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One Man's Check From The RIAA
c0rk writes "I received my $13.86 check today. This was my claim in the Compact Disk Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation. I wrote in detail about the letter/check I received here in my blog and posted a readable image of said documentation (not the check though...sorry). Score 1 for the consumer!"
Does that $13 check really make up for price fixing on hundreds of CD's that you've purchased over the years (I know it's hundreds for me at least)... It should be $3000 each like they are trying to get from us!!!
I like how the letter doesn't admit fault.
Its just the 'challenged' pricing policies, rather than any of the stronger language that could have been used like 'illegal price fixing pricing policies'.
paul reinheimer
... and spend that $13 on an a CD from an independant lable.
If you're going to make a kilobyte of black text on white into a 50K image, you deserve every cent of the bandwidth bill.
Or rather, score $13.86 for the consumer.
The score now stands at:
The consumer: $13.86
The RIAA: $33,000,000,000
Looks like the RIAA's in real trouble now!
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
would you thank someone if you were unknowingly (to you) over-charged for something, and then as penance, the seller offered a fraction of what they wrongly took from you?
"thanks" aren't in order, unless it's in the form of "thanks for the memories - i can think of one conglomerate that will no longer get any of my money."
I'm putting this in anonymously because suggesting to donate to EFF is a great thing, but also a karma whore move.
So anyway, get yourself over to the EFF donate page and give them the money. It's quick and painless.
.
as you drool over your measly 13 bucks, how much did the lawyer$ take home? class-action lawsuits are all the rave now and make $$ mostly for them. similar to micro$oft type settlements where the plaintaifs get a *free* copy of something from M$ and the lawyer$ get cost$, fee$, and other itemization$ paid for. no one wins here but the lawyer$.
now....go get ya a burger.
Are you NUTS? The consumer got completely SCREWED on this deal. The ONLY winners here with the record labels who took in BILLIONS in extra profit because of ILLEGAL price fixing and all the consumers got back was a tiny percentage.
Score 1 my ass!
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
You agreed to pay the price. Nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to buy those CDs.
I'd agree they'd owe us more if they were selling something necessary like food or fuel products.
But they're not. They're selling luxeries. Things you don't need.
As it is, they're giving you a check based on the average overcharge. People who only bought a CD or two are getting the same amount as people who bought dozens or hundreds of CDs.
There's no way the RIAA is going to count reciepts for everyone that requested a check and give proportionatly the same to everyone. Do you even have reciepts for all those CDs to prove you bought them and when you bought them?
It's just a lot easier to divide the entire fine by everyone who requested compensation and give equal size checks to everyone regardless of how much they spent.
And this is perfectly reasonable since nobody forced you to buy any of those CDs. If you're mad about how much you pay for CDs, buy them used. Use that check to buy used CDs so that none of the money goes back to the RIAA. And then stop buying new CDs.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Since $13 bucks is only enough for a McRottens lunch, why not donate it to a fund to help against the RIAA. Slashdotters can be free to give it to whom they please. Suggestions?
Not enough people signed on, indicating (1) not enough people were aware of their rights, (2) not enough people cared, or more likely (3) not enough people understand just how evil the RIAA is.
I'll be getting a check, and I know what I should do with it -- give it to a local school.
May I make a suggestion?
$13.86 isn't enough for a new CD from many stores, but you could use the money to buy an album from one of the many excellent artists from non-RIAA record labels such as Matador or Ninja Tune available from the iTunes Music Store.
Or perhaps purchase music for download in unencumbered MP3 format directly from non-RIAA record label Warp Records.
$10 thrown at the first option could get you, if you like rock music, one of the Yo La Tengo albums (if you like rock), Cat Power's "Moon Pix" album (if you like folky rock sung by a drunk manic-depressive woman), or Amon Tobin's "Supermodified" (if you like jazzy d&b-ish techno), and still leave you $3.86 for your own nefarious purposes. Any of these would be excellent choices.
From the second option, if you like electronica, $13.86 would be just enough to neatly buy Boards of Canada's probably-career-high Music Has the Right to Children album plus Autechre's probably-career-high gantz_graf EP and leave you enough money for a soda at a vending machine.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
And a sizeable percentage of your 14-cent CD-Rs will go bad within a year.
