Judge OKs settlement in music antitrust suit 3+m consumers receiving nearly $13 each.

CNN. com ^ | June 17, 2003 | staff writer

[yankeedame]

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- A judge has approved a settlement agreement in a music antitrust lawsuit that will result in more than 3.5 million consumers receiving nearly $13 each.

Judge D. Brock Hornby issued a 51-page ruling Friday in the case that began in 1996 when attorneys general across the country began investigating whether distributors and retailers had conspired to inflate CD prices.

[yankeedame]

"Pack up the kids, honey, we're going to McDonald's!"

[Martin Tell]

I put claims in for my entire family, well almost my entire family. I thought it would have pushed it a bit to claim my son had bought over-priced CDs since he wasn't born at the time.

McDonald's is about right. My 3 claims will just about cover what we spent last weekend at "Finding Nemo", if you count the over-priced popcorn.

All-in-all the child tax credit check (W. assured me it's in the mail) will amount to a lot more, but every bit helps these days.

[autoresponder]

Enough to buy a Dixie Chix knock(-off) CD in NYC.

[thatsnotnice]

"This settlement will put cash in the hands of millions of consumers and music CDs in libraries and schools throughout the country,

Hmmm? On the one hand the music industry is peeing all over themselves about people downloading music for free, meanwhile libraries all over have just about every CD and DVD in the world.

So you just go to the library and check out a CD (up to 20 here) and go home and copy them. Repeat. No more waiting all night for downloads is the only difference I see. They have computer games on CD too. Not good ones, but they do have them.

[Alex Murphy]

Old settlement disapproved Of the total settlement, $75.7 million would be distributed in the form of 5.6 million music CDs sent to libraries and schools throughout the nation.

And now you know how the record companies plan to get rid of all those Vanilla Ice records they couldn't sell.