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CD Settlement Shipments Unsettle RecipientsRecordings by Eminem and Cheech and Chong will not be among the 77,000 free CDs that the South Carolina State Library will be distributing to public library systems there as part of the settlement of a class-action price-fixing suit against the nation’s five major record labels and three largest music retailers. “Clearly, some things are not appropriate for minors to have access to,” explained Trey Walker, spokesperson for South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, in Columbia's June 16 The State newspaper. Walker added, “There was not a requirement to vet the titles, but we took it upon ourselves.”Librarians interviewed by The State didn’t seem to mind McMaster’s intervention. Lexington County Public Library Director Dan MacNeil admitted that the excluded titles “are not ones that we would probably choose on our own.” Kershaw County Library Director Penny Harvey said that the 1,147 discs she expects to receive will take the collection “from nothing to something,” despite the cost of adding antitheft tagging. “I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.” However, some librarians elsewhere apparently are: The MSNBC website reported June 17 that Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library discovered in its settlement windfall of 1,325 CDs 57 copies of Three Mo’ Tenors (2001), 34 copies of the Bee Gees’ This Is Where I Came In (2001), and 47 copies of the Los Tuscanes de Tijuana greatest-hits compilation from 2000, Corridos de Primera Plana. “Not to disparage the artists represented, but I was pretty surprised by the numbers,” reacted TPL staff member Lara Weigand. Worcester (Mass.) Public Library Director Penny Johnson said of Entertainment Weekly's Greatest Hits of 1971, “It’s an OK album with some decent songs on it. It’s just that we don’t need 148 of them.” Tina Kindo, senior assistant attorney general for Washington, said the anomalies were due to an errant allocation program designed “to give everyone a variety of genres”; it is currently being reprogrammed by claims administrator Rust Consulting of Minneapolis. That came as good news for Wallace Hoffsis, director of collection development for Sacramento (Calif.) Public Library. He told MSNBC News, “We’ve been wondering if we’re going to get 12,000 Yanni CDs.” Posted June 18, 2004. |
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