Who Does PR for the RIAA?

A three-toed sloth? Some sort of mollusk? From Boing Boing, not only is the Recording Industry Association of America (what’s up with their server…give the hamster a protein bar, eh guys) suing another 482 file traders, but now they’re foisting the very worst parts of their catalog on the nation’s libraries.

The CD cornucopia — consisting of approximately 5.6 million compact discs — was billed as a windfall for libraries and schools when it was announced in September 2002 as part of a $144 million settlement of the lawsuit, which alleged that music distribution companies illegally inflated the price of CDs by requiring retailers to sell them at or above a set level in order to qualify for substantial advertising funding.

However, when the CDs began arriving, they were truly awful.

Among them are the librarians at the Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library, who last week received a shipment of 1,325 CDs that included 57 copies of “Three Mo’ Tenors,”; 48 copies of country artist Mark Wills’ 2001 album “Loving Every Minute,” 47 copies of “Corridos de Primera Plana,” a greatest hits compilation by Los Tuscanes de Tijuana (2000); 39 copies of “Yolanda Adams Christmas” (2000); 37 copies of Michael Crawford’s “A Christmas Album” (1999) and 34 copies of the Bee Gees’ “This Is Where I Came In” (2001).

The RIAA blames the duplicates on that famous corporate get-out-of-jail-free card, a computer glitch. They have no one to blame, however, for foisting “Entertainment Weekly’s Greatest Hits of 1971″ and Christina Aguilera’s Christmas album (featuring classics like “I’m Dreaming of a White Trash Christmas” and “Do You Whore What I Whore?”) on America’s venerated institutions.

Here was a perfect opportunity for the RIAA to generate some goodwill with a cheesy press event. Instead, the story is yet again about what lousy, lousy people they are. Strong work. That said, the RIAA would have to offer me the GDP of Nevada to get me to do marketing for them. Ethics aside, that would be fate worse than death.