Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Courts Government Media Music United States News

Kansas AG Rejects Settlement Discs 327

Posted by timothy from the because-these-suck dept.
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?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Kansas AG Rejects Settlement Discs More

Kansas AG Rejects Settlement Discs

Comments Filter:

  • Weird Al (Score:4, Funny)

    by ParticleMan911 ( 688473 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:31PM (#9914696) Homepage
    What's with all these new records these days? I'm still content with my Weird Al - Bad Hair Day album.
  • 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.

  • To qoute the article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Judg3 ( 88435 ) <jeremyNO@SPAMpavleck.com> on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:33PM (#9914706) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • 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.

      Exactly. The record companies got over nicely with this so-called settlement. From the titles and quanitities cited in earlier articles, they basically shipped to the libraries crap they couldn't sell and would have been otherwise shipping to landfills.

    • 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.

      And illiterate book-lovers.
  • 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

  • Crap Music (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ev1lcanuck ( 718766 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:34PM (#9914708)
    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.
    • I guess you only need one copy of a popular disc for all the libraries of Kansas. The CDs that were banned were actually quite popular and generally critacally aclaimed. These disks would probably checked out more that 50% of the time. They were banned because the AG didn't like what they were about.

  • Settlement? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rminear ( 2509 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:34PM (#9914709)
    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?

    • Re:Settlement? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @04:06PM (#9914889) Homepage
      No offence, but parents should take a proactive stance toward keeping their kids "in line," rather than a passive one. Trusting the government to fall in line with your particular social and cultural values is just stupid.

      If parents don't want their kids checking out what they view as "distasteful" or "offensive" CDs from the library, then they need to make sure they're accompanying their kids to the library. Just because children are allowed in libraries doesn't mean all the material in them has to be targeted to (or even appropriate for) an under-18 audience.

      I'm not suggesting that libraries should provide pornography, but I'm sure folks who disapprove of some of these musical expressions wouldn't think twice about allowing a Danielle Steel novel on the shelves. "Values," indeed.

      p
      • I'm not suggesting that libraries should provide pornography,

        Notorious B.I.G. CD's are the audio version of pornography.
        [from "Fuck Me"]
        uh, yeah, uh, oooh, oh yeah, mmm, yeah
        Oh fuck me you black mothafucka, oooohh yeah!!!
        Oh fuck me you black Kentucky Fried Chicken eatin'
        MMMMMM, Aaahhh
        Ohhh, ooohhh, yeah
        You mothafuckin' gangsta killin', mutha fuckin black mafia ass

        [From "Me & My Bitch]
        But you was my bitch, the one who'd never snitch (uhh)
        Love me when I'm broke or when I'm filthy fuckin rich
        An
        • The same thing was said about Henry Miller, now he is considered a great american novelist. The problem with obscenity laws are you and I have a different view of what obscenity is. There are many people here in San Francisco, who would consider Rambo obscene, yet I bet you can find it in Kansas Libraries.
          • The problem with obscenity laws are you and I have a different view of what obscenity is.

            Right. And should the RIAA (or a SanFran resident) be able to decide what is or is not 'obscene' in Kansas, and what should be stocked on their library shelves? Similarly, should the Kansas AG determine and enforce what is 'obscene' in San Francisco? I imagine he'd have a problem with the whole gay thing.

            Let Kansas do their own thing, and let SanFran do their own thing.
            {no jokes about who is gonna do their own 'thing
        • What about the under-aged reading Slashdot right now? Smooth, self-contradictory move you pulled there.

      • Library content (Score:2, Insightful)

        by gzunk ( 242371 )
        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?"
      • I agree that it is/should be the parents responsibility to figure out what their kids are/should be reading or watching or browsing. But then too I had good parents who encouraged me to read most anything. (They even borrowed "Ulysses" from the library for me - the library thought I was too young for the books in the "adult" section. It was not an easy read, I'll admit.)

