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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?"
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
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.
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.
So much for 'evening things out'.
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"