A little-noted news item from yesterday:
The five largest music companies and three of the USA’s largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle a lawsuit led by New York and Florida over alleged price-fixing in the late 1990s.
RIAA & Co. love to spout figures about dollars “lost” and numbers of counterfeit discs seized…. how about some more figures from them: “our industry has overcharged consumers by at least $480 million dollars in the past 5 years alone”….
“We believe our policies were pro-competitive and geared toward keeping more retailers, large and small, in business,” Universal said in a statement.
Previously, the companies said that [price-fixing] was needed to protect independent music retailers from rising competition from discount chains …
Heaven forbid we have any COMPETITION in our free-market capitalist society.
This is why you can’t by 10.99 CD’s at best buy anymore…