[Free-sklyarov-uk] Advice and Help

[Jim Peters]

Chuck Heffner wrote:
>     I need some help and advice from all of you. Unlike the work you've done
> in the UK, the efforts here are garnering press attention but -zero- action.
> CDs are still not labeled (unless the record label announced the CD via
> press release), they are still being shipped by the 100s of 1000s into
> record stores nationwide, and no consumer groups or government (state or
> national) agencies are taking step one. In a word, bleak.
>     Do you have any ideas on who I could direct my site visitors to contact
> to make their feelings known (that would make a difference)? I've considered
> setting up an online form so that people could briefly write to the
> following all at once:

There has been some success from people contacting the Record Store
head offices, explaining some specific problem they've had.  The
record stores are in the middle -- unlike the record company, they
have to deal with all the customer complaints.  It's also more
important for them to have a friendly image (well, for some of them at
least).  It's bad press for them if they are seen to be doing things
that are bad for the consumer.  That might be one angle of attack.

(One thing has occurred to me -- BMG for example has been claiming a
`very low' return-rate of 1 in 1000 CDs for the Natalie Imbruglia CD.
However, I'm sure that when you return a CD to a record store, it just
goes back into stock to be sold to someone else.  So surely they're
not hearing about the vast majority of the returns.)

Apart from that, lots of hits mean lots of people learning about the
problem.  That means more people being around to say "that's probably
a corrupt CD" when someone has a problem with a CD.  Although the
results aren't instant, this is a very important thing to be
happening.  Getting the information out there, letting people know.

If you're still suffering from your immense work-load, perhaps you
need to look for ways to reduce it.  Then you could continue to be
there providing information and suggestions, and wait for critical
mass to be reached of its own accord.

Have you thought of setting up a mailing list for US-based
campaigning?  You might get some help and new ideas that way.

As the number of corrupt CDs increase, it's going to get less and less
useful to list them all.  However, getting people to send reports in
helps them get involved, and it also provides lots of good evidence
and information to use when discussing the issue with the press.

How to manage this if/when the number of corrupt CDs reaches 20%-50%
of the market, I'm not sure.  Obviously a list of this number of CDs
cannot be maintained manually.

Unfortunately, we haven't got any further with our automated bad CD
database at the moment, so no help there, I'm afraid.

I've been trying to think of a way that several people could answer
E-mails coming to a single address.  One way would be to have it setup
like a mailing list, and use the convention that when a message is
replied to, the replier uses "group reply" (or "Reply to All"), so
that the mailing list gets a copy of the reply as well as the original
sender.  This way everyone can see which messages have been replied to
by someone else.  (A threaded mail reader would help here -- where
replies are grouped with the original message).

That would be a way to get a team processing E-mails.  The reason I
was thinking about this was because, as an chaotic group of
individuals with different voices (the new leaderless model for this
group), we need a way to answer press questions.  If we made it clear
on the web-site that the `press' address goes to a group of people,
any of whom might answer, then we could use this kind of system to
make sure that every E-mail gets replied to by at least one person,
and that everyone can see everyone else's replies, and maybe expand on
them if necessary.  It just requires that everyone remembers to use
`group reply' [*].

Alternatives to this might include web-based systems, but this
requires coding time, and would probably be much less convenient.

> Major Record Stores
> Government Representatives
> Consumer Interest Groups

The consumer groups surely *have* to pick up on this eventually.
However, they might prefer to follow rather than lead.  What I mean is
that they need to see that this has some proven level of public
interest before they will take action for themselves.  Also, I'm sure
they would respond much better to people telling personal stories
about problems they've had, or describing their personal concerns
about the issue, rather than people cut-and-pasting standard info.

>     If I seem down in the dumps it's because I called the FTC (Federal Trade
> Commission)today and asked about this issue. The deputy director I spoke
> with indicated that this is a very minor concern that should be handled
> directly between the customer and the record store.

Yet another one passing the buck.  "Not on my desk, please" (NOMDP?).
I can't see how this is a minor concern, given the size of the record
industry.  Maybe `entertainment' is low priority to him.  

Jim

[* Unless some mail-address-mapping trickery might be possible with
the mail server.  This might work like this: press person A contacts
the press address B, which then rewrites the headers so that Reply-To
or From points back to the mail-server processing address B instead of
the person A, hiding address A in the headers somewhere, and sends it
out to the group of people CDEFG.  Person E replies, reply goes to B,
which picks up the original address from the headers, and sends the
reply to both A and CDEFG, with the Reply-To or From address directed
back to B again.  Could this be done ?  Would this work ?  ]

-- 
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