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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."
on Gnutella, or something?? ;)
A lesson in IP morality, coming from Disney?
Next thing you know, Nike will feature ads exorting how NOT exploiting foreign workers in sweatshops is anti-American, and Just Plain Wrong(tm).
Create a little cartoon or someone trying to print an image from a movie for a school book report, and the police surrounding the house. Or maybe a someone trying to setup an ebook reader for their blind friend, and the FBI busting down the door. Or a professor talking about encryption in a classroom and the RIAA comes in with a muzzle.
Fight Spammers!
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.
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
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.
Disney proudly brainwashing the masses for 6 generations.
You know, seems to be, we should be teaching people to think for themselves not shoving this crap down thier throats...I guess Disney goes no my boycott List...humm which would work if they didn't own ESPN, ABC, and like a zillion other things. Seriously though I guess its thier opinion and they have a right to express it, but its the Target audience that scares me...Kids should be watching TV that teaches them to think for themselves and make thier own choices. 'Nuff said.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
... how similar this is to the whole "Say no to drugs" campaigning that was sanctioned by the government for the longest time. Lots of kids programs featured episodes based around it - and did they work? No!
Have you seen Traffic? We all know that the drug problem is complex and non-trivial to solve. File swapping is the same. The solution is not to try and stop people from swapping digital content, but to figure out how free digital content can integrate with our lives.
The whole disney thing is 'spooky' of course (the contrast between disney's lovely family face and this underhanded propaganda is just fabulous), but perhaps not something to worry about.
Ash OS durbatulk, ash OS gimbatul, ash OS thrakatulk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul! Uzg-MS-ishi amal fauthut burgulli.
Things like this make me want to come up with a new /. poll:
Who is more evil?
Microsoft
RIAA
MPAA
RMS
ESR
The DOJ
Congress
CowboyNeal
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
You said that "[w]holesale copying of music against the permission of its creators is wrong," but I've got to take issue with this.
It's not wrong.
People copy music wholesale without the permission of the creators ALL THE TIME. Indeed, Disney is known for this. They have two entire movies, their "Fantasia" series, which liberally copy music without permission from the creators. (many of whom were long dead)
And if the copyright scheme in this country were like that of the early Republic, copying music would be perfectly allright, and not a copyright violation at all. A lot later and you'd merely have to wait for the copyright to expire -- which wouldn't take terribly long.
It's about as wrong as installing a picket fence at your house that doesn't comply with zoning regulations, in many cases. Reasonable people are not only perfectly capable of arguing over whether some particular act ought to be infringement, and even whether we ought to have copyrights at all. (which are not mandated)
You don't give children much credit either. They are often pretty capable of calling a spade a spade. (c.f. "The Emperor's New Clothes")
-- 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.
I thought that Microsoft was a big propenent of screwing the little guy over
And in the spirit of keeping an open mind, maybe, just maybe, you've been reading bashdot too much and listening to too much propaganda, and maybe, just maybe, Microsoft isn't the enemy that you thought they were...
If God gave us curiosity
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.
Indeed they did, but Diznee did not have Matt Groening, so of course it would have to be a lousy onesided PC story. Would not surprice me if it ended with the words ",and DON'T do drugs!".
:-)
/. craps out on me and have to wait for ages to log in again.
Remember he also did The Cartridge Family where Homer buys a gun to protect his family and joins NRA, driving Marge and the kids away from home whith his careless use of firearms
(note that Matt is not against NRA, he is a member)
That show was not shown in some countries even though it in the end displays that the local members of the NRA in Springfield,?? are not a bunch of trigger happy dudes but cancels Homers membership.
This only shows the difference between the two series, where (in my opinion) "Proud Family" is nothing more than a money making scheme, The Simpsons has a lot more substance even though they got hit pretty bad by the PC wave.
No more will we see lines like this from Selma's Choice:
-[ANTI_LAMENES_FILTER_INSTEAD OF NICE CLEAN SEPERATOR STRING HERE]-
Lisa: [reading from the pamphlet] The Duff Beer-amid contains so much
aluminum it would take five men to lift it. Twenty-two immigrant
laborers died during its construction.
Selma: Eh, there's plenty more where that came from.
-[ANTI_LAMENES_FILTER_INSTEAD OF NICE CLEAN SEPERATOR STRING HERE]-
Oh, I guess I got a bit carried away here. What I am trying to say here is that don't forget where the series are coming for and what do expect. C'mon Disney. The alltime fluffy feelgod company? The rewrote the ending of "The Little Mermaid", they would never have made true to the story of Hans Christian Andersen where she dies.
(on a totally unrelated note: everytime I sit down and try to write something serious
I have made it a habbit to cut'n'paste it before I press Submit or preview)
1. Girl working at her antiquated computer her dad gave her in her room.
2. Mystery guy (cool hip hop looking dude in black) shows up at her window and supplies her with an up to date computer, takes her into "the Matrix" and shows her a web area called Free Jackster where she can get all the music she could ever want FOR FREE.
3. The girl asks if this is illegal and mystery guy explains it is our birthright to have free music, creativity should not have a price.
4. Girl gets addicted to collecting free music, her obsession leads to telling all her friends. Soon the site is getting millions of hits from kids to grandmothers.
5. Next scene at the The Wizard Record Label board room where "Sir Paid Alot" enters to complain his royalty check was only five cents. This alerts The Wizard (head of the label) that there is a retail problem he needs to look into.
6. Teen Girl's house is surrounded that night by police and press and she is arrested for illegal downloads, gets a warning. The news makes it clear that millions of people can't be stopped. Parents take computer away from girl and explain why free downloads is STEALING -- kind of an abirdged explanation of how copyrights work.
