The RIAA beats out Haliburton for the Golden Shit award for Worst Company In America!

[BlooInBloo]

But really, a round of applause for all of the entrants. There are no winners among them - they're ALL losers!



http://consumerist.com/consumer/worst-company-in-america/riaa-wins-worst-company-in-america-2007-245235.php

:applause:


EDIT: Included pic.

[jeff30997]

1. Those greedy bastards deserve it.

:evilgrin:

[Ignacio Upton]

2. Halliburton deserves the award more

And so does Monsanto (maker of Agent Orange, and Bovine Growth Hormone, and other harmful products.) I absolutely HATE the RIAA and their extortion of both file sharers AND artists, whom they use merely as a prop against file sharing while simultaneously reducing their royalties!

To my knowledge, the RIAA hasn't been given permission from the Bush Administration to run amok in Iraq and impose their copyright-fascist world-views. The RIAA hasn't worked with mercenaries, and hasn't screwed our soldiers over in terms of supplies. Of course, if they were given the power to alter copyright in Iraq, they'd have our troops storm Iraqi houses to seize pirated CDs and smash people's computers if they have LimeWire or BitTorrent on them. Hell if they could, they'd raise their own private army to conduct raids on other countries.

[Greyhound]

3. "They had 70,000 people in the same place, at the same time, with the

same interest, and instead of using it to sell them what they wanted, they fragmented it and drove it underground. They wasted the opportunity of a lifetime" - LA adman on the RIAA v Napster suit.

Typical corporate morons :eyes:

[BlooInBloo]

4. LOL! Nice!

[Ignacio Upton]

5. They also sued the makers of the first mp3 player

http://www.virtualrecordings.com/rio.htm

Had they won that suit, there would be no ipod today, and such a win would have been a reversal of the Betamax decision (that 1984 SCOTUS ruling which upheld the rights of Sony to put "record" features on VCRs, something that the movie studios viciously fought against.)


...The RIAA dropped the ball in 1998, and has refused to retrieve it ever since. The only successful "legit" model has been the itunes store, but even that has some problems, with DRM (although Apple's DRM technology is the least strict, compared to other DRM platforms) and a limited selection of songs.

[NJCher]

9. birds of a feather

They had 70,000 people in the same place, at the same time, with the same interest, and instead of using it to sell them what they wanted, they fragmented it and drove it underground. They wasted the opportunity of a lifetime" - LA adman on the RIAA v Napster suit.

Right up there with bush blowing the sympathy we had going for us after 9/11.



Cher

[Patsy Stone]

6. What is the RIAA's death toll?

I think Halliburton wins.

[Ken Burch]

7. The RIAA is an industry association, not a company.

They are capitalist jerks, but they aren't analogous to Haliburton.

[BlooInBloo]

8. Hoovers says they're a company. But I'm sure you know WAAAAY more than Hoovers.

http://www.hoovers.com/riaa/--ID__110848--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml

[Ken Burch]

10. I'll agree that they say that, but that doesn't make it an unchallengeable point.

RIAA is made up of all the record labels and other businesses associated with the recording industry.

I'm not really sure why Hoovers calls THEM a company.

Also, while I don't like what the RIAA does, it's hard to see them being worse, even if we accept for the sake of arguement that they ARE, in fact a company, from Halliburton. Restricting music downloads is hardly as bad as profiting from mass slaughter in Iraq.

[Solon]

11. While I agree that the RIAA isn't worse than Halliburton...

They do have a bad habit of suing everyone and their second cousin for allegedly downloading music, and apparently dead people, grandmothers, and the disabled also aren't immune, nor those that never owned a computer and don't know how to operate them.

Halliburton is an evil company that profits off blood and bones, the RIAA is also evil, but in a different way.

[BlooInBloo]

12. I didn't say it was unchallengable. You said it's not a company...

... I just wanted people to see that in saying that, the reader has a choice between believing you, or believing Hoovers.

I wonder what the RIAA's CEO thinks about the matter?

:rofl:

Please don't admit you're wrong - it's soooo much funner when they don't.