RIAA Continues Distributing Dud CDs to Satisfy Settlement

cosyne writes "Part of the music industry's recent price fixing settlement involves giving free CDs to public libraries. Although they are technically complying with the the letter of the law, they're abusing the spirit by giving the libraries large piles of crud. According to the Stevens Point Journal, '[the] Milwaukee Public Library received 1,235 copies of Whitney Houston's 1991 recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," 188 copies of Michael Bolton's "Timeless," 375 of "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971," and 104 copies of Will Smith's "Willennium."' The recording industry obviously wouldn't want to have libraries loaning out music that people might otherwise buy." See also a related story about shipments to another state.

Comments

They had an opportunity to look good

[erick99]

It is shameful that the RIAA clearly attended only to the letter of the law. I believe that the ruling judge assumed that they wouldn't do something so despicable as to not only send exceptionally outdated/unpopular/fringe CD's but send them in ridiculous quantities.

Milwaukee Public Library received 1,235 copies of Whitney Houston's 1991 recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," 188 copies of Michael Bolton's "Timeless," 375 of "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971," and 104 copies of Will Smith's "Willennium," and nearly everything in between.

I hope that someone brings this to the attention of the judge(s) who could then provide a remedy that includes some sort of formula for how many CD's have to from the current or near-current top-whatever list. The RIAA should be ashamed of themselves. They had an opportunity to look good and to look generous but, instead, they took yet another dump on their customer base. For God's sake, will they ever learn and stop acting like spoiled children?

Cheers!

Erick

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[Ieshan]

Yeah, and the worst part is, it's almost an admission that they don't know the value of public libraries.

If the public library has a complete and total music collection and sued publishers to provide them with books, only to recieve 593 copies of "Martha Stewart's: 'Cooking with the Neighbors", 1,989 copies of "Maxim: The Uncensored Cut", 184 copies of "Pete Rose: How I Gambled and Stuff", and 8,948 copies of "A Year of Baseball Cards: The 1947 Digest", NO ONE WOULD USE THE SERVICE.

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[medelliadegray]

"For God's sake, will they ever learn and stop acting like spoiled children?"

Do you know of any spoiled children that just one day became cultured or respectable? I sure dont. Generally, it takes some life altering experience before a spoiled, well-off individual will take a look back and realise how well-off they really were--and that maybe they dont have to be a fecal matter hole to everyone else to enjoy what they have.

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[yintercept]

The RIAA is using libraries to dump overstock: "Give 'em the printed CDs that we can't sell."

The RIAA could have accomplished the goal of protecting their precious main stream pop collection by giving the library volumes of cultural stuff like Brahms, the pipers of Scotland and what not that teeny boppers never buy. The libraries would have ended up with stuff worth keeping in the collection.

The sad thing about the RIAA using the library system to dump unsold CDs is that it stifles the overstocked market. In the book industry, you end up having the unsold books flowing through dollar book stores where the less affluent can pick up new cds for rock bottom prices. Of course, the dud cds will just be distributed to the public through the library's used book sales, but the buyer doesn't get the satisfaction of breaking the seal.

BTW: There is one big difference between music and books in public libraries. It generally takes a person a week or two to read a book, while it only takes an hour or so to copy a CD. Thinking in terms of checkout days, if it takes an average of 14 checkout days for people to read the Da Vinci Code and a library system has 10,000 readers interested in reading the book in the first year then the library might do something like divide 14,000 by 300 and see that they need 47 copies of the book to fit their demand.

If a music CD averages two check out days, then they will need only 6 copies of American Idol

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[innocent_white_lamb]

There is one big difference between music and books in public libraries. It generally takes a person a week or two to read a book, while it only takes an hour or so to copy a CD.

And therein lies the problem from the RIAA's point of view.

You aren't supposed to copy the cd that you borrow from the library, just the same as you aren't supposed to photocopy the book that you borrowed from the same place. Read and return; listen and return.

The fact that you stated this viewpoint in such an offhand manner indicates that you didn't consider that difference at all.

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[angle_slam]

If the public library has a complete and total music collection and sued publishers to provide them with books, only to recieve 593 copies of "Martha Stewart's: 'Cooking with the Neighbors", 1,989 copies of "Maxim: The Uncensored Cut", 184 copies of "Pete Rose: How I Gambled and Stuff", and 8,948 copies of "A Year of Baseball Cards: The 1947 Digest", NO ONE WOULD USE THE SERVICE.

I think that's the point. Dump enough bad CDs on libraries, no one will go to libraries and people will be forced to buy CDs instead of checking them out.

