Wal-Mart Sued Over Evanescence CD Lyrics

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[q]Wal-Mart Sued Over Evanescence CD Lyrics
Dec 10, 5:55 PM EST

Associated Press

Evanescence's music: listen & download

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which promotes itself as a seller of clean music, deceived customers by stocking compact discs by the rock group Evanescence that contain the f-word, a lawsuit claims.

The hit group's latest CD and DVD, "Anywhere But Home," don't carry parental advisory labels alerting potential buyers to the obscenity. If they did, Wal-Mart wouldn't carry them, according to the retailer's policy.

But the lawsuit claims Wal-Mart knew about the explicit lyrics in the song, "Thoughtless," because it censored the word in a free sample available on its Web site and in its stores.

The complaint, filed Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court, seeks an order requiring Wal-Mart to either censor or remove the music from its Maryland stores.


It also seeks damages of up to $74,500 for each of the thousands of people who bought the music at Wal-Marts in Maryland.

"I don't want any other families to get this, expecting it to be clean. It needs to be removed from the shelves to prevent other children from hearing it," said plaintiff Trevin Skeens of Brownsville.

Skeens said he and his wife, Melanie, let their daughter buy the music for her 13th birthday and were shocked when they played it in their car while driving home.

Wal-Mart, of Bentonville, Ark., has no immediate plans to pull the CDs from its shelves, spokesman Guy Whitcomb told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail. He said the company will investigate the allegations. No hearing dates have been set.

"While Wal-Mart sets high standards, it would not be possible to eliminate every image, word or topic that an individual might find objectionable," Whitcomb told the newspaper.

He told the Herald-Mail that the song sample online was censored by Walmart.com, a separate division of Wal-Mart.

Whitcomb didn't return telephone calls Friday from The Associated Press.

The lawsuit also names as defendants Wind-up Records LLC, the New York-based company that recorded the music and decided not to apply parental-advisory stickers; and distributor BMG Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, of New York.

Sony BMG declined to comment on the lawsuit. Wind-up didn't return calls from the AP.

The Skeens' lawyer, Jon D. Pels of Bethesda, said he aims to "take this case national, even if that means going state by state."

He dismissed Whitcomb's suggestion that Wal-Mart stores didn't know about the censored version of the song. "They are a multimillion-dollar corporation and they certainly can communicate among their various entities," he said[/q]
 
No kidding. I can think of quite a few things ole Wal-Mart sells that contribute to the delinquency/screw-up of a person versus language used by an innocuous rock band.
 
Whoa, our 13-year-old heard the F-word! Only $74, 500 can reverse such trauma!!!!

:rolleyes:

How ridiculous. :tsk:
 
HeartlandGirl said:
Whoa, our 13-year-old heard the F-word! Only $74, 500 can reverse such trauma!!!!

:rolleyes:

How ridiculous. :tsk:

No kidding.

In that case, I want $74,500 for each and every time I've had to hear a 13 year old say the F-word...and with 4 kids + their friends, I've heard it a LOT. They must have learned it from those filthy CD's they buy at Walmart :down:
 
"I don't want any other families to get this, expecting it to be clean. It needs to be removed from the shelves to prevent other children from hearing it," said plaintiff Trevin Skeens of Brownsville.

This is the part that bugs the hell out of me when it comes to these kinds of issues. Okay, if you don't want your own child to listen to the CD, whatever, it's your kid, you raise them however you see fit. I don't care.

But what in the hell makes these people think they have the right to prevent other families from letting their kids listen to this music? Who died and made them supreme ruler of all children? Last time I checked, I only had TWO parents, thanks, and that's all the more I need. And if my parents don't mind me listening to that song, then that's their choice and this guy can just butt out. Since when did one person feel that it was okay to push their personal ideas of what is and isn't offensive on everyone else?

I also agree that it's stupid 'cause, geez, EVERY person will hear the "f-word" at some point and time in their lives, if not on some CD, they'll hear it just wandering down the streets in their TOWN. You can't escape this stuff, and you cannot stop others from saying things that you personally find offensive. The bigger a deal people make out of this supposedly offensive stuff, the more often it'll continue. If people didn't continue to make such a big deal out of mere swear words or sexual scenes or whatever, the shock value would be gone from them and it wouldn't be as fun or risque or whatever anymore and it therefore would not be as common. Honestly, you'd think people would've caught on to that idea by now...

I hope Wal-Mart doesn't pull this from their shelves.

