Slashdot Mirror
Disney's Anti-File Swapping Cartoon
LordXarph writes: "Newsforge has a story about Disney's anti-file swapping episode of their cartoon "Proud Family." The synopsis is simply hysterical; I'm waiting for someone to write a gnutella servent called EZ-Jackster."
I mean, from the "spent $125 on cd's from her $.05 salary" and "the girl was arrested by the police who showed up at her door" and calling the artist "Sir-Paid-A-Lot"???!?!? This is almost word-for-word what I would have done if I was *parodying* propaganda....
Next up, hunters using "Bambi" as material for showing why hunting is great.
Of course, I am assuming that anyone reading this thinks filesharing is great and that Disney is evil; this is true for only about 95% of the Slashdot readership, I'm sure :).
I wouldn't worry about this sort of propoganda actually affecting children's attitudes. It's simply too clumsy (and obvious and contrived.) Children, while many people who make children's programming don't realise this, are not stupid. They can spot something phony and manipulative(which you have to admit that this is, even if you agree that filesharing is wrong) from a mile away.
It's about as likely to drive the next generation of children away from filesharing as all those Captain Planet cartoons where to make people environmentalists. Less likely, since Captain Planet was less obviously hokey.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
While it's not technically 'stealing'...neither is time shifting or are fair use backups, but Disney characterizes them as 'stealing'.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
I always find it funny whenever slashdot links to a NewsForge article, which obviously would get thousands of hits from that linking, and yet only has 3 or 4 comments, while the slashdot post has several hundred. A question to everyone, why do you never comment on the NewsForge site itself? I'm just curious.
hmmmm... sound familiar?
Remember back in the 80's when we as children were all assaulted with those terrible anti-drug ads from the mind of Nancy Reagan? The "this is your brain on drugs" ad being singled out as the possibly least effective ad of all time? Now, after seeing our favorite cartoon characters turn down drugs and tell us how "bad" they were... what effect did it have?
Most of us got to college (maybe even high school), opened our minds, tried some pot, maybe liked it, and have a pretty non-chalant view of things... maybe even smoking up every now and then. Those who don't do drugs do so for their own reasons, not because Arnold on "Diff'rent Strokes" told them not to. So the effect on today's kids will be exactly zero. If anything, they'll realize the lame "do-gooder" condescending attitude, and another piece of tripe will become unpopular and get cancelled.
btw: have you written your representives about the SSSCA yet? i have!
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
Wow. This is the first time I've seen the airing of a piece of blatant, unapologetic propaganda directed at children since the World War 2 era. Sure, it's been around to a certain extent since then, but always in a very underhanded, not-so-easy-to-detect form. You've got to hand it to the content-direction people at Disney, they must have balls the size of tank bearings to pull a stunt like this. I honestly don't know whether to be appalled or impressed.
Along about the time Sir Paid Alot complains about his 5 cent royalty check, his lawyer looks at his contract:
"Lets see, your advance was $500,000, your touring cost was $1,000,000, the label gets 50% of the gate on your gigs, and your royalty rate on CD's is only half what it is for vinyl. Boy, you're lucky you got a whole nickel!"
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
And we certainly have reasons to suspect the Mouse's motives here, I've often thought this is the right approach.
Wholesale copying of music against the permission of its creators is wrong, and our children should be informed that it's wrong. The complex issues of monopolies and exploitation of musicians are for adults to solve.
In truth, the message we want to send here is not to blame the technology of filesharing, but the people who use it for ill. But because the RIAA and others don't see a way to get at the actual copyright infringers, they attack the filesharing technology itself, and now our PCs themselves.
I say, when they point out that the actual infringements are the problem, we should agree with them. But fight them when they want to punish technologies or the people who aren't infringing.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Both are indeed illegal. Yet piracy remains copyright infringement, not stealing. Stealing involves taking something and thus depriving the rightful owner of it.
