MPAA, RIAA and anti-trust laws

[Donny661]

I was thinking about these two orginizations (MPAA and RIAA that is) and what they are really created to do. So I went to the MPAA website and read the about page. Here's an excerpt of what it said

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) serves its members from its offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. On its board of directors are the Chairmen and Presidents of the seven major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States. These members include:

Walt Disney Company;
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.;
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.;
Paramount Pictures Corporation;
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.;
Universal Studios, Inc.; and
Warner Bros.

Here is an excerpt from the RIAA about page

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

These are both orginiztions created and controled by the large film/recording companies to benefit themselves by controlling the market. If I'm wrong in this observation someone please correct me. This sounds to me like something that would violate anti-trust laws in some way. I'm not very familiar with those laws, what they say, and if the MPAA or RIAA really violates them, but, with my limited knowledge, it sounds like they do. If someone knows more about trusts and stuff like that I would like to hear their opinion about it. If they do violate anti-trust laws shouldn't we be the ones sueing them and not the other way around?

[KetchSumAir]

I *think* the RIAA and MPAA are more of an industrial coalition. They are made up of several different companies that individually compete with each other.

The MPAA and RIAA just gives these groups a "common goal", but to be a monopoly, they'd have to be the same company. The only reason these individual companies even need to be part of an organization like the MPAA or RIAA is so they don't end up fighting amongst themselves - so they can unite behind a common purpose, and get their goals accomplished.


BTW - the MPAA and RIAA's real goal is to be able to charge every person in the world a fee for every time they watch or listen to one of their copyrighted works. They also would like us to be forced to watch advertisements every time as well (so they make $$ "coming, and going"). Once this is accomplished, that last item on the agenda would be to get the gov't to creat a law mandating that every american watch at least 4 hours of TV a day, or listen to 6 hours of music a day. Boy, I need to buy some stock in those companies, and retire

[Donny661]

Isn't their common goal to make money? The same as a monopolis company's. A monopoly controls the market the same way MPAA and RIAA do (RIAA owns 90% of the market the same way microsoft controls a similar amount of the PC software market).

That new law will make TV all commercials, and why would they want you to listen to the music, that doesn't matter as long as you've bought the cd. They'll make is so you'll have to buy a new cd every day.