I learned my lesson with uber-discount blanks. There's a reason why they couldn't sell them at higher prices.
Collusion to set prices is illegal.
If you don't like it, why not talk to your representative and/or senator?
wow, so thousands of dollars in legal fees later, we have ... a check for 13 dollars.
I really wonder, why even bother? Did this 'bite' the industry, or the 'violators'? a little. Probably not much.
I don't support this kind of legal action. I believe those who make stuff have the right to set the price. They can collude, conspire, or whatever. I don't care. if they're being unreasonable, I won't buy.
How much more effective could the community who was holding this lawsuit be by boycotting and organizing? a lot more effective than a lawsuit, which is long, drawn-out, and up to the capriciousness of a judge rather than our own individual decisions. How could I get $13.86 back? by refusing to do business with unreasonable companies. People say in previous posts to this thread 'i've bought $3,000 worth of merchandise and was overcharged more than $13!' and to that I say 'why the hell did you spend $3,000 with a company you thought was overcharging you?'
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Score 1 for the consumer!
Why have Americans taken to calling themselves Consumers? Your real power lies in Law, that law is written by CITIZENS. If your preceding citizens hadnt written some pretty keen laws, you current "Consumers" would be out $13.xx.
I cant stand it when people call me, or anyone else a f'ing consumer. Its goddamn offensive.
For those of you who aren't keen to the way these settlements work, I'll enlignten. The lawyers get paid right away based on the total amount of the settlement. The consumers, plaintiff's, etc. get their money later, if not never.
The reason why insurance of all kinds is so high is because of this unending battle between insurance companies and trial lawyers. And you would think that insurance companies would be your friends in this type of situation, but they aren't. The more letigious society is, the more insurance you need. The more your insurance costs, the more money the insurance company makes with their margins.
I want to illustrate how bad this problem has become. Lookup "tobacco settlement lawyers fees" and see the billions that they collected. Also keep in mind the trial lawyers represent THE largets lobbying group in Washington, and not to spark a party line issue here, but the majority of their money goes to Democrat candidates. This is from triallawyersinc.com :
Out of total U.S. tort costs of over $200 billion--more than 2% of GDP--Trial Lawyers, Inc. grosses $40 billion per year in revenues, or 50% more than Microsoft or Intel and twice those of Coca-Cola.Anytime that someone gets a retarded amount of money from some EVIL corporation out there, society on a whole is raped of the value of a hard-earned dollar because someone got something for virtually nothing. That means those who are producing carry the weight of that injust money redistribution on our collective shoulders. My big problem with trial lawyers is that they don't make life one bit better for anyone. When I program, I feel like I'm saving people some time and making life a little better for everyone. Trial lawyers do nothing but obstruct the progress of those that try to make life better. I think of them as financial and quality-of-life terrorists.
This "something for nothing is harmful" principle can be applied to every societal problem: welfare, prescription drugs, government health care, government housing, etc..
I urge you to all not celebrate those who get something for nothing. It is not a victory for the common man. It is just more burden for the common man to bear.
Despite the fact that I could have legitimately signed up for this, for the Microsoft rebates, and various other class-action settlements, I absolutely refuse to do so. The vast majority of class action lawsuits in America these days are just as big a scam as anything the RIAA or Microsoft has ever pulled, and I refuse to be a part of them. Score 1 for the consumers? No, score 1 for the lawyers who walked away with millions. Score nothing for the consumers who walk away with peanuts and no real change in the way business is being done.
I have a great idea: let's kill all the lawyers! Then, when your boss fires you because he doesn't like your hair, you can go suck your thumb. When your deadbeat son gets arrested for drug possession and thrown in jail for 50 years, you can whine like a baby. When your REAL freedoms get squashed, you can bitch and moan and post half-assed raving nonsense on Slashdot. Because that's all you'd be able to do without trial lawyers. [/sarcasm]
Why is everyone here so down on lawyers? Realize that many class-actions cost millions to litigate, and you, the beneficiary, aren't paying squat for it. If the law firm loses, they eat it, not you, and it could cost seven or eight figures. Did you want to pay the RIAA $14 if they won their case, and not the other way around? Did you? If you think equity redistribution is unfair in a class-action, propose a better solution, don't just accuse people of being terrorists.
