[Rumori] Walmart sued for selling a cd with the word "fuck" on it.

[Brian Turner]

Isn't it ultimately SOny/BMG's responsibility to label the explicit 
releases tho'?

brian


On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, matt davignon wrote:

> If you thought Walmart was run by overly sensitive censorship folks, try the 
> shoppers! I wish I got $75k each time I heard the word "fuck" at age 13!
> 
> 
> Wal-Mart sued over Evanescence lyrics
> 
> HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which promotes itself as a 
> seller of clean music, deceived customers by stocking compact discs by the 
> rock group Evanescence that contain the f-word, a lawsuit claims.
> 
> The hit group's latest CD and DVD, Anywhere But Home, don't carry parental 
> advisory labels alerting potential buyers to the obscenity. If they did, 
> Wal-Mart wouldn't carry them, according to the retailer's policy.
> 
> But the lawsuit claims Wal-Mart knew about the explicit lyrics in the song, 
> Thoughtless, because it censored the word in a free sample available on its 
> Web site and in its stores.
> 
> The complaint, filed Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court, seeks an 
> order requiring Wal-Mart to either censor or remove the music from its 
> Maryland stores. It also seeks damages of up to $74,500 for each of the 
> thousands of people who bought the music at Wal-Marts in Maryland.
> 
> "I don't want any other families to get this, expecting it to be clean. It 
> needs to be removed from the shelves to prevent other children from hearing 
> it," said plaintiff Trevin Skeens of Brownsville.
> 
> Skeens said he and his wife, Melanie, let their daughter buy the music for 
> her 13th birthday and were shocked when they played it in their car while 
> driving home.
> 
> Wal-Mart, of Bentonville, Ark., has no immediate plans to pull the CDs from 
> its shelves, spokesman Guy Whitcomb told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail. He 
> said the company will investigate the allegations. No hearing dates have 
> been set.
> 
> "While Wal-Mart sets high standards, it would not be possible to eliminate 
> every image, word or topic that an individual might find objectionable," 
> Whitcomb told the newspaper.
> 
> He told the Herald-Mail that the song sample online was censored by 
> Walmart.com, a separate division of Wal-Mart.
> 
> Whitcomb didn't return telephone calls Friday from The Associated Press.
> 
> The lawsuit also names as defendants Wind-up Records LLC, the New York-based 
> company that recorded the music and decided not to apply parental-advisory 
> stickers; and distributor BMG Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony BMG Music 
> Entertainment, of New York.
> 
> Sony BMG declined to comment on the lawsuit. Wind-up didn't return calls 
> from the AP.
> 
> The Skeens' lawyer, Jon Pels of Bethesda, said he aims to "take this case 
> national, even if that means going state by state."
> 
> He dismissed Whitcomb's suggestion that Wal-Mart stores didn't know about 
> the censored version of the song. "They are a multimillion-dollar 
> corporation and they certainly can communicate among their various 
> entities," he said.
> 
> 
> 
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