        One of the problems is that parents all too often have the idea that their (and usually everyone elses) kids should be protected from

    • Re:Settlement? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Twisted_Shane ( 803827 )
      I am also a Kansas parent, however I belive in rasing my children all by myself. Personally I am getting really irritated by the rantings of what I can only assume are lazy parents that don't want to be involved in the day to day activities of their kids. I see no need in having the government, be it state or federal telling me what is and isn't right for my children. After reading your post I had to wonder, is it that you don't watch what your young daughters listen to, just the older kids? Quote: "I wa

  • Lucky. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:36PM (#9914720)
    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.

  • Kline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Buzz_Litebeer ( 539463 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:36PM (#9914723) Journal
    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 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"

      Right. You respect him because he is determining what meets those standards above? How about books that feature violence against women? racism? violence in general? What about movies that do the same? Libraries do pay attention to parental warning labels and will not lend out media materials to people who do not meet age requirements. Basically you ar

    • Re:Kline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @04:16PM (#9914920)
      Its not censorship since they're not stopping anyone from listening to it, what they are doing is preventing a government sanction of ideas that the general public does not hold. If you want to get a CD of someone going on for 70 minutes about how he shot every ho hes been with, go to HMV, it has no place in a library or any government run institution.

      Replace the RIAA with Microsoft. No imagine MS was ordered to freely distribute Windows to states. Now imagine one of those states refused because Windows wasn't what the majority of people wanted. Is he censoring software? Ignoring the large group of people here who are going to say he's a hero or something, he's not censoring anything, but faithfully representing his state. Not everything is a big conspiracy and there are limits to everything, most of the content of these CD's has no place in a government run institution.

      • Re:Kline (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 )
        "Its not censorship since they're not stopping anyone from listening to it,"

        I think this alone is an important point about censorship. There is a significant differene between "You can't listen to this" and "You can't get this HERE." Nobody seemed to understand this difference when Slashdot's pitchforks were aimed at the FCC over Mrs. Janet's boob.

        • Re:Kline (Score:4, Insightful)

          by M. Silver ( 141590 ) <{ten.xyneohp} {ta} {revlis}> on Sunday August 08, 2004 @08:50PM (#9916632) Homepage Journal
          It's not "censorship" at all, at least not at that level. They certainly *ought* to reject anything that's not something the library system would have purchased under their current guidelines... these (wait a minute, I should shout this) THESE ARE NOT FREE CDs. These are discs that we ("we" being the CD-buying populace, including library systems) were, in essence, fraudulently charged for, so they darn well be giving us something we *would* pay for.

          (Now, if you object overall to a library system's policies on what they purchase, that's a completely different issue.)
    • I also listened to that station by happenchance. I don't regularly listen to the radio at home or at work, but my car has no cd player, giving me the opportunity to enjoy the recent growth in alternative/rock stations, after many died the year I graduated from high school.

      In part, I believe that its a form of censorship, but there's a larger fiasco going on here. Consumers in areas large enough to have retail music shops like Best Buy or Circuit city, ie places that put out ads paid for by the Record Label

    • No offense meant, but to have a lot of respect for Kline, you'd have to have a lot of ignorance [bostonphoenix.com] for Kline's actions as AG [exgaywatch.com]. I say this as a fellow Kansan.

    • "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"

      Whew, so it's still OK against post-adolescent white males? Philster, you are truly a representative for (some of) the people!

    • Phil Kline is also notorious for harassing abortion clinics and any others who do not agree with his brand of politics. For being an Attorney General, he doesn't have a whole lot of respect for the law. Sort-of like Ashcroft, but worse.

      And yes, I do live in Kansas and some of the elected-officials' actions here drive me batty. And the conservatives on the state board-of-education just gained a majority again, so we may be seeing a return of the Evolution hubbub. Meanwhile the state congress can't decide o

  • The Settlement (Score:3, Insightful)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:39PM (#9914742)
    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?

  • bigger problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 1337 Twinkie ( 795608 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:41PM (#9914754) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • 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.

