RIAA Wins Worst Company In America 2007

An anonymous reader writes "After 15 punishing rounds of combat involving 32 of America's most hated companies, 100,000 voters have spoken: More hated than Halliburton, more despised than Walmart, the RIAA has defeated all comers to become the Worst Company in America 2007."

I Demand a Recount

Ok, just in case RIAA demands a recount, I've selected the final 8, and added 2 from the final 16 that were "close calls."

This is a poll:
Worst Company In America - 2007

Verizon [impoll.net]
U-Haul [impoll.net]
Sony [impoll.net]
Exxon [impoll.net]
Clear Channel [impoll.net]
Halliburton [impoll.net]
RIAA [impoll.net]
Walmart [impoll.net]
Comcast [impoll.net]
Best Buy [impoll.net]

Re:I Demand a Recount

The truly funny bit was that this article came up with an ad for Sony's Blu-ray Disc Player.

Cheers,

Ethelred

They won't - the RIAA won

The RIAA doesn't care if they are voted the 'worst company' - they have succeeded. Since they don't sell anything to the public, the fact that all the hatred has stuck to the RIAA _instead_ of the companies they represent, they have succeeded entirely in this goal - and I predict most people are too blind to this fact to see that this is anything other than an extremely hollow victory. The RIAA doesn't care if they are unpopular with the general public - because the general public is not their customer. So long as the hate and bile sticks to them, instead of the record companies they represent - they are winning.

what about...

Cowboy Neal Corp? That's always an option...

Since when is the RIAA a company?

I thought they were an anarcho-fascist commune....

Re:Since when is the RIAA a company?

Yeah, a company.

Re:Since when is the RIAA a company?

No, they're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. They take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting.

Re:Since when is the RIAA a company?

No, they're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. They take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting.

Artists: Help help, I'm being repressed.

Lawsuit victims: Ah, now you see the violence inherent in the system!

Look:

Strange women [mccullagh.org] standing on the steps of the Supreme Court distributing BS is no basis for a system of artist compensation.

Re:Since when is the RIAA a company?

The RIAA isn't a company. It's a trade association.

An arbitrary distinction. They are incorporated in New York, so they are as much a corporation as any other. The fact that their entire customer base consists of a small clique of recording industry companies is wholly irrelevant. They are merely the non-profit* collective "beard" of their members, allowing them to pawn off their dirty work on a faceless third party.

* their lobbying efforts alone make their non-profit status pretty hard to justify under 501(c)(3)

Re:Since when is the RIAA a company?

* their lobbying efforts alone make their non-profit status pretty hard to justify under 501(c)(3)

But they are not registered as a 501(c)3.

501(c)3 is a designation for non-profits to whom personal donations are tax-deductible; there are many, many non-profits that do not fall under this category. Under federal tax law, a business may still deduct donations to a lobbying non-profit as business expenses, if the lobbying is in support of the business interests of the business -- personal contributions, however, aren't exempt.

Yet another way the corporations and their crony legislators have reinforced their domination of the legislative process.

comcast

Why wasn't Comcast in the poll. I would have voted them all the way.

Re:comcast

um, sony beat them in the first round [consumerist.com]

Re:comcast

When I went to move out of the previous apartment I lived in, I rented a Uhaul truck. We arranged the details two weeks in advance, and they promised it would be set up.

When my parents arrived at the uhaul rental place to pick up our large truck, they had none on the lot, and informed us that the nearest one was roughly 200km away, in the opposite direction from where I needed to go. They offered us a trailer that was 1/3rd the size as the best they could do.

So here I am on moving day, with nowhere to store my stuff, no truck to put it in, and no other options. By a strange fluke of luck I managed to get the landlord of my new apartment let me move in a day early, and we just ferried it over.

I'd say that's why Uhaul is worse. If Best Buy fucks up, you just have to wait a little while longer (I'm sure someone will have a story to prove me wrong, but whatever). But if Uhaul fucks you around on moving day, you're boned.

Re:comcast

that- or they stick you with an 80's heap that guzzles down gas like beer and gets about 4MPG when you're making 3, 100 mile roundtrips (200 miles total per trip). My gas bill was terrible. In their defense, they did refund me most of the rental after showing my gas bills, but it still was not a pleasurable experience.

