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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.
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.
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.