The Ranger Online

Issue date: 9/28/07 Section: Opinion

Sonya Harvey [Click to enlarge]

When it comes to buying CDs at Wal-Mart, saving a few pennies is not worth losing the right to make your own decisions.

On a recent excursion to New Orleans, some friends and I stopped at a Wal-Mart to load up on usual road trip supplies.

I decided to purchase some new CDs for the trip, including the Beastie Boy's "Ill Communication," because my old copy was scratched beyond repair.

As we headed down Interstate 10, I popped in "Ill Communication" and was shocked when several songs had annoying beeps and lengthy periods of silence.

Listening to the Beastie Boys in such a manner ruined the pumped-up, screwball attitude of the band, which is the reason I listened to them in the first place.

The CD rack at Wal-Mart, like the racks in 2,300 other Wal-Marts around the country, is a world of shrink-wrapped packages supposedly edited and cut for our protection.

I don't need protection from CDs; I need protection from corporations like Wal-Mart trying to control the world I live in.

Every retailer has the right not to carry something, but no retailer should be so big that they can effectively demand changes in music they want to sell to the world.

Record labels and musicians are pressured to redesign album covers, omit songs and even edit and change lyrics to have a piece of the music empire that is Wal-Mart.

According to http://www.Wal-Mart.com, Wal-Mart is the largest seller of pop music in the country, accounting last year for sales of an estimated 52 million of the 615 million CDs sold in the United States.

Wal-Mart's refusal to stock albums with lyrics or cover art it finds objectionable is a form of censorship that customers, musicians and record labels are forced to adhere to.

If people know CDs have been altered, and they still want to buy them, that's their business, but acting as judge and jury to decide people's tastes in what they listen to is wrong.

Preventing others from accessing information that should be readily accessible goes against the very principle of the First Amendment.

The point of the First Amendment is not to protect everything people agree on; it's to protect what people don't agree on.

It's too bad the music industry has become hostage to retailers that don't care about music and musicians' rights to say what they want.

It's their music. I for one would like to hear what they have to say.

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