I got my revenge on moving day a few years later- I was renting a 26 foot monster and despite them promising me an automatic, I got a manual (never drive one). Being studious, I understand the mechanics of a manual and figured a few minutes in the parking lot (or perhaps an hour) and I'd have it down. I didn't know of course that when you start the thing, there's no park and they often leave it in gear to keep it from rolling in the lot- so when I tried to start it up to do a pre-trip (I leaned in from the side), as the engine started cranking, it shot back into the truck behind. It did minimal damage, so they let it go and sent me out of there with an automatic, albeit smaller. Things went well from there, but the bigger truck would have been helpful. Anyway, the point is, they pulled the same trick on me and it caused an accident.

Re:comcast

I am looking for +1 revenge in the moderation combobox ...

Re:comcast

A couple years ago my credit card got rejected. I was shocked and checked my statement, and found that 3,000 dollars had been charged to a UHAUL in Columbus, GA, where I had been stationed previously. Since I had been moved to Germany a month previously and had never set foot in a UHAUL store anywhere, it was pretty easy to prove that I had not made the charges (don't know how my credit card number got out... I'm guessing at a restaurant). Anyway, MasterCard agreed with me and decided that UHAUL would have to foot the fraud bill since they did not verify the card holder identity or even actually physically see the card.

So, there you have it, bad karma has a way of coming back at you, even if you're a company.

Re:comcast

When my parents arrived at the uhaul rental place to pick up our large truck, they had none on the lot, and informed us that the nearest one was roughly 200km away, in the opposite direction from where I needed to go. They offered us a trailer that was 1/3rd the size as the best they could do.

"I made a reservation? Do you have my reservation?"

"Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars."

"But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservations."

"I know why we have the reservations,"

"I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation. You just don't know how to hold the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anyone can just take them."

Results may already be dated.

As much as the RIAA has stirred up resentment for attempting to keep the status quo at all costs, including alienating the record buyer, I pretty sure that this poll was done before Halliburton announced that they're moving their headquarters to Dubai.

Re:Results may already be dated.

It wasn't. If you bothered to click on the link in the summary and scanned down the page a bit, you would have seen the message about Halliburton moving it's HQ to Dubai just before Round 13.

Unrelated to your post but I'm too lazy to create another post of my own: It's funny how 100,000+ voteS in the actual article turns into 100,000+ voteRS in the Slashdot summary. It seems that the highest number of individual voters in any single round was around 23,000. That's a pretty small sample size but considering that the people who frequent The Consumerist seem to be at least a bit more educated about consumer issues than your regular joe perhaps these votes count for a bit more than a poll that reached more people and got more numbers.

stolen music vs corruption

if you think about it, the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property. isnt halliburton guilty of a far worse crime to humanity?

It's "most hated" not "most evil"

> the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property.

No, they're not "just" trying to do that. They've manipulated the law to their own ends and complain whenever people decry that as unfair. They sue innocent people, attempting to ruin their lives. And if they do find out that someone's innocent, they use discovery to invade the innocent person's life, looking to find the real infringer. Which might well be them, after they have MediaSentry flood the P2P networks with bogus files and bogus search data (including the very searches they use to find "infringers"!) And if you insist upon corruption, just what do you call payola? Are bribes not considered corruption these days, or what?

Now, don't get me wrong--Halliburton isn't exactly some nice company, either. But this is "most hated" not "most evil" and the RIAA has gotten a lot more press lately.

But please, don't say they're "just" trying to protect their "property" because there's no way in hell I'll buy that lame excuse.

Re:stolen music vs corruption

Here's how I view it--these big corporations with lots of IP and money to spend traditionally have fought hard over seemingly small IP issues. It's much like a game it seems, with one company choosing to infringe a little bit on another company's IP knowing ahead of time how it's going to argue in court, and then the court irons things out. There are tons of example of this, and the reason is because it adds up to millions of dollars. And it really is much like a game to these companies--"let's see what I can get away with."

The problem is that the RIAA is now playing the game against regular people who don't have wads of cash to throw at this. They aren't playing the game fair.

I think this is why the RIAA is easily comparable to a bully--they aren't picking on someone their own size.

Re:stolen music vs corruption

if you think about it, the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property.

