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CD Price-Fixing Suit Ruling
Jay Langhurst writes "As the AP reported Friday, if you filed a claim before March 3, 2003 online or otherwise you'll be getting a gift in the mail from those monopolistic music companies in the form of a check for about $13!"
do they lower the prices?
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
I'm going to donate my $13 to the EFF.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
to send a donation to xiph.org or towards the purchase of software that uses Ogg Vorbis. That will really screw their plans if enough of us do it.
Un-news
We've got the recording industry in a vulnerable spot. It's time to withhold cash from them and go in for the kill.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Yeah yeah... 13$ is about the price of a CD... so whatever you don't feed it right back into the machine that is the RIAA... instead go donate it to a good cause like the couple below (no affiliation)
boycott-riaa.com
digital-consumer.org
do something useful and fight this idiotic RIAA crap!
I own about 500 CDs. $13.00 works out to about two and a half cents per CD. Is that all they were gouging me for?
It's actually $45.5 million out of RIAA pockets in total. Sure, not that much considering the size of RIAA. But at least they'll feel the pinch.
Now that we have precedence, maybe there should be waves upon waves of this class action. If there is relentless waves of such cases, hopefully the RIAA will get the point, and look at other distribution models more carefully...
Not that I'm holding my breath anyway.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Umm, only $13? Good thing 'we' 3.5 million people settled this case.
The real winners here, of course, are the lawyers. A large portion of the remaining $23.3 million goes to them.
Just a hunch, but I imagine it comes out to a tad more than $13 for each for them.
IANAL, but right now I wish I was.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
That's right.
So everyone who's getting the money has agreed that the music companies didn't fix prices.
In effect, if you're getting that 13 dollar check, don't bitch about the cost of CDs, you lost that right when you agreed to the settlement.
This settlement is a rip-off. By far not a long term solution. I guess the only benefit than can be gotten from it is if people donate their newly acquired riches to xiph.org or a similarly focused group. At least that way we're looking at a more long-term solution to combatting artificially inflated prices.
Where the hell is that coming from? By signing up as a claimant all you said was that you bought a CD. Nothing else. And the judge ruled against them, ergo there WAS price fixing.
Hey, that's 13 songs I can download from the iTunes Music Store!!
Ever heard of shipping & handling?
That's ok, keep your money and I'll settle my claim via kazaa.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Or....
How abotu when the government finds out that 5 major labels have been colluding to fix the prices on CDs, they make them all give $13 to whoever signs up, and then shake hands and say "All in a day's work," and nothing changes? That is paltry in response for how long it went on before we found out. Is that promoting capitalism or consumerism? Competition? Or the fleecing of America (and the world?!?) by people who have enough money to influence the government? When do the people wake up and realize it's not fair, and they keep voting along party lines for people that are only harming them?
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
Totally... For all the pissing we do on record companies (and they deserve *a lot* of it!!), every now and then they come out with stuff that is actually a very fair (or even good) deal. The new Metallica is a good example - the free DVD, the long length of the album, IMHO a very good album, and the reasonable price... It shows what happens when you've got tough competition and a free market working - Metallica (contrary to popular opinion) is a very, very savvy band. They knew to get their fans into the store that they'd have to offer them some cool stuff that isn't easily transmitted via KaZaA and such. And they knew that their fans wanted it to be a decent price.
amazon.com has a running promotion of no s&p if you order more than (I think) 30$. That's 3 cds...
Amazon also makes it very easy to buy used CDs at significantly less. To all you folks out there, you should be buying used whenever possible (which means almost always). If it's a new release you want, wait two days and somebody will be selling it on Amazon used (just click on the "XX used & new from $X.XX" link under "more buying options" on the right side of any product page).