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[ThisIsFred]

It's obivious that they don't value a lot of the stuff they actually produce. Just goes to show, a release is worth $0 until the one payola-promoted song is on the CD, then it's worth $20. What's seriously funny about this is that the RIAA and crew are actually screwing themselves, because music production, distribution, and promotion is so vertical (and apparently expensive), that there is little opportunity to either let someone else experiment, or to get feedback from consumers. Well, they got their feedback when they didn't sell millions of "Willenium" CDs, but it was a tad late by then.

I can't say that I believe they don't value public libraries, but they certainly have no idea how they work. Public libraries get their funding based primarily on how much they circulate. They wouldn't need any more than maybe one copy of Willenium per 5,000 patrons. You could use anything in that example - one book title, one audio cassette title, whatever. This is good and bad. It's good because it rewards the libraries that best serve the taxpayers. It's bad because libraries are no longer a big archive of collected books (costs too much to track all those dusty titles), and have something more like a B&N store.

Anyway, that explanation aside... Anything donated beyond a handful is really worth nothing, since it is going to circulate. I think the RIAA's message is, "public libraries are an evil hotbed of piracy!" I still maintain that this was a terrible settlement idea, I have no idea what libraries have to do with price fixing when I (former CD buyer) am seeing no benefits, and the government got what it deserved for trying to directly fix the situation.

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[yintercept]

Actually, I was thinking about the digitizing problems. If I were in the RIAA, I would do everything possible to avoid filling libraries with the pop culture music that sells well in stores. I would try to get the libraries to stock up on boring educational oriented CDs that people are not likely to copy to their MP3 collection.

For that matter, on rereading the attached articles, I actually find myself sympathizing with the RIAA's choice of donated CDs. The articles are upset because the library didn't get a boatload of the popular music that people want. To a large extent, I think collection of music at the library should be about expanding the exposure to different types of music, rather than just playing the greatest hits of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

What I want in a library collection is a large number of obscur titles that I am likely to listen to once or twice. The only problem I have with the RIAA's selection is the large number of duplicates. It is not with the obscurity of the titles.

Re:They had an opportunity to look good

[Trepalium]

The problem with the titles is not the obscurity, but rather that they are all titles that the music industry expected to do well, but did not, and are using them to dump into the libraries. The music titles themselves have no cultural, political, or historical significance. Instead of throwing away these titles, as they would've inevitably done, they're dumping it into the library system.

Sorry. I hate the RIAA

[Ckwop]

The RIAA expects the customers to hand over cash for overpriced CDs, appealing to morality for justification, and yet in act of gross duplicity it gives libraries crud just to spite them because they lost a court case. This isn't about morals, it isn't even about the artists.. it's about the bloody dollars.

Don't get me wrong. I don't support piracy but the RIAA's approach isn't exactly making me willing me to go out and buy their dross. Fear not, technology has destroyed industries before. The nice thing to know is that it's usually pretty ruthless in that it takes no prisoners. I doubt the RIAA will be the exception. No amount of law making saved the canal boats from the invention of the automobile.

We now have the infrastructure to pay the artist not the army of lawyers, executives and other useless staff. I think all artists would prefer a return to the music and less of the obsession with the dollars. I'd be more willing to fork out the dollars (will pounds in my case) if I knew the artist was the key beneficiary?

Simon.

Re:Sorry. I hate the RIAA

[NanoGator]

"Vote with your wallet. Do not buy their product, that is the only way you can have change."

Yeah, like DMCA2. The RIAA will chalk up any losses to piracy. They won't get your message, instead they'll twist that data and use it to get new really bad laws in place.

Wish I had a strong alternative, but really I don't. This is as good of time as any for somebody to speak up.

Re:Sorry. I hate the RIAA

[RLiegh]

(The last version of Windows I owned legally was Windows 95 BTW ;^)

By illegally using windows, you are still supporting MS, if nothing else but by using their file formats and by giving them marketshare (no, not for their OS, but for their other products).

Now, if you dropped windows entirely, then you'd be sticking it to the man. ;)

Re:Sorry. I hate the RIAA

[rppp01]

Vote with your wallet?

Some of us have for years now. But realize the more we don't buy anything from them, the more they claim that piracy is stealing money from their pockets. This in turn will get them to lean heavily on Congress to push more laws that force people to pay more for less.

This isn't simply capitalism anymore. This is extortion. What's the next step? Fascism?

Re:Sorry. I hate the RIAA

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I really do wonder where this is going to end. In 100 years, will people look back on this as the time when corporate greed destroyed the American music industry?

