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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!"
It would be really sad if being slashdotted costs more than the $13.86 check. I mean, the image of the letter alone is 50k, and it didn't have to be. I hope you have a flat rate, no cap on bandwidth. Course, it's smart to have those Amazon referrer links. Good luck with that. Kind of hypocritical. "Hey, look at my RIAA settlement...now buy some music."(fp)
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Sizzly
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!!!
$9.99 CD.... Plus tax... Your total is $13.86. We, the RIAA, will keep this check we were going to send you and call it even.
Blogzine.net
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
That's not even enough to buy some new CD's. Guess I'll just have to spend it on alcohol!
Hey, with that money, you could almost buy yourself a new CD!
Oh, wait...
... and spend that $13 on an a CD from an independant lable.
LABELS: Capitol Records, Inc d/b/a EMI Music Distribution, Virgin Records America, Inc, and Priority Records LLC; Time Warner, Inc, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp, WEA, Inc, Warner Music Group, Inc, Warner Bros Records, Inc, Atlantic Recording Corporation, Elektra Entertainment Group, Inc, and Rhino Entertainment Company; Universal Music & Video Distribution Corporation, Universal Music Group, Inc, and UMG Recordings, Inc; Bertelsmann Music Group, Inc and BMG Music; and, Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
RETAILERS: MTS, Inc d/b/a Tower Records, Musicland Stores Corp, and Trans World Entertainment Corp.
when you take all of those together, and divide 70 million or so between them, it's not as hard as a blow as we thought it was... (score +1, interesting)
on a side note, did this really need a second story (score -1, troll)
Runnin' On Empty
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
blank cd-r's with my check. If I wait for the right deal, I should be able to 100 for 13 bucks.
While P2P and HTTP may be excellent ways of file sharing, for better or for worse, the RIAA _will_ stop them. Right now they have attacked legally, which is leading P2P developers to make some advancements in the way of encryption, anonymity, etc. The RIAA seems to realize, now, that there really is no way to stop technology. We have already won.
Now they are taking the overused advice of "adopt a new business model", which seems to be services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, BuyMusic.com , Rhapsody, and soon Roxio Napster 2.0.
The new RIAA attack plan is to offer B2P services. The problem? DRM. If I buy a CD from iTMS, for example, it may be $9.99. I would buy the same CD in store for $14.99. No, I'm NOT paying five bucks for the album art, professionally burned CD, etc. I'm paying for the right to do with it what I want. There's something about having "SOMETHING" in your hands. They can't take that away from you, like they can with digital music.
P2P for me is a way of sampling music before buying the CD. This will never be replaced by a $0.99 deal, since I like to download it, and listen to the song throughout the day. At work I listen to different music than at home. At night, different music from the day. Walking music is different from sittin' or driving music. Rhapsody fails here, so does iTMS... you can only sample certain portions, while in front of your computer. It's not the same.
Why P2P is better than HTTP? It's easier. More people use it, than HTTP was used for MP3 trading. Does it matter? No, B2P will overtake them both. There IS a large number of people who ONLY want digital music, that's why they turn to P2P. These people will turn to B2P once it becomes "mainstream."
For the most part the RIAA doesn't have to do legal battles any more (though it is a nice source of income), they can attack it by offering new online services, just as EVERYONE has been saying for years. Me, I'll stick to brick and mortar, and P2P though.
Score 1 for the consumer!" And score 1000000 for the lawyers!
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.
.
My check from the RIAA... Confused yet?
My being part of a class action law suit paid off. This morning I received my portion of the settlement made due to the Compact Disk Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation. I filed a claim to be part of this class action suit about a year or so ago... anyone having purchased a Music CD between Jan1st, 1995 and December 22nd, 2000 was eligible to redeem part of this settlement. Surprisingly, I was part of this demographic since I will on occasion purchase certain artist's CD's whom I deem worthy of my entertainment dollar.
This is essentially my being reimbursed for the financial damages I suffered as a music CD purchaser during a time when CD pricing policy was overwhelmingly unfair to the consumer. I received approximately $14.00 as restitution from both record companies and music retailers. These companies and retailers where indicted for violations of the Sherman Act which works to prevent companies from engaging in shady business practices... in this case price fixing. The defendants attempted to exploit their MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policies to cheat the consumer. The willingness of the defendants to settle with plaintiffs (that's me) with a significant pay out, $14.00 of which will be deposited in MY bank account, more than confirms their guilt.
Here is a list of the defendants (that restitution... these are the guys supplying it):
LABELS: Capitol Records, Inc d/b/a EMI Music Distribution, Virgin Records America, Inc, and Priority Records LLC; Time Warner, Inc, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp, WEA, Inc, Warner Music Group, Inc, Warner Bros Records, Inc, Atlantic Recording Corporation, Elektra Entertainment Group, Inc, and Rhino Entertainment Company; Universal Music & Video Distribution Corporation, Universal Music Group, Inc, and UMG Recordings, Inc; Bertelsmann Music Group, Inc and BMG Music; and, Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
RETAILERS: MTS, Inc d/b/a Tower Records, Musicland Stores Corp, and Trans World Entertainment Corp.
