe vs. softman case, the courts are upholding our rights.
So now the battle shifts to hardware and standards bodies, as the content cartels will try to get through firmware what they can't achieve in the courts.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
The settlement requires only that they label *this* CD - it does not require future labeling. And more importantly it has absolutely no effect on any other record company.
Universal can go right ahead and copy protect their CDs however they chose, and label them (or not) in whatever manner they want.
But the point of almost all of this is that there is nothing illegal with any of these copy protection schemes - at the *most* you will get gov't imposed labelling standards and requirements. But when N*Sync releases their album with fully-labelled copy protection, do you really think it won't sell to the teen masses?
In other words, get used to this idea - it's their IP, and they can protect it however they want (so long as they aren't tricking people, etc.)