Re: [OT] The record industry, RIAA and US law
Michael Marsh wrote:
> On 5/8/07, Jostein Elvaker Haande <tolecnal@tolecnal.net> wrote:
> > I'm left speechless, honestly...
> > http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070507-record-shops-used-cds-ihre-papieren-bitte.html
> RIAA crap aside, it's true that CDs are easy to steal and
> easy to sell. A good friend's apartment was burgled a
> number of years ago, and pretty much all that was stolen
> was his CD collection. Many of those were difficult to
> find at that time, and the total value was many hundreds
> of dollars, probably thousands ($15/CD adds up).
> A 30 day moratorium on re-sale doesn't hurt the store that
> much, the seller still gets paid, and if the discs were
> stolen, the victim has some chance of recovery. That does
> not, of course, justify incredibly invasive personal data
> collection. At most, you could keep collections sold
> together in a single lot during the embargo period, and
> require the seller to sign a simple agreement. The
> agreement wouldn't even need to have any force of law
> behind it. It'd mostly be used for identifying suspects by
> handwriting.
*Ahem*. As somebody who has spent a good deal of time
working in a used record store, I feel qualified to comment
here. For one thing, the resale of stolen goods isn't
generally a big issue in a lot of areas. For another, there
are ways besides fingerprinting every customer and making
photocopies of their identification to deter this sort of
behavior. For example, it is common practice in some areas
to record driver's licence number (not make photocopies of
it) and get a signature from the seller. On the one occasion
I've seen this be an issue, this was enough information for
the police to nab the culprit and for the owner to retrieve
the CDs. Also, it's pretty easy to tell a lot of the time
who is less trustworthy a seller than others (extreme
nervousness, selling a lot of items they're clearly
unfamiliar with, etc.). Record shop owners and employees, by
and large, are not stupid--it's not easy to keep any small
business open as it is. I hate to think what these horrible
laws are going to do to the small business owners in the
states in question; record shops have already been being
forced out of business by conglomerates like Barnes and
Nobles and Borders. How lovely to know that now we can count
on losing our last vestige of choice in these issues. I
should just go ahead and start buying up Corp-o Records gift
cards. Or, actually...how's Canada doing? I hear it's nice
there...
Amy
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