7. Next scene, Asian Guy's retail record store is empty, guy is crying on the floor. Teen Girl who happens to work at the store shows up to work, Asian guy fires her for supporting all the free downloads.
8. Next scene charts showing record sales are down down down to nothing because people get the music for free.
9. Sir Paid Alot gets 100 million hits on his website from freeloading fans who now love his music and previously would have never actually purchased his CD, gushing about how wonderful Free Jackster is. GeekBoy, an employee who runs his website and has spikey hair and a nose ring, runs around looking exasperated because a mercury thermometer attached to Sir Paid Alot's server blows its top and spits gallons of mercury all over the server room like an oil well blowing it's top, while cartoonish sirens go off.
10. Slick Dick, an Ad Exec representing BoingBoing Sneaker Company shows up at Sir Paid Alot's home in a shiny pointy pinstripe suit with a suitcase full of $100 bills if Sir Mix Alot will only wear their sneakers and show their logo all over his (now) sold out Nationwide tour. We see The Wizard outside Sir Mix Alot's mansion gates panhandling for money as Slick Dick leaves.
11. Mystery Guy hires Asian Guy to write reviews of Sir Mix Alot's Greatest Hits downloads on the Free Jackster website. Jump to a Flash Movie Asian Guy produces in pantomime style of the late-night "only $19.95" Greatest Hits Album commercials, complete with scrolling song titles and Sir Mix Alot performing a la Yanni and Anne Murray behind the titles.
12. Asian Guy proclaims he loves his new job because now he can do nothing but write about his first love, music, and not have to worry every day how The Wizard was always trying to rip him off as an independent Record Store owner. Cut to flashback where the Wizard shows up at Asian Guys' shop offering CDs priced at $11.99 while right behind Asian Guy "crying on the floor," we see he is selling his CDs for $12.00. We see Asian Guy leaving Free Jackster's offices with Rio-like device in hand, big grin and kewl shades, listening to Sir Mix Alot song, grimacing and throwing a few pennies at The Wizard begging on the street.
13. At his sold out concert, with "kids and grandmothers" all rockin' out, Sir Paid Alot calls Teen Girl on stage, thanks her for getting rid of the "Blood-sucking middlemen" out of his life and letting him do what he always liked to do, rap fantastic straight to his fans saying his "creativity should not have a price."
14. Sir Paid Alot makes up a rap right on the spot for Teen Girl, she swoons and her eyes turn into beating hearts bulging out of her eyesockets.
15. On her cell phone going to Las Vegas in the back of Sir Paid Alot's limo, Teen Girl explains to her parents why the copyright system works in the old world of Vinyl and CDs, but in the new world of electronic bits, an economy of scale ensures that the artists get even more money from a more democratic connection between them and their fans and without any middlemen, sort of like the radio, with sponsors paying him endorsement fees rather than the artist getting royalty checks. She explains how Asian Guy's reviews on his now super-popular website ensures that people get exposed to new artists and new forms of popular music. Cut again to GeekBoy running around server room while mercury thermometer attached to server gushes, with Asian Guy in the background taps happily away at a computer, writing reviews.
16. Her parents are impressed but yell at her for being in a much older Rapper's limo and being underage and tell her to come home immediately. Via Free Jackster on the computer they took away from her and her cell phone, they send her a copy of a Barney song she always listened to as a kid and that she had lost in CD form, but now is eternally available for free via the Web, conveniently and quickly, wherever they may be, with whatever device, without any red tape involved. Teen Girl cries and jumps out of the limo into a passing car being driven by Mystery Guy heading in the opposite direction. Mystery Guy drives her home where "police and press" treat her to a lavish homecoming.
17. Mystery Guy puts on a baseball cap, complaining "my hair is always too nappy", saying to Mystery Girl, "I'm a teenager too." They kiss and the cartoon closes with Sir Mix Alot singing a la Barry White to them in the background.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If disney wants to discuss IP, they'd better take a look at This site.
Basically, Disney ripped their latest fiasco, Lost city of Atlantis, straight from Nadia, queen of the see, a terriffic anime job.
And they say they had never heard of Nadia... Take a look and see what you think.
~z
sig?
Well, I didn't mean that I meant it was universally wrong, but in the common sense that I meant it -- taking recently recorded music that you know the creator wants to be paid for, just so that you can hear it without having to pay -- it's still my opinion that this is wrong.
And of a number of people here, to whom the comment was really addressed. Yes, clearly if you don't buy the concept of copyright at all, you're going to think the cartoon's message is wrong in every way.
But there are many who, like me, have said "what many users are doing with Napster/Gnutella/MusicCity/Freenet/etc. is wrong, but writing file sharing tools is not wrong."
If you don't agree with that, then of course you won't buy what I said. If you do agree with that you may feel, as I wrote, that the right course is to teach our children what's right and wrong, not because of what the law or technology will allow you to do or forbid you to do, but because of a moral system you have.
While many point out that making a copy doesn't physically deprive the creator of anything, they misunderstand what IP is when they say this. IP isn't really about owning particular sets of bits.
IP is about the question of whether a creator can have control over their creation. When you copy, you appropriate that control.
Curiously, the most physical of properties, real estate, is also entirely about control, even in things that don't deprive the landowner of anything physical.
I own land, and I have the power to tell you not to walk on it, even though if you walk on it when I'm not there, you've had insignificant physical effect on me.
Now you might argue that control of creations is bad if it means controlling who can make copies. But that is what IP is, for better or worse.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation