That is (probably) the actual release date. You can go into options and force it to only tag the year. I agree with genre, I don't think anyone has good genre tagging. And no PerfectMeta is not perfect, but it pulls meta-data from AMG, GD3, MusicBrainz, and freeDB and compares the results from all 4 and comes up with the best meta-data results. You can hit control-M in the ripper to see the PerfectMeta screen.
Ahh, so that's how it works. Might not be perfect, but I'd have it do the same thing. As for the release date, it's not.. which is why I found it odd. It came out on 07/15, not 08/20 like it said. But regardless, that's not so important.
I appreciate the idea though... I'm glad I actually tested it out for once (the ripper).