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Kansas AG Rejects Settlement Discs
RWarrior(fobw) writes "Kansas's Attorney General has rejected 1600 CDs by 25 different artist as part of the music industry's anti-trust settlement. Is this a community values issue, a censorship issue, or just crap music being foisted off onto the public as part of a meaningless settlement?"
What's with all these new records these days? I'm still content with my Weird Al - Bad Hair Day album.
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Music, good or bad, is an expression. Children checking out cds from a library are not going to turn violent after listening to one or two cds. It comes from other environmental variables, one of which I think is lack of guidance from parents. Censorship is censorship, no matter how you try to disguise it.
After hearing of the record co's pulling that shit, it was never more clear the type of people that we are dealing with here. Makes me sick to my stomach that one might think this type of tripe is okay. Glad to hear this move though.
Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter removed 5,300 discs, or 5 percent of the 107,000 his state was scheduled to receive.
And those where just Britney Spears CDs too!
More on topic though, it seems almost like they send the states whatever they have sitting in a warehouse without any rhyme or reason. A lot of those CDs *shouldn't* be in libraries imho.
I wonder if the settlement was for Books-On-Cd as well, as that would of been a welcome addition to the blind and near-blind library patrons.
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Kansas isn't exactly known for its progressive thinking, which leads me to believe that it's mostly a censorship and "values" issue. However -- and the CNN article doesn't help to clarify this because it doesn't mention specific albums -- a pretty good argument could be made in the case of certain Outkast and Notorious B.I.G. albums that it's the RIAA foisting off more un-saleable crap on the public just to comply with the letter of the law.
Just like when they sent a library in Wisconsin 1000 copies of The Bodyguard soundtrack.
Asshats.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
What use would the state of Kansas have for 1600 CDs, many of which are duplicates? The only logical thing would be to put them in libraries and allow the citizens to borrow them so they can rip them onto their hard drives and share them as MP3s. When will the RIAA learn to be responsible and not only help out their customers but also themselves. I can buy DVDs and many computer or video game titles for less money than a new CD. Not that I would be particularly compelled to buy the latest CD anyways, there has been nothing but junk for the past few years when it comes to music.
The "settlement" as we have seen in other articles is crap. Most of the cd's are from groups that no one wants to listen to.
As a parent in Kansas, I think the AG is right to refuse some of the cd's. I watch what my kids listen to (my older kids listen to all kinds of rap)..but not my young daughters.
If the record companies are pissed...so be it. They lost...didn't they?
I'm glad they don't read the books as well, there are authors with sentiments far more violent and twisted than any 90's pop act.
I actually have a lot of respect for Kline whose department restricted the discs. (I live in Kansas)
I listen to a local radio station called 96.5 the buzz, and every friday they do a "current events" day, where people call in.
Well, people started to call in about the CD's incident and bashing it for censorship.
Then a really weird thing happened, the two Junior DJ's got a call from Phill Kline. They did an on the spot interview on why he was censoring them.
I guess what it came down to was that his general rule was
"If the CD has a track that is about violence against women, or the degredation of women, and promotes youth violence then the entire CD needs to be removed"
He said that he supported his staff, because it would look worse for him to allow CD's that had violence in them, than to allow them through.
Since his department was responsible for handling the donations, they were responsible for the content, unlike a situation where the Library system was responsible.
I think this is a good case of Covering his ass, espeically in an environment where everyone is hunting for some moral reason to remove someone, instead of taking factors such as freedom of speech into play etc.
The problem is, I am not as good as explaining his position as he was, and so this is probably going to recieve some replies that were answered well by him in the interview, but I am doing my best to explain where he was coming from.
He did what he felt was important, since this was an issue of a dispersment which he was responsible for.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Is this a community values issue, a censorship issue, or just crap music being foisted off onto the public
YES!!
This settlement was a huge fiasco... it makes the states' AGs look like they were walked on, and made the RIAA look like total losers.
Next time: AGs, go for the cash if you're going to recover damages done by the industry. Heck, I know I wouldn't want 10 crap CDs that the industry can't sell - why do you think your librarians would want millions of crap CDs that no one wants to hear?
Heck, I like Lou Reed and all, but does every library in Kansas really need 12 copies of his worst album of the mid 1980's? Does anyone really think that this settlement saved the libraries any money, or made the world a better place for anyone, anywhere?
The only winner is the RIAA - they got rid of a boatload of crappy inventory, and escaped from any real penalty.