      Nah. This whole "dump whatever's collecting mold in the warehouse" thing is just the recording industry execs exercising their right to free speech. It expresses their view that laws and ethics are meant only for for poor people; that consumers are just money cows who's only purpose in life is to be milked; and that

      • We really need a "+1 intelligent sarcasm" mod option.

        If I had mod points now I would have very much liked t mod you up, but I don't really know what I'd use. Funny might be appropriate, but it's intelligent too, which funny usually precludes (especially since it doesn't give karma anymore).
  • 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 NOT censorship (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) <{yayagu} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:43PM (#9914764) Journal
    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?"...

    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.

    • 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".

      Define "crap." Clearly for Kansas, "crap" music means music that doesn't agree with the AG's morals, and has nothing to do with the quality, popularity, or other facets of music that people would normally associate with the "crap" designation for music.

      Define "reasonable." If the libraries want to reject material, should they not make that decision, rather than deleg

    • Re:it's NOT censorship (Score:4, Insightful)

      by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @04:19PM (#9914942) Homepage
      This IS censorship, in its worst form.

      Read the article on CNN again. Specifically, and I quote:

      The Kansas attorney general has withheld more than 1,600 compact discs from distribution to state libraries because officials determined the albums promote violence or illegal activity, records show.


      The albums removed by Attorney General Phill Kline's office were part of 51,000 discs given to Kansas as part of a nationwide settlement to resolve allegations of price fixing.


      The Kansas AG has specifically targeted a set of 1600 CDs out of the total distribution of 51000 CDs given to the state as part of the settlement.

      If the AG wanted to take the stance that the settlement is total bullshit -- which it IS -- he should have sent all 51,000 back to the RIAA and said, "Piss off with your worthless crap."

      Instead, by rejecting only 1,600 CDs, he has effectively said, "These 25 different artists are promoting values contrary to those I perceive my constituency to hold, so these 1,600 CDs will not be distributed."

      This is horrible on two counts. He's committing blatant censorship, and he's tacitly endorsing the complete crock-of-shit RIAA settlement as acceptable.

      p
      • 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 th
      • Definately a form of censorship. I find it unnervingly amusing, but not surprising on what they decided to censor.

        An excerpt from one of these 'terrible' cd's (Rage Against The Machine....... gee, i wonder what 'the machine' is)

        Weapons-- not food, not homes, not shoes
        Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
        I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
        Line up to the mind cemetary now
        What we don't know keeps the contracts alive an movin'
        They don't gotta burn the books they just rem
        • Or possibly it had something to do with "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" repeated 16 times, followed by "Motherfucker!" in Killing in the Name, or any of the lyrics of Bullet in the Head ("You got a bullet in your fuckin' head!", for example), etc. Not everything's a friggin conspiracy.

          • Re:it's NOT censorship (Score:3, Informative)

            by ewhenn ( 647989 )
            No escape from the mass mind rape
            Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
            And then play it again and again and again
            Until ya mind is locked in
            Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya
            Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya
            They say jump and ya say how high
            Ya brain-dead
            Ya gotta fuckin' bullet in ya head

            Yes, bullet in the head, it isn't saying go and shoot somebody, its called symbolism... IE, if your a prisoner to the system you might as well have a bullet in your head.

            Same wit
      • "He's committing blatant censorship"

        I'd be more inclined to agree if he were taking steps to prevent the sale or ownership of these CDs. He's not. He doesn't want them passing through his department.

        Frankly, I'm not sure we'll agree on this without some hair-splitting over the definition of censorship. The dictionary says one thing, but the images in people's minds is another. It might, to the letter, fulfill the dictionary term of it, but I'm quite sure people are picturing something far worse.

  • A couple of logical fallacies... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aismail3 ( 735831 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:43PM (#9914767)

    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.

