Elliott Spitzer Investigating Music Industry MP3 Price Fixing

From the LA Times:


Pricing of Music Downloads Is Probed
Warner Music discloses a subpoena by New York's Spitzer in an industrywide inquiry.

By Charles Duhigg, Times Staff Writer

Eliot Spitzer is taking on the music industry again, this time over the pricing of digital downloads. Warner Music Group disclosed Friday that it had received subpoenas from the New York attorney general as part of an industrywide probe into how much record companies charge for digital music.

According to industry sources, who declined to be identified because the probe was continuing, Spitzer is reviewing whether the companies conspired to set wholesale prices.

Wholesale digital music prices can range from 60 cents to nearly 90 cents a song, according to industry executives. Operations such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes, the most popular digital music source, then sell songs to users for 99 cents per download.

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-warner24dec24,0,3015790.story?coll=la-home-headlines

See also:


http://p2pnet.net/story/7414

and

Mom Fights Downloading Suit on her Own
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2006998





Cher

I mean, check out the last link in your post:

...

Her travail started when the record companies used an investigator to go online and search for copyrighted recordings being made available by individuals. The investigator allegedly found hundreds on her computer on April 11, 2004. Months later, there was a phone call from the industry‘s "settlement center," demanding about $7,500 "to keep me from being named in a lawsuit," Santangelo said.

Santangelo and Beckerman were confident they would win a motion to dismiss the case, but Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the record companies had enough of a case to go forward. She said the issue was whether "an Internet-illiterate parent" could be held liable for her children‘s downloads.

Santangelo says she‘s learned a lot about computers in the past year.

"I read some of these blogs and they say,

Why didn‘t this woman have a firewall?‘ she said. "Well, I have a firewall now. I have a ton of security now."

http://www.leadingthecharge.com/stories/news-00116495.html

Ah, that's one aspect of capitalism that needs to be enforced in order for a capitalistic system to survive: Property law. Without such ideas, I could not, for instance, buy up homes in an area and force people who need the homes more than I do to pay me rent. These guys demand "hush money," or they'll kneecap you with a lawsuit. They operate almost like the mafia with the protection rackets.

after all, if someone breaks into your house and steals your stuff they are only protesting those pesky capitalist "property laws"
and therefore have the right to take anything they want.
Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

The simple fact is I never said a person couldn't own a home. What I object to is owning several homes when one is sufficient and using the extra homes to make a profit off others. If this were the dark ages, then my example would simply be a case of the feudal landlord using more primitive methods of coercion to force people to pay rent.

I object to the notion that something such as art can be homogenized, commoditized, and commercialized beyond recognition for the gain of a relatively small number of shareholders and their CEOs. There used to be a time when record companies tried to convince musicians to join their labels. Now they control everything, and musicians are basically forced to submit to the record companies and sign away, in many cases, their own music to the corporation's control.

My account always seems to be charged in whole dollar amounts, even though songs aren't 1.00. They sell millions of songs, and those extra pennies surely must add up. Plus, I've downloaded enough music from them that that 99 of those extra pennies should have bought me another tune.

Hey, I'll still 'em. But I'm just sayin.