People will look back and laugh at the quaint historical anomaly called "the music industry" -- a beast that did not exist prior to 1890 and probably won't survive past 2040 or so.

Re:Sorry. I hate the RIAA

[Technician]

Throwing out the baby with the bath water is the best description of the RIAA and MP3's.

There are always going to be people using MP3s legitimately, though the RIAA doesn't see MP3 players as being anything but tools for stolen property.

Too bad the RIAA is bent on killing the most used compressed format. If the MPAA wants to sell movies, they know to sell them in VHS and DVD.

The RIAA has no interest in releasing high quality MP3's, that will play in my living room (DVD player plays MP3's) in my car (MP3/CD jukebox) or at the gym (CD/MP3 player). They are only interested in selling tunes at low bitrates that can be played only on the PC that downloaded it, and/or on a propritory player. Sorry guys. If I can't play it wherever I am, I won't buy it. I have yet to find a DVD player, portable CD, and car CD player that will play the same encrypted music file that most sites try to sell online.

Maybe in a few years, Panasonic will make a portable CD MP3 player that will play content from i-Tunes and Napster. Maybe Kenwood and Pioneer will make the same for my car. Maybe Mitsubishi will make a DVD that will play them also. In the mean time, the RIAA is selling content that's not compatable with my playback devices. The MPAA knew enough to release movies on VHS. The RIAA would rather throw out sales of usable high quality MP3's in the MP3 format in the war on piracy. I'm missing that kid the RIAA tossed out with the bathwater.

Blame the Judge on this one

[nurb432]

He should have been savvy enough to predict a stunt like this, and specified what was 'acceptable' in a bit more detail in order to prevent it..

Give a snake an inch, and they will try to eat you...

Re:Blame the Judge on this one

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the RIAA be punished with the charges of Contempt of Court by pissing off the judge ?

Re:Blame the Judge on this one

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

There's no set of rules one could come up with that SOME clever \ devious person couldn't find a way to exploit.

How about: You are to send them $X in cash or bank notes; you are not to write this off on your taxes as any sort of "donation"; and you are list the outlay in your stock prospectus as a fine levied on the company.

The issue here, as usual, is that the parties settled. Generally, in a settlement, the group with the bigger lawyers comes out on top. In this case, the schools simply never had a chance.

What's this going to cost in storage?

[JayBlalock]

It's kind of sweet, how the people in charge are attempting to put some kind of positive face on this. Yes, they DID get a lot of CDs, and they might potentially be able to sell them (at pennies on the dollar) in fundraising. But in the meantime, what's it going to COST the schools \ libraries dealing with the mess? Cataloging and storage isn't cheap. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, this ended up costing the schools (and therefore, the taxpaying public the RIAA was originally convicted of ripping off) more money than it brings in.

You can almost imagine some high mucky-muck at the RIAA laughing maniacally and twirling his moustache as he pronounced this.

Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody really expect any better from these slimeballs?

Another Day...

[One Childish N00b]

...another tantrum from the RIAA.

When are they going to realise that when people hear about them doing this stuff, it makes them less inclined to buy their content? RIAA tantrums induce piracy because of the affect on thousands of people every time who will refuse to buy crap from such a selfish company.

All companies are out to make money, but haven't the RIAA heard of a little thing called 'PR'? They spend enough trying to make their latest teeny-pop artist look 'cool' and 'must buy' - why don't they pool their marketing expertise and realise that when they do things like this, they make themselves look bad and in turn discourage people from buying from them - effectively inducing piracy.

Also, how many copies of 'Willennium' do they have to distribute? Every time I see an announcement like this they're handing out a new 3-figure sum of the damn things to some poor public institute!

Related Article

[TheFlyingGoat]

There's more info at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Among the quotes: 'She said there was even mold growing on a few of the 520 CDs received in Mequon - a five-disk 1999 set titled "Respect: A Century of Women in Music." ... It was disappointing because we could have actually used that one'. As a Milwaukee resident I know I'll be running to the library to check a few of these out. :P

Duh!

[HeyLaughingBoy]

What else did anyone expect? If you force me to give away 10% of my possessions of course I'm going to find the 10% of crap that I don't like, never use, or can't even sell at a garage sale. Goodbye argyle socks!

Want a real settlement? Should have made the terms such that they only give away Top 100 stuff or something like that (or better yet, cash!); otherwise there are no grounds for complaint.

Besides, I'm pretty sure that in a country of almost 300M people, at least a few like Whitney Houston

Idiots

[sheldon]

And I'm not talking about the RIAA.

What did you expect?

Frankly I think it's a creative point-making excercise by the RIAA. You complain about good CDs costing money, but you forget the fact that they've got 10,000 copies of Whitney Houston's recording of the Star Spangled banner sitting in a warehouse cause nobody wants that crap.

For every good CD that you want to buy, there are 20 others published that very few people give a shit about.

The CD prices are fine, quit your whining. If you don't like it, don't buy CDs! That's the only way you are going to hurt them, with your free market wallet.

Re:Idiots

[hendersj]

CD prices are fine? Then why were they convicted of price fixing?

The promise of CDs back when they first came out was that they were cheaper to produce than cassettes. Yet the cost of CDs has consistently - since the release of the CD as a format - has been higher than cassettes.

RIAA have the nerve to claim piracy is cutting into their profits, yet they are convicted of price fixing. Could it possibly be that the prices they've fixed are not prices the market will bear for the crap they produce? No, it has to be pirates, it couldn't be that RIAA turns out total crap and then tries to charge a price that the market simply won't bear.

Myself, I stopped buying large amounts of CDs years ago. I don't download, and I don't pirate songs, I just haven't found much worth paying any amount of money for in probably the last 5 years, and those that were worth paying for weren't worth the asking price. The few CDs I've purchased in the last few years have been used, because those prices are a lot more reasonable and in line with the actual value of the content on the discs.

Every year I vote against Hatch (I live in Utah) and every year that bastard continues to get elected.

Re:You voted for the RIAA

[erick99]

Ya know, before you adapt such a shrill tone and make wild assumptions, you might have asked those questions, first. However, I think it is more fun for you to behave like a self righteous shill for the cause-of-the-day. I don't buy their music. I do buy from local bands. My collection is stuck somewhere in the 80's. Oh, and you can go to hell.

Cheers!

Erick

Classical Music

[nick.cash]

It seems like about half of what they got was classical music. To me, this makes a lot of sense for a library to have.

Now, the duplicates and Michael Bolton crap are certainly inexcusable, but the classical music seems perfectly legitimate.

Give the library the choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I cant fathom why the libraries weren't allowed to choose the CDs.

By giving the labels the ability to choose what they hand out is obviously going to lead to them dish out whatever at the minimal cost, hence they dump CD's that were too crap to meet sales expectations, and which they wont lose sales due to the rentals. Giving "aid" where the recipient has no choices has been proved again and again to be highly inefficient.

The labels are supposed to be getting punished, not awarded some trivial exercise in PR.

Duhcracy

[Doc Ruby]

With Orrin Hatch as their champion in the Senate, the RIAA will get away with any stupid acts they deem profitable.

It's nice to know...

[DumbWhiteGuy777]

It's nice to know someone in the RIAA has a sense of humor.

Re:You voted for the RIAA

[Sexual Asspussy]

What the fuck did you just say? You actually gathered 10 friends to buy one fucking $15 CD and you call this a compromise involving -- how did you call it -- support bands you respect?

Let me break it down for you real slow.

Bands get JACK SHIT when 10 people buy 10 $15 CDs.

Bands get (say it with me you simple piece of shit) LESS THAN JACKSHIT when you start your own burning club.

I'm not saying I wouldn't copy music for ten friends of mine. Firstly, I'm making fun of you for not buying a $15 CD your damn self, having had three years to save up for it. I am also making fun of you for rationalizing that your little plan was to benefit anyone other than yourself, and was somehow, in your lukewarm, clotted brain's defective worldview, fair to bands. I think that makes you look very silly. Actually, not silly so much as Richard Simmons, Greg Louganis, bathhouse-scrubbing, popper-huffing, dying-of-mouse-pneumonia-at-38 gay.

Take some action

[serutan]

Does anybody still have sympathy for the RIAA any more? They've been acting like a bunch of selfish 4-year-olds for years. "They're only protecting their legal rights." Record companies excel at doing exactly what is required of them and nothing more. They've honed this skill over decades of writing usurious recording contracts. And when that's not enough they get new laws written to suit their needs. What they do is wrong.

If you live in Utah, please VOTE AGAINST Senator Orrin Hatch, the entertainment industry's number one toadie and one of the most technologically clueless legislators in the country. He's the guy who a couple years back said record companies should be allowed to attack the computers of people whom they suspected of copyright infringement.

If you live in Kansas, please VOTE FOR for Senator Sam Brownback, who introduced the bill last year that stopped the RIAA from getting rubber-stamped subpoenas for identities of internet users they decided had infringed them.