    • Re:A couple of logical fallacies... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JeanPaulBob ( 585149 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @04:17PM (#9914926)
      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.
      What the hell? Forget the article--did you even read the summary? This has nothing to do with the state government dictating the content of the libraries, and it has nothing to do with whether or not they're "in charge of stocking themselves." This is about CDs given to the state by the music industry as part of the settlement.

      There's nothing to indicate the libraries aren't free to stock these CDs themselves--the AG just decided the state wasn't going to provide them unrequested. This is no more censorship than if a parent decides, "I'm not going to give this CD to my son for his birthday." That doesn't mean the kid can't buy it himself.
  • I don't remember about "violence against women" in lyrics from Lou Reed. Kline is beyond being ludicrous.
    • Have you heard Reed's Berlin?
    • From Berlin, "Caroline says/as she gets up from the floor/you can hit me all you want to/but I don't love you anymore." And so on. Lou Reed's lyrics often deal with low-level violence, drugs, S&M, etc. All of which is entirely inappropriate for children in Kansas.

      On the other hand, my local library retains a copy of "NWA's Greatest Hits."

  • WTF is this? a charity shop? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:48PM (#9914794) Journal
    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.

  • 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.

  • Not the first time Kansas AG has acted like this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by satsuke ( 263225 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:52PM (#9914807)
    This purging of objectionable content is censorship -- pure and simple.

    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 .. 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).

    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).

  • List of banned CDs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fenris Ulf ( 208159 ) <fenris@ulfheim.net> on Sunday August 08, 2004 @03:52PM (#9914809)
    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"
    • Gee, what did Live, Lou Reed, Soul Asylum, or Stone Temple Pilots ever do to anybody?

      I can understand the reasons that parents wouldn't want their children to listen to a lot of the hip-hop on the list, but that doesn't give the AG the right to impose his set of morals on an entire state. If the parents don't want their kids listening to it, DON'T LET THEM CHECK IT OUT FROM THE LIBRARY! How difficult is that?

      p
    • That just makes room for more copies of Willennium (if they have any left after sending it to the other states)!
    • It's funny, this seems to fly in the face of the other articles we've seen on the settlement CDs which all seem to be complete worthless crap. There are a bunch of good CDs in that list (issues about whether the libraries are going to stock them aside).

      As on offtopic aside, could they possibly have found a worse picture of Lou Reed for that CNN article?!

      [TMB]
    • Bejeesus, some of those titles are so innocuous it's unbelievable! Stone Temple Pilots for god's sake? Live? And Rage Against The Machine hardly promotes violence against women etc, more a left-wing political opinion, akin to Michael Moore but in a bitter, heavy guitar (and slightly childish, angst ridden) way.

      God, if you're going to ban anything, get rid of the insipid boy band tripe corrupting kids today! Get them to learn a decent taste in music!
    • I bet albums I think are objectionable like Creed, Jars of Clay, and Amy Grant were approved.
  • "there's no way libraries could have said what they wanted"

    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...

  • Wizard of Oz (Score:3, Funny)

    by konaforever ( 744753 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @04:26PM (#9914985)
    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.

    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/930557 4.htm/ [kansas.com] can't think of anything good about their city or state!

  • crap?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Montressor ( 34631 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @04:34PM (#9915042)
    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.

  • Vouchers Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WareW01f ( 18905 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @04:46PM (#9915118)
    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.
  • 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 likel

  • Redundant like "Microsoft Works" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @05:23PM (#9915316) Journal
    "or just crap music being foisted off onto the public"

    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.

  • 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.

  • No, it's really a good deal (Score:4, Funny)

    by lgordon ( 103004 ) <larry DOT gordon AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday August 08, 2004 @07:24PM (#9916107) Journal
    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.

  • the "settlement" was a shit-shovelling exercise (Score:3, Interesting)

    by swschrad ( 312009 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @11:03PM (#9917329) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • The Settlement was Not Effective (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Monday August 09, 2004 @12:25AM (#9917695)
    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.

Slashdot Top Deals

Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one you are least interested, and say nothing about the other.

Close