This is the real way to send a message to the RIAA: don't buy their product; -or- if you have to buy their product, buy it so they don't make any revenue on the sale. If you want the artist to get money, buy the CD used, then go to the artist's webpage (most have them) and send what you saved when buying a used CD directly to the artist as a gift; it will be more than what they would have made on a new CD sale.
moto411.com
i could get 13 songs on apple music store for that money
i am the self-proclaimed king of free stuff
Why is it that I could rob a 7-11 of $100 and get jail time, but companies can rob the populus of MILLIONS of dollars and they are immune to everything?
Record companies aren't holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy one of their $18+ CDs. I don't side with record companies on this case either (as I'm one of the ones getting a $13 check), but your analogy doesn't fit.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
The analogy fits. They stole from all of us and we had no idea.
From m-w.com:
robbery:
: the act or practice of robbing; specifically : larceny from the person or presence of another by violence or threat
This is NOT what record companies are/were doing. Your analogy does not fit.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
You misunderstood the point of the original poster.
The article said that the RIAA was paying out $12.63 to more than 3.5 million consumers, so it's paying at least 44.2 million dollars.
The parent of the original poster was commenting that sending the $13 back to the kid whose life savings was taken away was just returning his own money; however, that $12000 only comprises 0.0000271% of the total settlement, so I highly doubt they're somehow covering it all with it.
Schlock Mercenary
Collusion laws are reasons that OPEC will never have a summit in the United States.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
BUT... I'll bite, just in case some other retard sees what you posted and without thinking about it for half a second, assumes there's any validity to your imbecilic remark.
No one has said that there will be famous artists at CD Baby dot com; all that was said was that there is good music (fitting literally ANYone's taste) to be found on the site. Hell, if you could read at all, you would have seen that their tagline is
Independent music? Hmmmmm... THAT sounds like RIAA material to ME. The fact that your little survey didn't take you all night should say something as well.If you hit the page expecting someone you've heard streaming over the airwaves, you might find them, but it's not likely, since most artists who have reached that scale of marketability don't need it. The web site is only useful to bands whose target audience is aware of the site's existence, and no single website is as popular or ubiquitous as radio. To find music, search for a genre of music you know you already like. Or search for a famous artist to whom lesser-known bands will claim similarities. Search for "metallica," and you'll find over 170 matches, but none of the matches actually ARE metallica. But I'll bet you a dollar that if you LIKE metallica, you'll find music there that ISN'T metallica, but you still like.
The fact that you can't find any of your "non-RIAA" artists on CD Baby doesn't prove a flippin' thing, except that none of YOUR friends have set up pages for their bands there. Do your buddies a favor, and TELL them to register there! And while they're at it, mp3.com as well. How long could it take? The only reason they'd regret it is if they truly suck, and no one that hit the page ever cared to download .mp3s or purchase CDs. Some music is targeted to a very narrow audience, and registering there will always sell a few more discs that if it wasn't listed on the site. If you really think it's a waste of your time, forget it, but I hope someday you realize just how closed your mind really is.
By the way, Einstein... there was a time when mp3.com was as small as CD Baby is right now.
Mom says my
My God, you fucking fratbrats make me sick. "I'm gonna really fuck the RIAA -- instead of buying one new Dave Matthews CD, I'll buy twenty used Dave Matthews CDs! I'll be getting RIAA product, and supporting an RIAA artist...but dammit, they won't get my money."
That's awesome logic, Gumbo. Tell you what: If you really want to fuck the RIAA, why don't you flip off MTV and try to develop some sense of individuality about your musical taste? There are about a bajillion independent artists, performing and recording on their own dimes -- rock, jazz, folk, hip-hop, gospel, blues...you name it.
If you want to fuck the RIAA, then screw your childish, microcosmic view of how you can cut a tiny corner within the RIAA framework. If you want to fuck the RIAA, then lead by example: Prove that we don't need the RIAA framework. Artists can survive, independently, if we support them. But as long as fuckheads like you still lap up ClearChannel and RIAA products like an obedient puppy -- grinning when you happen to snatch a free scrap or two -- the big, bad corporation ain't going anywhere.