This victory, though not a MAJOR blow to these giant conglomerates, does feel good at time when music lovers are being actively hunted and sued for copyright infringement by the RIAA. I will more than likely use a portion of my settlement to invest in what I consider a legitimate and fair business model --- iTunes. If the RIAA had jumped on the legitimate internet distribution band wagon instead of conspiring to rob the consumer with their aging CD business model through price fixing, maybe they wouldn't be up to their ears in legal fees these days.
My thanks go out to the legal teams and active citizens who were instrumental in the success of this litigation... score one for the consumer (there is a statement you don't hear much anymore).
Here is a scan of the letter I received from the legal team representing the plaintiffs... though I'm still waiting for my personal letter of apology from the RIAA... but I'm not holding my breath. My check was attached to the bottom of this letter, but is not pictured here for obvious reasons...
*****
February, 2004
Dear New Jersey Music Purchaser:
As Lead Counsel for the Private Class Plaintiffs, we are pleased to enclose payment for your claim in the settlement of the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation. This lawsuit was brought by the Attorneys General of 43 states and three territories and by counsel for PRivate Class Plaintiffs on behalf of purchasers of music CDs. In accordance with the terms of the court-approved settlement, payment is being made to music purchasers who filed a valid and timely claim.
Whether you filed your claim online at the settlement web site, www.MusicCDSettlement.com, or by mail, the attached payment represents full payment of your portion of the Settlement. Please note that the attached payment instrument must be cashed by May 20, 2004.
It is a pleasure to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion and to return value to c
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?
I don't know about you, but I JUST want the right to download the song, no service from anyone. I was considering this before when I saw tapes in a record store. If the tape costs $10, and the CD costs $15, am I legally in the right to buy the tape, then download the tracks of the CD, and burn them to CD? Presumably some of the money spent on the tape goes to the actual production of the tape, so how much does it cost for just the right to listen?
This new 'legitimate' downloading helps answer this, kind of. I'll use iTunes as an example.
It costs $0.99 per song to download from a 'legitimate' music service.
$0.33 go to Apple for their storing and serving the song. $0.66 go to the record label.
My question is: Will they ever sell "licenses" to download songs at $0.66/song, and let you obtain the song however you please? (p2p)
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
CDs are luxury items, and as such they're worth whatever people are willing to pay for them.
True. But this doesn't involve "how much people will pay", it involves fraud by way of screwing with the "Minimum Advertized Price".
If the music industry sold their CDs to retail outlets for $30, and the stores then sold for $50, that alone would not have caused the RIAA to lose this case. They lost because they played pricing games, which violate the Sherman antitrust act.
Think what you will, but they cheated and got caught, end of story.
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.
Too bad that copy of the letter you made was illegal. The RIAA will be by shortly to deliver your subpoena.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
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.
This is the same trick as MS does.
Be legal if possible, but if not, then be illegal as hell. Make a ton of money and try not to be caught. If you are caught, then hold it off for as long as possible. The interest alone more than covered all of this. Sad, but true.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
not just on the bandwidth either. the obviousness of the riaa legal ploy is really quite brutal. jack prices in collusion with others, pay next to nothing for manufacturing, lure in first time artists with explosive first albums and force them to sign a crappy contract, then do this for 20 years. then get taken to court and make everyone who want's a check worth less than the cost of a new cd in the store run the red tape to get it (no sir i have never downloaded music). any thoughts as to how much money was made, in profit, from the scam? sounds like piracy to me.
Guess they are stealing that business plan from the Microsoft playbook.
I think, therefore I thought.
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.
Is there an easy way to check? Like a boycott search engine or something?
Yes.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I took my settlement a long time ago.
....
The RIAA can shove their check up their
Who will guard the guards?
As an ex-member of BMG Music Club and Columbia House, I can tell you that those $13 mean squat when compared to the amount of money these thieves, extortionist, ect have taken from people that purchase CD's like myself. I only purchase from independent and none riaa affiliates now. And that nice little check is going straight to the eff along with my other support. There is a hell of a lot better music out there that doesnt make KC's top 40, real artist, none of this over played hollywood bull shit.
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!
Try cheque.
Businesses have customers upon which the businesses depend. Businesses have no inherent right to people's money, they have to earn it.
The word "consumer" makes it appear that the customer is actually dependent on the business, which is absolutely not the case. Car engines consume gasoline because they have to, a person buys a Toyota because they want to.
It's the principle of free will in a free market.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
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"