Copying something does not involve taking, deprivation, or even anything capable of being owned. (copyrights are ownable, content is not)
These are fine differences, but they're there.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Check again. It ain't necessarily so, and the legalities of this issue are being worked out as we speak. Or perhaps I should say the buying of new laws is being handled as we speak. But under traditional copyright law (i.e. laws more than a couple of years old), fair use rules allow for some downloading. Furthermore, if you own the CD already, and decide to just grab the MP3 off Gnutella instead of ripping from your CD, that isn't illegal either.
Yes, some aspects of file sharing go too far (according to copyright laws), but not ALL downloading of music is stealing. Only the corporations want us to believe it, and sadly most of the public is buying this lie. And, of course, with new corruption to the copyright laws taking place every year, your statement may well be true someday in every sense. But it isn't right now, not while the issue is still being fought in the courts, and in the court of public opinion. So I repeat: Check again -- this issue is not as black-and-white as the corporate propaganda tells us it is.
________________
Private Essayist
Then explain why record sales spiked when napster came out and slumped after it got shut down.
Did it occur to you to correlate record sales with the general state of the economy? Or is only that Napster explaination suitable to your worldview?
Although these folks appear to be lining up against this particular initiative, it doesn't appear from this article that they stand against it philosophically. Their opposition derives from their loss of control. They don't want the government to interfere with their private initiatives to accomplish this same goal.
Holling's bill says that if these guys can't all agree on a standard, that the government will intervene and mandate one. Well, how likely do you think it is that these guys will all agree on a standard? Not likely at all, and they all know it. Instead, they would prefer to get the technical details worked out, and then ask for legislative protection.
But don't take my word for it. From the article:
"The MPAA agrees with the goals of the Hollings bill, that is, for the private parties to negotiate an agreement on Internet standards for content encryption, watermarking (and) digital rights management," MPAA President Jack Valenti said in a statement. "When an agreement is reached by the private parties, we will all then together support appropriate legislation regarding copyright protection in digital devices."
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Reducing the value of something to its intrinsic worth is not "stealing". Stealing is the deprivation of property from a victim. Copying music does not deprive the writer of the music; it can only arguably deprive him/her of the money he/she might have made --and that is highly debateable, since artists see little to none of the money made by labels selling the music.
The whole concept of "Stealing" is a wordfuck, a lie, a purposeful confusion of concepts to create a false fact, ie copying music=stealing the music.
The only possible crime is unauthorized distribution, which is a COMMERCIAL, CIVIL, offense. Or at least used to be, before the wordfuck of "Steal" began.
1) This is not hysterical[1]. It might be hysterical if it weren't so deadly serious. Disney, for all of their happiness, is probably the number one master of propaganda; and always has been. Go watch the war films of the 1940s. Watch the anti-drug movies. See if you can find the anti-black movies of the earliest years. Disney is a manipulator.
...in a funny sense, that is
2) This is utterly hysterical. It is based entirely on hysteria--mass, unthinking response to carefully calculated images, designed to drive crowds.
Do you think that by recognising and avoiding being part of the 'mindless throng' you're safe? Go ask Pete Seeger about the 'witch trials' of the 1950s.
[1]
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
What are you talking about? We all know that file sharing services are used to illegally distribute copyrighted material. But the reason many oppose efforts to control this piracy is because most of the control mechanisms infringe on our current rights.
What we need are examples of this infringement. If people saw what the IP hegemony could do to you if we gave them carte blanche to protect their "rights" then they might stop feeling guilty for "condoning piracy" and start feeling proud about supporting individual rights.
Why exactly is the copyright system wrong and why exactly do (or should) people have the right to freely copy other's copyrighted material?
Whether this cartoon is serious or a parody, there is a serious implication. The music industry as we know it could be destroyed along with our copyright system. That may or may not be a bad thing, but it is naive to believe that it is a good thing just because it allows you to get music for free. Ultimately there is a question of incentive and whatever system has to contain a way to cause people to want to create and distribute music and books.