The real issue here is with the settlemens in general, not the specific CD's.
The record companies settled for millions of dollars. They decided to pay this with CD's. In the deal, the CDs were presumably valued at market price.
Whoa! Hold on, the record companies do not pay anywhere near market value for any of the CDs. They pay for the production costs, which sure a hell ain't $16 a CD; more like $0.50.
So this really wasn't any sort of punishment for the recording industry. More like a lesson that they could do whatever the hell they want and "repay" their debt to society with worthless crap.
Why not just give all these states money? It's obvious that the CDs that they are being sent are crap. Who wants 500 copies of Whitney Houston singing the National Anthem?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Well, most notably this is NOT censorship. It's a reasonable rejection by Kansas of crap foisted onto them in the form of a "settlement". The hubris of the music industry in their passing off inventory as fodder for art as value would be laughable were it not so egregious and offensive.
Here in the state of Washington, the CD's provided were highlighted in the local news with local librarians and school officials beside themselves trying to fathom what they were to do with these CD's.
Hat's off to Kansas for some chutzpah and balls to reject these CD's though the music industry skates on the whole deal anyway.
Most odd to me is the permission to the industry to choose what the form of payment in settlement would be. This is similar and as offensive as the wink and nod to Microsoft to "settle" many of their claims by "contributing" software to schools... at inflated MSRP valuations.
This was very similar to what libraries do all the time.
That doesn't make it right. Societies discriminated against blacks "all the time" too.
They did libraries a big favor by selecting these CDs because there's no way libraries could have said what they wanted.
If there's "no way" that libraries can say what they want, it's a flaw in the organization of the libraries of Kansas, not a license for someone else to dictate their content for them. It seems to me that, having continual contact with the public, libraries are more in touch with what the people really want. Therefore, they should be in charge of stocking themselves.
I heard somewhere that the settlement calls for the RIAA to send the states all of their crappy CDs to libraries.
You see, part of a library's mission is to archive the arts for as long as possible. The RIAA was just going to throw away these shit CDs, resulting in the permanent loss of YEARS of crappy music.
In order to have a history of what is now known as the "Modern Crappy Music Era", the RIAA cut a deal to ship all their crap to libraries around the USA.
However, some in Kansas question if "Notorious B.I.G." is really in the "Modern Crappy Music Era". Some believe that these CDs really belong in the "Post-Modern Crappy Music Era".
Only a court can determine the answer.
I don't remember about "violence against women" in lyrics from Lou Reed. Kline is beyond being ludicrous.
Why on earth is the music industry allowed to choose what CDs to send so they can dump whatever stock they would otherwise send to a landfill? This is not a settlement its crap. They should be settling with money or with a selection of _all_ their CDs or those at the courts will. Fuck those bitches totally. The AG was should have refused every single one and asked for more. Lets make a settlement were the defendant is allowed to empty all the fluff out of their pockets and see how that goes down.
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Those who say this isn't censorship are apparently too focused on the ridiculousness of the "settlement" to notice that morality was the reason for rejecting those CDs, not popularity, quality of music, or other aspects that might be relevant to "dumping junk music."
I'm glad I don't live there -- not only does the AG feel the need to be moral daddy, but the libraries think it's appropriate for the AG to do their work for them. Ugh.
No Laughing Allowed!
This purging of objectionable content is censorship -- pure and simple.
.. It would have been more appropriate for these library resources to be presented as is, rather than withheld. If the AG wanted to "make the local library board aware" of some potentially objectionable content would be one thing (though still highly dubious).
This is not to say a person in Kansas can't go buy the material on their own, it's not censorship in the sense of it not being allowed at all (like say Texas in banning sex toys a few years ago).
Kansas AG is a prime example why some types of people should not be in law enforcement, let alone responsible for enforcement of all laws in a state. If a elected official can not seperate their personal beliefs from his official function as a representative of the government, than they should not be in power (A better example is John Ashcroft).
For a little bit of background, in Kansas, with some exceptions, every statewide office by default goes to a Republican unless that canidate goes outside of a loose centrist feel.
Case in point, Dennis Moore, the only democrat from Kansas in the house, ran against Phil Kline, Alan Taft and a few others since being elected. The only way (and this is a subjective observation) he seems to keep beating the republicans is because the local RNC chapter keeps trotting out hard right wingers like Kline to run against him.
Otherwise in Kansas politics, the republican gets it almost every time (the democrats in the kansas house and senate seem to have less power than the democrats in Texas do, at least down there they have the big red button of denying a quorum if absoulutely needed).
Back to the topic / artical
Other topic, Kansas politics makes for an interesting read on the way the party not in power has to play ball in the midwest. Like the fact that the democrats didn't even field a canidate during the 2002 Senate race. Or the fact that the (late) prior democrat governor (Kim Finney) had several parts of her platform that were planks in the republican party platform (prolife being primary amoung them).
Rejected CDs
rejected for Kansas public libraries by Attorney General Phill Kline's office:
* Alice In Chains, "Greatest Hits," "Live"
* Big Punisher, "Yeeeah Baby"
* Blink 182, "Cheshire Cat"
* Foxy Brown, "China Doll"
* Concrete Blonde, "Bloodletting," "Classic Masters"
* Cypress Hill, "III," "Live at the Fillmore"
* Da Brat, "Unrestricted"
* Devo, "Pioneers Who Got Scalped"
* Heavy D, "Heavy"
* Jagged Edge, "JE Heartbreak"
* Live, "The Distance to Here"
* Mase, "Harlem World"
* NAS, "It Was Written," "Nastradamas"
* Notorious B.I.G., "Born Again"
* OutKast, "Aquemini," "Stankonia"
* Rage Against the Machine, "Renegades"
* Lou Reed, "Growing Up in Public," "Rock and Roll Heart," "Sally Can't Dance," "Walk on the Wild Side"
* Silver Chair, "Freak Show"
* Soul Asylum, "Candy From a Stranger," "Let Your Dim Light Shine"
* Stone Temple Pilots, "Tiny Lights: Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop"
* Toadies, "Hell Below"
* "Bad Boy Records Greatest Hits"
* The Wu-Tang Clan, "The W"
* Wyclef Jean, "The Carnival"
If they were guilty, even if they send out 5,000,000 discs, they got a killer deal on this one. Look at the cost per disc to mass-produce. Each copy costs the company almost nothing, yet they can claim losses of ~$24.99 per disc.
RIAA attorneys: "W00t!"
being a patron of the kansas library, I can tell you that libraries can and Should request what they want if the RIAA is going to pay back in CD's. If the RIAA is going to take the low road (big suprise) and go the low cost route, libraries already have a ton of patron requests in their database of music, also any requests for library network items could be filtered in and created as a CD request form.
In the entire state of kansas, they would have no need for as many copies of those CD's as the RIAA would give. They would end up in the rummage sales at the end of the year and eventually the trash. Could the RIAA get any lower?
I don't mind some library censorship, it's still possible to buy a book in whatever subject you want, or to get it from the libraries internet in many cases too. Even if the library censored eminem, who cares. Their track record is pretty good nowadays in Kansas and the real issue is that a normal item at the library costs them at or over retail price. Why would they want to spend a lot of money questionably violent materials just to avoid a censorship rep. They should stock up on more language learning content and updating computer books, as they go out of use in 8 months.
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I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
So which party is the current governor of Kansas from?
...it should be the community that decides what CD's it should receive, not the recording company. Their backlog of crap music can go to whatever landfill it was destined for.
Why not? Why couldn't the ruling have specified that the libraries could choose what they wanted from the RIAA members' catalogues, instead of the RIAA being given the chance to dump 17,000 unsold copies of 'Willennium' on them? *That* would have been a proper punishment for the RIAA - actually being not only forced to give up stuff of value rather than tat they couldn't shift, but also to have to give it up for people to share...
You must think in Russian.
>So which party is the current governor of Kansas from?
Democrat
Once again, the Slashdot writ-up and the actual story do not quite jive together. The story itself is NOT about the fact that the music industry is foisting off crappy CDs that they need to get rid of, as a part of the settlement. What the story ***IS*** about is rap music. The Kansas AG does not like the politics of the music, saying (rightly so) that it is overly sexual and violent. We ***ARE NOT*** talking about the music industry sending 2500 Engleburt Humperdink CDs to the schools and libraries. RTFA!!! And Slashdot editors: Do you even RTFA???? Clearly not.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
A judge does not want a convicted money falsifier to pay his fine using falsified $100 bills. Film at 11!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
DUH. Because the record companies don't want to pay out any money. So they offer free CD's to the states in an amount they say is equal to the value of such albums if the libraries were to buy them for their collections from a retail store. And for some reason, a judge and the AG's were not smart enough to figure out what a bunch of geeks on Slashdot saw a mile away.
The problem is by giving away CD's rather then money as previous posters have pointed out:
1) The libraries don't get to pick what they get. So who cares if they are getting the same "value" in merchandise, they don't buy stuff people aren't interested in, so the discs are a waste.
2) The record company loses far less money themselves, the libraries get the same "market value" but since they are getting the CD's direct the record companies are only losing their own costs on the deal, not full value.
Plus, the record companies get to get rid of unsellable stock.
So, gee I wonder why the record companies don't give them the money...
No realmente, verás: el español será la lengua oficial de los Estados Unidos a partir del 2018...
No me crees? qué quieres apostar?
No sig for the moment.
You think the AG would ban the Wizard of Oz as well. Not only is it violent (2 witches die), but the main theme is a young female who wants out of Kansas.
7 4.htm/ can't think of anything good about their city or state!
Of course, maybe even the AG knows you can hide the truth about Kansas.
Look. Even the people of Topeka http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/state/93055
I can't argue that Whitney singing the national anthem is crap. However, many CD's were rejected on decency grounds.
I can't believe that this crowd thinks Outkast is crap music. Outkast has many excellent songs, some of which are very political and some of which are about other complex themes. To reject it based on decency grounds is not only censorship, but it's the rejection of the genre as a whole as invalid for public consumption.
How did you nerds feel when a judge ruled that video games are not expressive speech? Don't come back and reject the speech of another genre based on similarly idiotic premises.
"If a elected official can not seperate their personal beliefs from his official function as a representative of the government, than they should not be in power"
not true in the slightest. elected officials ostensibly represent the majority of the population. if the majority of the population feels that you should not look at porn, then that is what the majority is there to regulate. it will choose representatives it likes best. if this means people who say profanity online should be illegal, then you're not SOL yet!
you can vote the other way. if enough people feel the same way, then your moral code gets enforced upon me. you think there are laws *i* don't like?
yes, i realise there are exceptions. bush won with a minority of the popular vote. such exceptions are rare, though. i definitely take issue with ashcroft, don't get me wrong. i didn't vote for him. last i heard, nobody around here did. or anywhwere, save the government.
a government by the people, for the people, should be run BY THE PEOPLE. it should not be some monolithic ghostly entity, pulling the peoples' strings (which is really what it has become). the point is, you say a government should not represent the majority of its citizens. i disagree. if most kansans want this bozo to be their "moral daddy" (as you so eloquently put it), that is their right. if you don't like it, either vote differently or kill them all.
but don't bitch about how any system with any vestiges of a democracy doesn't represent you. it's not the government's job to represent YOU, it's the government's job to represent "the majority" (which again, it occasionally fails to do).
another example: do people want drm? reality check: most people don't care. or think they don't. educate them. cast your votes opposing them. kill them. or move to canada, for all i care. just because you are not in the majority does not give you some special right to force your will down other peoples' throats.
"Otherwise in Kansas politics, the republican gets it almost every time"
i suppose it hasn't occurred to you that the majority of kansas residents are republicans? impossible!? not hardly. look at the ballots.
If, in the RIAA settlement whereby a lot of people got a check for $13 and change, instead the RIAA was allowed to send you a CD. Some CD that THEY wanted to foist off on you. Say....something by Notorious B.I.G. A CD that you really, really don't want in your house.
If you reject that CD, is that censorship?
Now...there is an obvious difference between you rejecting a particular CD, and the state AG doing it.
But not wanting to accept something that is unacceptable is NOT censorship. No one has demanded that there be no outlet to obtain that Notorious CD.
The library stocks a lot of CD's. They chose, before this, not to stock any containing material found offensive. Why should they be forced to accept those same CD's as part of this settlement?
The settlement is necessarily bad. That the RIAA chose to give out demonstrably offensive crap to public libraries and schools is bad. And shouldn't be accepted.
Does the Kansas library system censor items it provides? Sure, if you count not buying and providing Hustler censorship. And you do the same in your house.
Wouldn't *all* of this been solved if libraries were simply given credit to buy CD, rather than dump this crap on them?!? If the record companies are not just dumping crap they can't sell on this than the whole thing would be settled by giving each institution credit for X CD's, and be done with it. Then all of these institutions could have, oh, I don't know, expanded their classical offerings, or even the history sections on jazz, or something usefull. It seems odd the the record industry wouldn't opt to give libraries CD's that aren't huge sellers (that people are less likely to buy) just to move that market a bit. As in we all know that the bodyguard didn't do to well, but I'm sure there are a ton of other not so hot CD's that you could dump and at least MAKE IT LOOK LIKE YOUR TRYING.
I guess my point is that we all knew that whoever was handling the case must have fscked up somewhere when we found out that they 'won'. If the companies weren't going to play fair, they could have at least tried a little harder to not make it so obvious.
YHBT YHL HAND.
Is it just me, or doesn't the fact that the ACLU is hopping mad about this, due to the fact that it's censorship:
[from the article]
The American Civil Liberties Union said the decision amounted to censorship.
"What he's doing is enforcing his concept of decency on libraries around the state of Kansas, and that's not his business," said Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the ACLU in Kansas and western Missouri.
AAAHHGGHGHHG!!!! Sweet jesus mother fucker! The ACLU is defending the RIAA.
What!?
You know, americans have a funny sense of Justice. It seems that to americans, the "civil liberties" of large,abusive litigous scumsucking bastard organizations is more important than possibly stopping that same company from blatently violating the spirit of the judgement against them. Well, that and the shitty music they were trying to foist off on the states.
Y'know, sometimes I think it's ok to live in a backwoods country like Canada.
*sigh*
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
I insist that my library contains content that is inappropriate for minors, because if it didn't - it would be completely useless for me.
"Sorry sir, we don't have 'Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time' because the under-10's wouldn't be able to understand it, how about 'Thomas the Tank Engine goes to a Black Hole' instead?"
As with any news article, it pays to look at the source. In this case, it is CNN, a Time/Warner subsidiary, which is just another member of the RIAA. Frankly, I'm pretty much appalled whenever I watch CNN Headline News any more because their "Music" section is just blatant advertising for the latest craptacular top-40 artist they're trying to foist on the american public. I'm not saying that the Kansas AG isn't trying to censor things from the library, perhaps that's true as well, but it's far more likely that Warner Bros. sent them 1500 copies of some shit band that they couldn't sell in the stores, and only 100 CDs that were actually decent (like Lou Reed or Outkast). The funny thing is, in the article, of course they're going to tell you they are rejecting the popular bands, or the ones most people would like to hear, in order to spin the story the direction they want it.
Move along folks, the headline should read "Media Giant's News arm tries to cover up problems from Media Giant's record label."
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
There's a name for that.
It's called "everything the RIAA has rights to".
"Crap" need not ever be explicitly written in such stories. "RIAA" already implies that.
Give the libraries vouchers redeemable at certain music stores, then allow them to get whatever they wish. This solves two issues, RIAA giving people crap music, and the censorship issue. The other thing is that RIAA should not be allowed to provide CDs which they can produce for next to nothing to meet antitrust punishments.
Well, as anyone who has made even a casual attempt to look up a particular song's lyrics, there are no legal lyrics databases, at least in the United States.
Lyrics may not be copied without consent, and as far as I know, the RIAA isn't letting anyone post lyrics. If the above quote is accurate, the attorney general's office is breaking the law.
One of the problems is that parents all too often have the idea that their (and usually everyone elses) kids should be protected from almost everything. For instance, all too many parents would find "The Origin of Species" a serious problem for their kids and even (by extension) "The voyage of the Beagle". Or "Ulysses", or the Koran. This spills over into libraries too. Such things end up in the "adult" area or are even removed entirely.
If you're homeschooling your children, it does them no favors to censor thir reading as long as what they're reading isn't flat out raw porn.
And personally I'd rather have kids reading "Ulysses" for all of its (however brief) adult content than Danielle Steel.
The relevant verse goes :
It is, I believe, about Holly Woodlawn, a noted transvestite who appeared in some Andy Warhol films.
The whole song is about gay men going to New York back in the days when living anywhere else and being open about being gay was at the very least hazardous. Not that New York was all that friendly, but it beat most other places.
of a given CD - find the closing bid on a brand new CD of the same title on eBay + shipping cost, and ask RIAA to use that as the monetary value of the CD. I wont be surprised if they dump 1 million of these CDs instead of 1000 in that case.
So is it censorship if the individual library decides not to carry porn? More disturbingly, is it censorship if the individual library chooses not to carry the latest beheading video from Iraq? Of course it's censorship, by the strict dictionary definition. Just like it was discrimination when I decided to start dating a white girl instead of a black girl.
People need to understand that words such as "censorship" and "discrimination" have incredibly negative connotations, so people recoil in fear and loathing anytime they hear one of these words. But most of the censorship and discrimination that goes on is not objectionable to anyone.
Further, the article basically states that the attorney general did what the individual libraries would have done anyway. So what's the big deal with the fact that the AG did it? Is it less censorship when the individual libraries do it, rather than the AG? If so, why?
The State of Kansas only has to purchase 4 more cds at the regular price over the next 24 months, and all of the cds are absolutely free!
They merely have to pay $2.79 each for shipping and processing. The selection of the month comes automatically, but the head librarian can return it back to RIAA and they will pay for the shipping.
They even have a full 10 days to try them, and if the State of Kansas is not completely satisfied, they can return all of the cds and have no further obligation.
>just crap music being foisted off onto the public >as part of a meaningless settlement?"
Umm, OutKast just scored a #1 album--so obviously *someone* is buying their albums, and hence of interest to libraries. And I've heard of B.I.G., so I imagine he is (or was) pretty famous as well.
This really doesn't sound like Kansas rejected those CDs because they wouldn't be of interest--they felt it would attract too much of the *wrong* kind of interest.
Didn't Kansas also have the educational board that wanted to kick evolution out of the ciriculum??
joab
Well, why stop there? The library has lots of objectionable books for which the majority in the community has no use. Should we stand by and let the government condone these books by allowing them to remain in the library? After all, if an individual has access to them, they can always buy them, correct?
I think we need to form a committee to determine which books we keep and which we burn. We don't want anyone to think we're immoral because we have immoral books in our libraries. Such decisions are too important to leave in the hands of egg-headed liberal librarians, anyway.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Translation for mods:
Not really, you will see: the Spanish will be the official language of the United States as of the 2018... You do not create to me? what you want to bet?
You do not create to me? what you want to bet?
close, but no cigar. The correct translation is:
Not really, see: spanish will be the official language of the USA as of 2018... You dont believe me? wanna bet?
Tu eres chistoso, pero tu tienes razón. Por eso quiero vivir in San Miguel de Allende, donde se hablaron íngles.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Un link mejor: Pensionistas en SMA
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
These settlements should have included "Top 100" for a given window of dates to count as compensation. That they didn't shows that the prosecutors know nothing about either the music biz, or the weasels that run it who they forced to settle, without getting a legal precedent. It's a sellout: music business as usual.
--
make install -not war
Notorious BIG was on Court TV.
I thought Devo was the 1970s.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
It's more of the typical crap Phill Kline (our AG) tries to pull off. I swear he's the Ashcroft of Kansas. Kline tends to pull a lot of this kind of crap. While I agree that it's pretty shitty of the RIAA to give out the misc crap it can't pay people to take, I do think it's definitely censorship to keep libraries from archiving it. If they want to either a) verify a person's age before listening to said material or b) have the child's parents sign a consent form to permit their child to listen to said material then I'd approve of that tactic. I do not however think that an adult should be kept from listening to something a library archives no matter what Phill thinks is profane. What is it about state's in the damned bible belt. First our state's Board of Education elects to omit evolution from our state's curriculum Then Kline gets off on a censorship rant. What's next? No Sunday liquor sales? Oh wait... We don't honor the separation of church and state in Kansas. No uniform Sunday liquor sale laws in Kansas. Oh, and our lovely governess also vetoed our most recent attempt at getting concealed carry legalized in Kansas. Kansas is one of 4 states (out of 50 in case you didn't already know) that doesn't permit concealed carry. 46 states do permit concealed carry. I swear, this state has issues. This writeup was pretty good.
It is not uncommon for Kansas to have a Democratic Governor even though both houses are controlled by the Republicans. In Johnson County Kansas, there is a more moderate Republican appeal. As a result there is constant friction within the Republican party in the state between the conservatives and the moderates. Case in point. Recent primary election in Johnson Count for the right to represent the Republican party in the general election against Rep. Dennis Moore ( Dem. ) pitted Kobach ( Conservative Repub. ) versus Taff ( Moderate Repub.)
something they can recognize in Kansas without a million-dollar consultant. bravo for their AG. this nonsense about "we'll give you product if you just go away and stop biting my ankles," is not a settlement, it's a warehouse cleaning exercise.
you want to make settlements count, three words... Cold Hard Cash. get the cash, not the paperwork.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The music companies basically took the entire inventory that they had been unable to give away for the last 20 years and dumped it on the state attorneys general as "settlement" for the millions of dollars ripped off from consumers during the course of the price fixing fiasco. Nobody can honestly say that the CDs distributed as part of the settlement had a fair market value equal to the amount that was swindled from consumers. I mean look at the list of artists: Michael Bolton, Stone Temple Pilots, and other equally obscure junk. The recording industry laughed all the way to the bank on this one.
Why was this settlement made anyway?
The lawsuit was about artificially inflated prices, the victims were the CD-buying public.
So why wasn't the settlement simply lowering the prices (besides being an extremely temporary solution no doubt)? If CD-buying public lost money, then how is their loss compensated by handing out free CD's to libraries? Somebody who buys a CD doesn't need to go to the library to rent that CD.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
So is it censorship if the individual library decides not to carry porn?
Yes.
More disturbingly, is it censorship if the individual library chooses not to carry the latest beheading video from Iraq?
Yes.
Just like it was discrimination when I decided to start dating a white girl instead of a black girl.
Or a girl who wasn't a serial killer. Just another characteristic. Yup.
Is it less censorship when the individual libraries do it, rather than the AG?
No, it's just as objectionable.
My old city library once had someone donate every issue of Playboy to the library. The library kept them behind the desk (didn't want parents angry that their kiddies were leafing through them), but they were in the card catalog and in circulation and could be checked out. Same for a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook.
Frankly, I don't really think that it's a good idea for parents to restrict what their kids read/watch (talk it over with them, give and justify your views, do whatever you want, just don't "keep them from content", because there's only one way that people mature enough to deal with content, and that's experience). However, that isn't really the relevant issue here -- I'm certainly in the minority on this point. What is at issue is that a group of people should not dictate the set of ideas that *other* people can be exposed to -- this goes above and beyond molding and controlling your own child's development, which is as far as the rights of parents extend -- not to the children of other parents.
May we never see th
All of which is entirely inappropriate for children in Kansas.
:-)
To demonize something, you must keep people apart from it.
Let children come in contact with marijuana or homosexuals, and they might realize that neither is as objectionable as their parents desperately want them to believe.
It would be horrible for the American media to broadcast images of soldiers being killed ("we're going to move you back...for 'security' reasons") or killing civilians, or for photographic evidence of US-led prison atrocities to be spread around ("I find that 'offensive'"), and so on and so forth. People might get stirred up, uncomfortable with what their leaders are doing.
If you want propaganda, don't bother with Fox and friends -- they feed dillute, unsatisfying gruel. For the real stuff, just read the United State's official international propaganda source (currently, it appears that they're smearing the name of the Iraqi politician that turned out to dislike the idea of being a puppet). If you want vaguely more balanced news, try the excellent news.google.com, which includes a helping of different perspectives on stories. It's always fun to read an Arab and an Israeli view on the same story.
May we never see th
What's up with the settlements these days anyway?
Microsoft gets a fine that they can pay in part by giving away their software counting the retail value.
The music industry can offload unwanted CDs while counting the retail value?
What's next? The motion picture industry giving away tickets to a drive cinema showing 10 year old flicks as a settlement?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You seem to be a bit ignorant about what censorship is. As a historical matter the Censors were a Roman invention, circa 400 BC (pre-celtic invasion). Originaly they supervised the census.
From the OED:
Censorship -
An official in some countries whose duty it is to inspect all books, journals, dramatic pieces, etc., before publication, to secure that they shall contain nothing immoral, heretical, or offensive to the government.
No material has been inspected ex ante, nor has publication been constrained in any way. What Phil Kline (I used to work for the guy and I know he is a jerk) did was to decide that Kansas wasn't going to endorse these paticular artists. It isn't censorship.
If you don't give me $50,000 to publish my book you haven't censored me.
"Frankly, I don't really think that it's a good idea for parents to restrict what their kids read/watch"
Frankly I'm betting you don't have kids.
"but "Creationism" is a specific belief system which takes the Judeo Christian creation myth to extremes."
Calling it a "myth" is an assertion of your own religious faith, which includes the faith assertion that the Judaeo-Christian Creation is not true. As long as we clear on that.
"....nobody that I am aware is doing any serious research into what happened before the big bang because all of the laws of physics break down at that point"
Please see this link, one of many which refers to the cyclic universe model. This model definitely has something before the big bang, and those discussing it are far from being crazy creationists or Velikovskyites.