And while I'm ranting, there's one more thing I'd like to get off my chest. Lawyers, despite what people may think of them, generally do what they do out of a desire to help people. Yes, it sucks that some people profit off of other people's misery; however, if there weren't a system of redress of grievances, everyone would suffer. Injustices aren't righted by computer, they're righted by people, and those people have to get paid.
Some of the lawyers I know work just as long as the programmers I know (including myself), and many work much, MUCH longer. Maybe, if you'd get off your elitist high-horse and actually TALK to a lawyer, you might get a different impression of them. Oh, and one more thing: if you want to maintain your attitude, then that's your business, but I never heard of a trial lawyer getting ass-pounding prison time when he was in dire need of a good programmer.
[/rant]
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
" Buying overpriced CDs for years ($1,306.19)"
/. sickens me. You're all worried about your own rights, but have no qualms about treading on the rights of those you don't like.
If it was overpriced, why did you buy it? Don't use govt. thugs to limit the freedoms of others just because you don't like the deal they offer. There is no such thing as a right to a good or service from another person. That is an endorsement of a form of slavery. The hypocrisy of
Vote for Pedro
I don't know what twisted vision of capitalism you have in mind, but nobody has the right to demolish the underpinnings of the free market by colluding to restrict competition. This settlement was A Good Thing [tm]; it was designed to remove a distortion in the market.
Why is this filed under "Your Rights Online"?
A payment as restitution for price fixing by the RIAA is undoubtedly significant to the Slashdot audience, but it doesn't have much to do with one's rights online.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Much less than a dollar per CD sold actually, RIAA is not a company, it's an industry association with only a limited number or RC on board + big retailers and other orgs and companies connected with the recording industry etc.
What is funny about this settlement is that CD's from indies are by the by more expencive than CD's from the majors that are part of the RIAA that is even if we take output from budget indie labels into account. And indies are often not much smaller as companies than the mayors, in fact some "independent" distributors and retailers are bigger than the ones in the RIAA. However when it comes to screwing artists an indy is much more likely to do so than a major, in fact some indie labels and publishers are quite notorius for NEVER paying any royalities wahtsoever and sometimes have not done so for decades, in contrast this rarely if ever happens with the mayors due to standardiesd contracts and when they are accused of such a behaviour it always turns out to be the artist managment/publishers/master license that is the culprit.
So the people that really overcharge for CD's and routinely pay no royalities get away squat free and RIAA picks up the bill and the average slashdotter thinks that's justice because they do not like some of the other things that the RIAA does.
I'm not American so I may have got this backwards, but where I come from people and companies are not "good" or "bad" under the law, but rather can be held responsible for their actions wich in turn may be considered good or bad depending on the circumstance, local law's rules regulations or conventions. Seeing people gloat over the RIAA because some laywer managed to wrangle a small sum out of them as a cheaper alternatieve than going to court over something that they do not control is a bit sick, the RIAA is facing problems and has reacted rather stupidly from time to time but holding them accountable for everything that's worng with the music business is childish.(the RIAA does not in any way control CD pricing, the combined market share of RIAA companies, while hige is nowhere near big enough to allow that to happen, may infuence it but I doubt it)
Also, a monopoly is one of the conditions where a market economy fails. If there's no competition, prices don't drop. If one organization owns all the means of production in an industry, it's only nominally different from a command economy. We learned this the hard way in the days of Standard Oil, and passed laws against abuse of monopoly power.
The ending of price fixing is a good thing. The punshment for years of the practice, which netted the record companies billions, was completely unacceptible.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
You have a point.
One of the things I regret is taking the $13 settlement check. Because by doing so I relinquished all my rights to sue concerning this matter.
I was recently thinking that it would be an interesting project to get a group of friends together and sue them over the same issue, as much of the legal groundwork has already been done by these lawyers.
Not having received the check, I was tempted to send them a letter stating the fact that they have not settled with me and remove myself off the list.
Then I hear that they are mailing checks.
What gets me is that CDs are still as expensive as ever, so can somebody please tell me what has changed?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"