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Music Download Pricing Lawsuits Pending?
larry bagina writes "New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has subpoenaed Warner Music Group, apparently looking into allegations of price fixing with Sony/BMG, EMI, and Vivendi, and apparently more subpoenas are in the pipeline. 'As part of an industrywide investigation concerning pricing of digital music downloads, we received a subpoena from Atty. Gen. Spitzer's office as disclosed in our public filings. We are cooperating fully with the inquiry.'"
remember downhillbattle and EFF. They are fighting for your rights.
Test 1 2 3 4
"Does he even have jurisdiction for this? Isn't this a federal matter?"
Sure he does. So long as ONE person in his state has been victimized by RIAA price fixing.
Corporatism != Free Market
Dear recording industry: Ha! Merry Fucking Christmas, motherfuckers!
Clever signature text goes here.
The Sherman Act gives state AGs the power to sue on behalf of its affected citizens as parens patriae. Private parties affected by anticompetitive conduct can also sue, but consumers in general ordinarily do not have a cause of action.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Arguably he's done it to boost the public's impression of him, but at least he's done something real good to do it unlike latching on to divisive issues. He's punished so many crooked corps: Wall Street, insurance, payola, and now the music companies again. Here's a profile: Wikipedia Profile The consumers will lose a great public advocate when he goes on to become Governor (although one hopes he'll use his clout there to do even more reform.)
there's no mention of this in the bible, music downloads are just a theory of atheist scientists
You know, the one where they got fined and then CDs still cost the exact fucking same?
It's difficult to not admire the tenacity and inginuity with which he pursues these people. But it's also difficult to make the case that they are punished in proportion to their transgressions. Steal hundreds of millions, but you'll have to give millions back. Where is the disincentive? Collude to steal billions, and be forced to offer rebates that customers won't take wide spread advantage of because we've got to make it convienent for the criminals. These people who do economic harm on this scale, they need to lose everything and spend everyday of the rest of their lives in a very deep, dark, lonely, empty hole. That's disincentive. But to think, we live in an age when half-measures from politicians are genuinly deserving of praise. It's sad.
As the concert date approached, both companies became concerned that the new products would be neither as original nor as commercially appealing as products already available to consumers. In an effort to shield the new products from competition, Warner and PolyGram agreed not to discount and not to advertise certain of their catalog products for a limited period of time, the complaint says
So they decided not to advertise about previous releases?Well,dont many companies do this?Only here,seems both of them decided together.& what competition are they talking about,when they own the rights.?
1. Had there been actual competition, instead of a oligopoly of a few major labels, a decision to market older products less wouldn't have given the Three Tenors any competitive advantage, seeing as how 100 other record labels wouldn't hold back on the promotion.
2. The record companies screwed all other artists that weren't the Three Tenors.
3. Copyright is a (prohibition) right granted under the theory that allowing creators to benefit of their works stimulated them to make more works. If artists didn't get properly compensated, the reasoning goes, we would all be stuck with the same old tripe. In this case, the record companies clearly intended to delude the consumer into thinking, yes, the same old Three Tenor tripe is all that's out there to buy.
4. Pooling two companies' promotion clout allowed them to come on top of the Three Tenor deal. Had they not colluded, they would have taken a loss, to the benefit of their competitors, and the market (the invisible hand should smack down on crappy business, should it not). Competitors that (hypothetically) would play fair wouldn't be able to recoup bad investments in the same way, they'd be SOL - cf. Standard Oil's pricedumping.
So, they screwed the artists, the consumers, competitors, and the Constitution. Not a bad run.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I think you don't understand what "price fixing" means, in terms of the Sherman Anti-Trust act. It doesn't mean that a vendor can't set their OWN price for something...how else would they operate? It means that multiple companies in an industry (that are competitors with each other) can't collude to agree on prices. The point is that if all of these companies get together and say, "Yeah, I won't give iTunes access to our music if you don't give them access to your music, and he doesn't either, except if they agree to our pricing model" then the competition between them is reduced to a cartel. As a result, a de facto monopoly results, which is bad for consumers.
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