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RIAA Dumps Unsold Inventory to Settle Anti-Trust Case
theodp writes "A music windfall promised to WA public schools and libraries from last year's $143M anti-trust settlement with the recording industry wasn't all it was cracked up to be. While WA got 115,241 music CDs out of the deal, folks aren't quite sure what to do with the odd collection, which includes 387 CDs containing explicit lyrics by Big Pun, 310 copies of Will Smith's Willenium and 48 copies of Spooky Scary Sounds for Halloween from Martha Stewart."
From the Article: Raunchy music wasn't what anyone in education or the Attorney General's Office had in mind when they announced that a windfall of music was coming to public schools and libraries from last year's $143 million anti-trust settlement with the recording industry.
Yes, but it's exactly what the RIAA had in mind, so couldn't the Attourney General charge the RIAA with the intentional corruption of youth? Gosh if the world was perfect, the RIAA would be charged criminally for trying to push explicit lyrics on children.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
An who in the gov't decided that shitty music that doesn't sell is an appropriate method of payment?!?!
Disgusted. I'm going to go steal some music off of the internet now.
Blar.
The public library system got a bunch of CDs dumped on them, but the district attorney said that they're not allowed to put out the ones by Eminem or other profane artists. So not even adults could borrow them. God forbid we be allowed to decide for ourselves... (and down here in the South, they decide that God does forbid quite a bit of free-thinking)
-jls
Techno-pagan
"Of course, if they're excess inventory"
You've probably come across a nice technicality: the recording contracts with the artists probably state that certain forms of offloading unsold inventory don't result in royalties, and so this "dumping" is a nice break for them: not only do they avoid paying hard cash, but they avoid paying royalties (which they may have been liable for it they dumped off the stock at $1/each), and avoid wastage (i.e. if they dumped the stock into an incinerator for no gain, and an overall loss [taking into account costs of production]).
Very saavy move by the RIAA, which only goes to show how commercially slick and smart they are in business terms, as opposed to the schools who were have been completely shafted because they probably assumed they were going to get some useful music out of the deal.
Class-action lawsuit settlements are one of the biggest scams out there. Friends, family and I have been in 3 or 4 of these over the years and every time and in every settlement I've heard of the cunsomers get crap like coupons -- to buy more products from the people who screwed the consumers to begin with!
The only people that profit are *gasp* the lawyers.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
In 22 channel surround you might be able to hear some way that Ice Ice Baby's beat is different from Under Pressure's. That video clip of Vanilla Ice explaining how his song is nothing like Under Pressure is one of the funniest things MTV has ever shown. For those of you who havn't seen it, Vanilla Ice says "Their version goes like this...ding-ding-ding-dinga-ding-ding...and my version goes like this...ding-ding-ding-dinga-ding-ding". I've probably seen that clip a dozen times and I have yet to tell any difference between his two renditions.
-B
According to the article the settlement state that, "Titles had to be on a Billboard chart for at least 26 weeks and had to peak in the top half of the chart." I can't think of many CD's fitting that description that aren't crapola.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian