More bald-faced RIAA hypocrisy
p2pnet news view | Kids & Kartels:- In one of the most astounding examples of bald-faced hypocrisy ever seen on- or offline, RIAA chairman/ceo Mitch Bainwol is calling for online music companies to implement “effective parental-control filters to provide parents more information and control over what their children can download”.
This is particularly perverse because RIAA members – especially the Big Five record labels – are among the very worst purveyors of porn anywhere and have been repeatedly attacked by the FTC for ignoring pleas for effective anti-porn labelling.
The Recording Industry Association of America is, “providing companies with guidelines for how best to label digital music product in the same vein as the ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers on physical CDs,” Billboard Bulletin has Bainwol saying in a report here.
He was apparerently addressing a public Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop on media violence and children yesterday.
Current ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers are a laughing stock and because there’s no law compelling their application, companies only use them if they’re inclined.
“I think that it is hypocritical for the music industry to claim that it is helping parents by placing a parental advisory [explicit content] label on a CD, while at the same time undermining parents by aggressively marketing the same CD to children.”
The comment came from Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle in December, 2001, a year after then RIAA boss Hilary Rosen said, “The recording industry takes seriously our responsibility to help parents identify music with explicit lyrics. We believe that not all music is right for all ages and our Parental Advisory Label was created for just that reason.”
In 2000 the major record companies were knowingly and deliberately peddling records with explicit lyrics (to use the popular euphemism for obscene and/or violent and/or sexually suggestive content) to kids, said the FTC report, Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children: A Review of Self-Regulation and Industry Practices in the Motion Picture, Music Recording & Electronic Game Industries.
Of the 55 music recordings, “with explicit content labels the Commission selected for its review, the Commission found that all were targeted to children under 17,” it stated.
Then, a couple of months back, “As a guy in the record industry and as a parent, I am shocked that these services are being used to lure children to stuff that is really ugly,”
Andrew Lack, chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment is quoted as saying of the p2p apps in a September 6 New York Times story here.
From Sony Music’s Man vs. Machine by Xzibit – Choke Me, Spank Me (Pull My Hair):
She act like she ain’t gon’ survive the night without my d**k all up in her a*s, so quick, so fast / I see her twin towers and I’m ready to crash I don’t want to love, you / I just want to f**k, you / You should bring your friends, through I’ll f**k you and them, too I know it’s hard to talk with all this d**k in your mouth
Quoted in the Billboard story, Bainwol has no trouble expressing himself. says the RIAA’s guidelines, “will reinforce the importance of consistent descriptors across all services” and should “help parents draw a distinction between the pirate peer-to-peer networks and legitimate online music services.”
