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Lawsuit Over Crippled Charley Pride Music Disks Settled

Posted by michael on from the warning:-this-silver-disk-is-not-a-CD dept.

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."

3 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. I may not be a lawyer but... by Demon-Xanth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...I'm glad to see this trend started where labeling similar to software packaging is required and the companies are required to take some reponsibility and provide a kind of warentee on this disk (even if it's just 30 days). I hope that it'll convince other companies and CDs to adopt these policies and not just stick with the Charley Pride album and blindly continue ignoring the consumers.

    A guy can't wish, can't he?

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    If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
  2. Re:Most important by polymath69 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    Yes, but this is still a problem for people who buy most of their CDs online, and so don't have the opportunity to inspect the packaging before making a purchase. Even if this settlement makes music stores more willing to take back (rather than exchange for the same item) non-compliant CDs, the hassle may make the whole experience just too irritating.

    Imagine buying 10 CDs at cdnow and finding seven of them have warnings on the label. So you send them back. Then you open the other three, to find that two of them have warnings inside the shrinkwrapped package. Even the imaginary more liberal return policies are unlikely to help you now.

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    I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
  3. Warning labels by morcheeba · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Overall, a great settlement. But, I wonder if the warnings will follow the obfuscation standards that liquor and cigarette manufacturers use. (Why the pregnant woman warning before the drunk driving warning? Surely there are more drivers than pregnant people!).

    I wonder if the warning would like this:

    PLAYS IN ANY CD PLAYER. TO ACCESS ADDITIONAL DIGITAL MUSIC FILES ON A COMPUTER, YOU NEED MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98 OR LATER, MICROSOFT WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 7.0 (INCLUDED FREE ON THIS CD), AND ACCESS TO THE INTERNET (ALSO INCLUDED; TRY AOL FOR 50 HOURS FOR FREE). ACCESS WILL REQUIRE NOT MORE THAN SIX DOWNLOADS. NOT DESIGNED TO WORK IN DVD, MP3, OR COMPUTER CD-ROM PLAYERS. FOR A LIST OF KNOWN COMPATIBLITY PROBLEMS RELATED TO COMPUTERS, CD PLAYERS, AND DIGITAL MUSIC PLAYING DEVICES, PLEASE VISIT WWW.RECORDSTORE.COM/01lOI/|I\!.HTML

    (Yeah, I know it's in upper case. It's meant to be hard to read. That's why liquor and cigarette labels use it...)

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    HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets