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Originally Posted by spectre
Doesn't the RIAA consitute a monopoly? I realize that it's a group of different record companies, but isn't it sort of like the DeBeers monopoly on diamonds? One group controlling most of a product and going well beyond normal overcharging to the point of violating antitrust laws?
There can't be any way the largest providers of an industry can have a group that exists purely for the purpose of keeping their prices artificially high and not be investigated. I mean, we can get a committee on how much Barry Bond's nuts have shrunk from steriod use, but nothing on why we're paying well beyond fair market value on something pretty much everyone buys?
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ubertuber's answer is pretty complete, but I'll chime in with a couple other points why the MLB has been under scrutiny and the RIAA has not.
The RIAA has pretty good lobbyists working for them and donate to a few hundred thousand to various Congressmen over the years.
(not as much as they used to, since they and other media ownership companies like Disney, were able to get their copyrights extended in the 1998 Sonny Bono copyright act).
AFIAK, the pro sports leagues (and the MLB) don't make campaign contributions to US politicians, so they might have less clout as a result (by no means is this the only or main reason that the RIAA is able to 'get away' from congressional scrutiny but the MLB can't).
Secondly, the Congressmen and Washington people are probably more of baseball fans (I remember reading somewhere that one of the investigators was a baseball fan and he felt concern that the steroid speculation was ruining the purity of the game).
than they are of music fans.
Compared to a focus on the music industry for price fixing CD's, the baseball issue (steroids) is less about an economics issue than it is about an intangible [for the lack of a better word] value of the 'purity' of the game (although the steroids issue could have economic effects when fans disenchanted with steroids no longer go to games and spend money on it).
catcha back on the flipside,
will.
[sources: opensecrets.org and Lawrence Lessig's 2004 book - Free Culture]