Angela
 
HelloAngel said:
No kidding. I can think of quite a few things ole Wal-Mart sells that contribute to the delinquency/screw-up of a person versus language used by an innocuous rock band.

Yeah, it reminds me of the time WalMart banned Sheryl Crow's second album because it included this lyric:
"Watch our children while they kill each other
With a gun they bought at Walmart discount stores"

Because remember, violence is okay, but sex and naughty words are eeeevil! (sarcasm)
 
EmilyBono said:


Because remember, violence is okay, but sex and naughty words are eeeevil! (sarcasm)

my thoughts exactly. there are far more offensive things that young adults are constantly exposed to on the radio and the telly at any given moment. can we sue for that too?
 
A big reason I don't buy cds, dvds, or the like at Walmart is that they do censor the material they sell in their stores in the first place. And partly because they do this, their selection sucks. I don't care how cheap a cd is there, I'm not buying it from them. I much rather pay a few dollars more and buy it from somewhere else that doesn't pull this type of crap (or at least doesn't pull it as much).

As for the moron who brought this lawsuit -- get a clue you dumb fuck! :madspit:
 
The last time I walked into Walmart, I made a promise to myself it would be truly be the last time. And it has been. I feel like I've been reborn.
 
As far as I was aware, the parental advisory label is self-imposed or at least left to the discretion of the label. One song with the word "fuck" doesn't warrant a label. Look at Ben Folds' albums; the only one with a label is the live album, but the words "fuck" and "shit" appear frequently, along with a good bit of drug reference. But WalMart sells all of those, and no one ever complained. Shit, I could say it's because Ben Folds isn't really mainstream and Evanescence is. Well, then you look at Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill": fuck shows up numerous times, references to oral sex ("go down on you in a theater" and "wine, dine, 69 me"), along with "shit" and a few others... but guess what? It still sold millions and millions and millions and millions of copies without a parental advisory label or sanitized version available. In fact, the "dirty" version still sells at WalMart. It's just one radical person reacting to one song with "questionable" content on an otherwise clean CD. Jeez.
 
This is so stupid. If would be one thing to tell the kid sorry, you can't listen to the CD anymore (even though I think that's a dumb idea because it will make the kid want to listen to it even more because it's "forbidden"), but it's an entirely different matter to sue the store. The store is under no obligation to be a moral baby-sitter.
 
anitram said:
The last time I walked into Walmart, I made a promise to myself it would be truly be the last time. And it has been. I feel like I've been reborn.

Yeah, I had one of those "Walmart epiphanies" too. Last time I went in there I realized it was such a dreary place with a crappy selection of everything I was even considering, and I just don't like the whole feel of the place. I, too, decided I'd not go there again. I haven't been back. And I don't miss going there in the least.
 
elevatedmole said:
Somehow, in the grand scheme of things, I doubt hearing the f-word will really screw up children's lives. :|

No. I mean, it's not like Wal-Mart stocks anything bad. Like guns.
 
this thread has seen some of the best replies ever at interference.

finally, something to be proud of.
 
to continue on the sheryl crow and fuck thing, sheryl's first album does also have the word mentioned once (she says "fucking record labels") and it has no advisory. i remember when i bought jagged little pill (like every other 12 year old girl did at the time), i was shocked that it didn't have an advisory label. i didn't care, though, i was just surprised.

i just can't believe that these people and companies that thrive on their values and being patriotic could agree that it's fine to censor art like this.
 
Amazing that people get sooo upset over hearing the word 'fuck'...as if that is a complete outrage and they have no strong reaction to the fact that there are so many people in the whole world dying from poverty and AIDS.

THAT makes me angry....not hearing someone say 'fuck'.
 
indra said:


Yeah, I had one of those "Walmart epiphanies" too. Last time I went in there I realized it was such a dreary place with a crappy selection of everything I was even considering, and I just don't like the whole feel of the place. I, too, decided I'd not go there again. I haven't been back. And I don't miss going there in the least.

I had my "Walmart epiphany" about a year ago. I started shopping at Target and all was well - and then they banned the Salvation Army bell ringers. :|
 
martha said:


Because nowadays patriotism=censorship.

Yep.

Plus being a censor is a good way for "fine upstanding citizen" to get all the fun stuff without being questioned. "I don't like this, I'm just doing it for the good of the country!" HAHAHAHA!!!!! :lmao: :lmao:
 
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