See, the problem here is that it isn't their "property". Songs, stories, movies--- once they're publicly released, they belong to all of us. Copyright is an artificial, government created, temporary, limited monopoly on the right to copy these artifacts of our common culture. The fact that the thieving bastards have greased the collective palm of congress to obtain perpetual extensions to the temporary monopoly on copying doesn't change the fact that all that stuff is ours. If you actually educate yourself on the long history of artistic creation and the short history of copyright, you'd understand what an absolute evil is being perpetrated upon us by the bastards claiming ownership of this stuff--- and you'd likely no longer parrot the their "intellectual property" fallacy.

Re:stolen music vs corruption

Dun Malg, I love you. I basically created an entire Web site [respectthe...domain.org] to say what you just said. People like you are VERY rare. My wife read the site and said, "but you're a writer, how can you want people to copy your stuff?" And I thought, wow, if my own wife totally misses the point -- a wife who is technology-friendly and talks with me about this stuff regularly -- then LOTS of people are out of touch with the ideas behind copyright. Here's to you, Dun Malg.

Re:stolen music vs corruption

Well, according to Thomas Jefferson, all copyright is a loan from the public domain. We do own all published creative works, it's just that the copyright holder is the only one allowed to profit by them for a while. Jefferson actually did not want copyrights (or patents, for that matter) because he felt that such would ultimately damage the public domain. As usual he was right.

We really should listen the Founders more often.

The hypocrisy of the MPAA/RIAA

> the riaa is just trying to protect its intellectual property.

The problem is that IP laws have been so twisted by lobbyists and big business. They seek to profit by taking away our rights. We are supposed to have rights to fair use, fair pricing, and things entering the public domain in a reasonable period, and the artists receiving a fair deal.

But when Mickey Mouse was supposed to enter the public domain, Disney went to the politicans so firmly in their pocket and got them to change the way. Same for the public domain period which congress just keeps setting back and back and back. And the DMCA which was a rights grab and now I can't even watch a DVD I purchased in another country without breaking the law. Some anime series are overpriced: the maker puts 5 episodes on the first DVD, whittling it down to 2 episodes (on a $30 DVD) on the last. Yet this is legal. And while the MPAA and the RIAA hiss and spit about how they're only protecting the authors' rights, they use Hollywood Accounting to rob those very same artists blind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting [wikipedia.org] And look a the tactics the RIAA shareholders have used to steal royalties off music artists. Recently when someone submitting a movie to the MPAA for ratings, the MPAA made and distributed copies against their wishes, and the court found the MPAA could do what it wants. Their hypocrisy is staggering. We have the absurdity of Adobe, who engineered an incompetant encryption scheme, using the DMCA to throw the guy who exposed them into jail. The DMCA means Macrovision is now by law built into every video device, with the result that my old color TV can't watch new videos. In Australia Channel 9 was fiddling with their digital feed to stop people from copying shows, with the results digital TV sets across the country kept locking up. http://www.smh.com.au/news/home-theatre/case-of-th e-csi-lg-tv-freeze-cracked/2007/03/21/117415312601 5.html [smh.com.au]
The pendulum has clearly swung too far.

Orson Scott Card (Author of "Ender's Game") wrote an excellent essay on this:

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1 .html [ornery.org]
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-14-1 .html [ornery.org]

With today's Internet in place, the RIAA and MPAA and their moneyed up masters would have never come into existence. They're a cartel living off an old business model, with duplicitous congressmen with bulging pockets changing the law at their beckoned call. If you want to know which congressmen have supported it and which ones have fought it, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA [wikipedia.org]

Gave me a fright

For a moment I thought RIAA actually won a lawsuit against Microsoft.

This isn't a win for us

It's not Sony BMG, Warner, etc at the top of the list, it's their front group the RIAA. People hate the RIAA? Guess what, that's exactly what it was created with in mind. Recording companies get to engage in strong-armed consumer-alienating behavior, but dodge the consequences because the "RIAA" is there to take the flak.

So don't call this a victory for us! This is a victory for the record companies, because it shows that they have successfully redirected your wrath to a "company" (I don't know why the summary uses that word) that doesn't have a product, and could care less that you don't like them.

Re:This isn't a win for us

Maybe he actually meant they "could care less." Just because they're running a despicable, heartless organization like the RIAA doesn't mean they don't have hopes, dreams, and feelings of their own! It hurts to be so hated! They sure could care less!

No Brainer.

RIAA produce nothing & sue consumers. Of course people hate them.

From TFA:

The message is clear. The internet cares deeply about being able to download music illegally.

WTF? I think many, many people who respect others' copyright have problems with RIAA's tactics of suing random (often innocent) people, attempts to scare govt & the public by linking terrorism & piracy, and basically ignoring the fact that they have to change (or at least adjust) business models.

Painting all enemies of RIAA as illegal downloaders is just stupid (or perhaps a troll?)

Bootnote: This is mildly amusing for me, 'cause last thread I commented in I was accused of being a RIAA Shill [slashdot.org] (presumably that poster believes anyone who criticises Apple is a RIAA shill).

Trade Group Not Company

The RIAA is a trade group, not a company, although I have long wondered why they do not run afoul of anti-trust laws since they essentially serve as a vehicle for price fixing, joint litigation, and other forms of collusion between the member companies, which, taken together, represent a de facto monopoly in the music industry.

Re:Trade Group Not Company

The correct term for this is "cartel" which is exactly what the RIAA is.

And the prize is...

The RIAA will get a gift certificate for 100 song downloads at the iTunes store!

How Sad

How sad it is that the fight over music usage rights eclipses war profiteering by Haliburton.

I would have voted for the US Government

I think the US government counts as a company now, it's controlled by corporatist frontmen.

What a load of crock.

Take a look at the votes on their "Big Board" and you'll quickly find that their methodology is a complete crock.

Comcast or Verizon or Microsoft could easily have won against the RIAA, given the appropriate competition on the big board. But, hahaha, to figure out who the "worst company" was they pitted the RIAA against United Airlines, U-Haul, Exxon, and Halliburton. Halliburton is the only one that was any challenge at all. Change the board around - make it RIAA against Microsoft, RIAA against Comcast, and you'll see different results.

Furthermore, the RIAA v. Halliburton... so funny... RIAA takes money away close to home, Halliburton kills everyone in the rest of the world - but who is hated more? America, you fail. Rot in hell. :)

Cheney Quoted

When asked about his opinion on Halliburton's ranking on the Worst company list, Cheney was quoted as saying: "Number two? This is bullshit!"

Totally stolen from http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48445 [theonion.com]

Nice try, but

... does this mean anything? So I have a couple of questions:

1. Who is "consumerist" anyway? I can't find much information to that question on their web site, I saw only 3 names. So maybe they are a bunch of activist geeks, but that by no means represents the general populace. What could the result mean? Nothing much to the general public, I guess...

2. What's the method to get to that conclusion? Is it representative? How did they draw their sample? I don't think so, I can't even find any info on how the poll is made. If people really hate those bastards, how come they keep on sending their hard-earned money to those fuckheads?

3. Since when RIAA is a company? This already puts a question mark on their method.

In search of the Golden Poop

Wondering (as one does) how much of a market there could possibly be for golden poop, I noted the Japanese writing on the screen and followed the trail to http://www.rakuten.co.jp/bif-shop/448445/156668/ [rakuten.co.jp]: so that award cost somewhere between $18 and $35. I see the little one doubles up as a rubber stamp, too.

MPAA more loved

I was originally going to vote MPAA the worst corporation ahead of the RIAA, but then I thought about the charming Jack Valenti and all the pornography he brings us. That couldn't help but make smile.

Where is SCO?

Come on Slashdot, don't you love polls? SCO should have made the prelims.

They beat U-Haul

The RIAA Beat U-Haul? I'd take a lawsuit over running across the freeway to pickup my belongings that fell out because of the broken lift gate.

Then again I did need new furniture...

Ever had a car fall off on of their trailers because they hooked it up wrong?

Then again I did need a new car...

The power of publicity.

As nasty as the RIAA is, they don't hold a candle to the tobacco companies: the only industry whose product, used as recommended, causes cancer, emphysema, and heart disease.

-jcr

Sad poll

It's depressing to see where peoples priorities are. Haliburton steals tens of billions and New Orleans gets thrown to the wolves to make way for rich people's condos. Oil companies control the government and manage to surpress information about global warming that will affect the lives of everyone on the planet. What people are really concerned with is the free exchange of music, movies and software. People really do need to get their priorities screwed on straight. Anna Nichol Smith and Brittany Spears get more press than global warming and Haliburton. If music and movies are more important that corporations stealing billions from every american with the governments help we're in serious trouble. If you want to get upset get upset about something important. Music and movies could disappear overnight and we wouldn't loose a single life. Global warming is threatening millions and our grandkids will be paying for the eight year term of our current administration. Those are important things. Get angry at the companies behind that not the ones that are trying to restrict downloads.

This is good news for the RIAA

The RIAA is not a company, their job is to maximize damages on behest of the record labels againts infringers, violators and whomever (the trade labels deem elligible targets. Their goal is not corporate karma, international love or good faith. They maximize damages. This means an all out assault against ALL infrigers.

Mothers, innocent parties, mentally handicapped, children, nuns, Kim Jong Il, it doesn't MATTER. They want you all to know that there is no international border that they will not cross, no corporate entity that will shield you, no means they will not pursue to attack their file infringers.

Without a scorched earth policy there would be no fear (not that there is now), but that IS their goal.

Personal experience and a suggestion at the end.

My school (MTSU) has one of the few Recording Industry Majors in the country; it's actually its own department here. It's a completely BS major (as in the cow product, not Bachelor of Science): in fact, they tell everyone who signs up that only 1% of them are likely to get a job in the recording industry. All of the musicians and sound techs who sign up typically drop out or go to a specialized technical school, so essentially the only people who make it all the business types: i.e. people who typically have no interest in music.

I've met a few of the professors in the dept., all of whom have industry backgrounds, and let me tell you, meeting these guys and the graduates from these departments explains alot. You see, the the RIM college offers three basic majors: one for artists, one for techs, and one for business and pre-law in the recording industry. The most common? You guessed it, business and pre-law. These are the same asshats who, at any other school, would be learning how to ask for TPS reports and iguring out the best way to make partner in the shortest amount of time. Further still, I live in Murfreesboro, 30 min. away from Music Row in Nashville (or as we like to call it, Crackhead Alley), and I used to live in Nashville. When I lived there, I hung out in West End alot, and met alot of people in this business.

So let me say this: some of these people are cool, and I mean no disparagement towards them. But, in my time dealing with alot of these clowns, I have met a higher concentration of assholes than in any other sector (including advertising sales, the Devil's Piggy Bank). Most of these guys could give a flaming crap less about the actual music they produce: the techs normally do, and the artists, of course, but the lawyers and admin. people are so incredibly full of themselves that it's ridiculous. What was always great was hanging out at Cafe Coco, still kind of a hotspot, but mostly Vandy kids now, and seeing one of these jackasses walk in and expect to be treated like the Lords of All. Please understand though, that when I pick on these guys, I'm doing it because, even in a world full of jerks, these guys oftentimes stick out.

So, back to here at MTSU and our RIM dept. Quite literally, contempt of artists, techs, and fans is quite literally indoctrinated into these guys. I've sat in on some lectures, and my God. One of the classes was for artists contracts. I've always known how shady these things are, but to see completely unethical and illegal tricks being taught ina college course absolutely dropped my jaw.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that the reason the RIAA is so friggin bad is because it is expected of them. MTSU got it's RIM dept. up and running before Napster hit, so you have to understand, some of the people involved in the RIAA's modern tactics almost certainly came from this dept., where, as mentioned, these kinds of illegal and unethical behavior are correct answers on practical test questions. Further still, there is a culture on the admin side of the business that expects people, even demands, that they act this way. You want to fix the problem? It's not about fixing the laws, or methods of distribution. These people will just find new ways to screw artists, fans, and techs over. To change the problem, you have to change the education and the culture: nothing else will do. How we do that though, I have no idea.

Just hoping

... that they get soon the Darwin Award, Company Edition.

Article text

In case the original article is slashdotted, here's the original article:

What is the Worst Company in America 2007?

• Halliburton
• Walmart
• Microsoft
• RIAA
• CowboyNeal Inc

Where's Microsoft?

I wonder where the Evil Empire ranked? I did not see them in the polls.

It would be nice to have a top 10 or top 20. That'd be funny.

Pirates

Damn those lazy Pirates, stealing our opening paragraph [torrentfreak.com] for a Slashdot submission.

Their New Mission Statement

The RIAA changed their mission statement [bbspot.com] to reflect their priority to stay the most hated company in America. I think it's a good strategy.