If you live anywhere else and you are interested in the copyright issue, don't just read Slashdot, look up your senator's voting record and vote accordingly.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

If the RIAA was ordered to pay libraries

[Orion Blastar]

a settlement, would they have used Confederate Dollars? :)

Actually have the libraries use eBay or half.com to sell off the extra CDs they don't want, and then buy the ones that they do want to have in stock. That way the RIAA doesn't get any more money from them.

spite

[Doc Ruby]

Everyone I ever knew who worked in management or promotion of pop music hates their customers. At best they're condescending, thinking of the public as millions of unpopular children in the playground, who depend on them, the popular kids, to "have a life". It's no surprise that, when these music biz bullies get power over the consumers, they shake them down and deride them at every opportunity

Best quote of the article.

[u-235-sentinel]

"We definitely have duplicates and we have a lot of plain - is there a nicer word than junk?" Medenwaldt said.

Best quote of the article. It's no wonder that the music industry has been hurting for so long. They sell "junk" and people respond by not purchasing it. Obviously the RIAA is aware of this otherwise the CD's would never have been shipped to the libraries.

Very sad.

and why

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't we seen the artists stand up for their rights? I think it is the artists responsibilty to stand up to the riaa and say no and no to the record industry as well. Isn't it pretty much obvious by now who they really care about? If the artists are to protect their own future they should do so now and stand up and call a reform of the record industry.

Re:Not that bad

[dema]

Its understandable to say the media may have picked what they wanted to highlight. And maybe some people would love to check out Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971. But do you really think a library needs 375 copies of it? IMO, the problem here is quantity, not quality (although I am in no way implying that any of the quality is good, again, IMO).

Re:You voted for the RIAA

[fleener]

> I was thinking that if I stopped supporting
> RIAA attatched bands that I respect, that they
>might get a clue, and start some independant
> release scheme, but them realized that that is dumb.

It's that kind of thinking that keeps RIAA and Microsoft in power. It's also what keeps America's political duopoly in power, but that's a separate debate.

Re:Not that bad

[Stick_Fig]

The good stuff (the best recent mainstream stuff I saw: Ben Folds Five, TWO Outkast discs (in fact their best two), Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, and some good archive stuff by Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, etc.) was only in small handfuls in comparision to the Whitney Houstons and Will Smiths in there. Putting a handful of good stuff in with the crap does not take one's eye off the huge amount of crap in the pile. I don't think the media sensationalized it one bit. If some truck driver dropped off 1,500 copies of the same CD of Whitney Houston singing the Star-Spangled Banner, wouldn't you be a little pissed too?

In their defense

[nwbvt]

That was a stupid part of the settlement.

I'm curious, would everyone be happier if they gave out free Brittney Spears CDs?

Give Credit where its due and bill for the garbage

[Obaki]

Libraries and schools should issue a receipt to the RIAA in the amount of $14.95 per title delivered. And a bill for disposing of the other 1039 copies.

Re:You voted for the RIAA

[Cecil]

one person does not make a difference

Sorry, guy, I think you're wrong. One person does make a difference, it just doesn't happen instantly. The red sea does not part, angels do not descend and sing. It takes blood, sweat, tears, effort, persistance and sacrifice. The instant-gratification mentality that pervades society isn't going to get you anywhere.

RMS is one person, he has made a difference. The Apache group were just a few people, they have made a difference. But you don't have to be them to make a difference. Look at Linux's slow progress. It isn't happening because Linus or RMS or anyone else is working super hard to get things done. I don't deny that there are people working hard on Linux at the moment, but that's not why it's becoming a force to be reckoned with, that's not why more commercial software than ever before is being developed for it. It's because of one person at a time switching sides, and adding their small voice to the movement. Even if they never actively do a thing, all it takes is one person to see their Linux desktop, or see their count in an access log, and they've made a difference.

It'll take time, but if you support indy music, you'll be a part of killing the RIAA by death of a thousand cuts. It won't happen tomorrow, and you won't be the person who tips the balance, but that doesn't mean you don't matter.

Let librarians do *their* job

[Randym]

Although they are technically complying with the the letter of the law, they're abusing the spirit by giving the libraries large piles of crud.

Librarians are professionals. Mandating the dumping upon them of CDs of the RIAA's choice is just insulting; the judge should have made this *subject to the approval of the librarians*.

I suggest to the librarians that they keep the CDs which -- in their *professional* opinion -- are worth keeping, and *send the rest back* (at the RIAA's expense, of course). Repeat until enough CDs have been received that fit the *librarians'* criterion for inclusion in the collection.

The RIAA of all "people" should *not* be allowed to decide what the libraries get -- especially since they *lost* the case.