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Disney Blames Apple For Music Piracy
Vishniac writes "It looks like Disney CEO Michael Eisner is accusing Apple in part for fostering music piracy, particularly with its 'Rip, Mix, Burn' campaign. Testifying before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Eisner said that the ad suggests to people that 'they can create theft if they buy this computer.' Apple? iMac? Impossible."
What the Great Eared One fails to mention is the fact that Apple has made several important concessions to the music industry in the design of their products.
First, there is the hard-to-miss "Don't Steal Music" warnings that one finds in Apple's materials. Second, much to the annoyance of consumers, Apple has designed the iPod/iTunes product in order to minimize the opportunity for piracy - it only synchs one way. Yeah there are ways around that but not with Apple software tools.
Incidentally Jobs has already issued a response that is quite interesting.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I'm sure that Weird Al gets permission from and pay royalties to the artists whose songs he uses.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
Apple puts this slogan in all of their music-related ads, and I think they also put this sticker on their iPods. I guess no one told Eisner about that...
It doesn't matter, really, since the RIAA/MPAA's new take is that beacuse of rampant piracy, fair use must be eliminated. There goes the doctrine of "substantial non-infringing uses."
For the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
Disney had better be pretty careful on this one.
Disney's last few decent releases have been the animated films Toy Story, Bugs Life, Monsters Inc. all coming out of the Pixar production house.
Steve Jobs is still CEO of Pixar and major shareholder and has a well-known history of fighting fire with fire.
IIRC Pixar are contracted to do two more films and so far every one of the Pixar releases has been very successful especially when the merchandising angle is brought in.
[)amien
Well, if using an Apple makes me a pirate (and didn't Apple fly a pirate flag from the building they were inventing Macintosh in?), I submit the following:
Yo Ho
Yo Ho
A pirate's life for me
We're ripping and mixing and burning CDs
(Upload me hearties yo ho)
We steal and create theft and don't like Disney!
(Download me hearties yo ho)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Thank goodness we have people like Eisner standing up for our rights to purchace entertainment at premium prices.
... actually atleast in Sweden it's _legal_ for us to burn copies of our CDs and give to friends. We even had a "parliament member" who did this and admitted it in our biggest newspaper. An investigation was made but she wasn't charged with anything.
it's in my head
I hope some of the Congressmen realize the difference between "Rip, Mix, Burn" and...
Congressmen will realize what Disney pays them to realize. Now you'd better turn yourself in for pirating music by humming "Whistle While You Work", because you are illegally copying Disney's Intellectual Property with your mind. Federal agents are closing on your location as we speak.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Pixar has a five-picture deal with Disney, and for complicated reasons Toy Story II didn't count. So, there are three movies left that Pixar has to release through Disney, and that Disney has some creative control over -- after which Pixar will be able to be it's own, for better or for worse.
It appears that these three pictures are all green-lit, and are in progress at one stage or another.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Well, Except it wasn't Pixar that made Shrek now was it? It was Dreamworks I believe... Pretty obviously taking shots at Disney, golf clap for figuring that one out.
You can hit up the Commerce Committee for PDFs of the actual statements. Anyone got any Ogg Vorbis of the Hearing?
and buy a PowerMac, PowerBook or new iMac in the event that they get sued. That would be probably more effective than any Amicus Curae brief.
Yes. I seem to remember the introduction of cassettes was going to kill the music industry if their prophets were right. I guess they were wrong.
The same goes for VCRs and the movie industry. "Oh no! Videos will kill the movie industry!!!"
Bzzzt! Wrong again...
One has to wonder what effect this may have on Disney's relationship with Pixar. After all, Steve Jobs is the CEO of both. I've always hoped that Disney would purchase Pixar. They do great work and would be a valuable addition to Disney. Buy them, and then leave them alone. Don't interfere in that division.
Having been around a lot of cartoon animators in my life, i can tell you that the last thing a successful and talented animator wants is to work for Disney ("work for the rat" as they call it). It does not look good on a reelshow or resume, and the super-corporate Disney environment is not one that encourages artistic creativity.
DZM
In Lessig's book "The Future of Ideas" he has a story that shows you pretty clearly where Disney's head is. In IIRC the early seventies, RCA was working on a consumer VCR. They were concerned about publishers' IP rights so they developed a ONE-USE cassette. After showing the video once, the cassette would mechanically lock and couldn't be rewound. You'd have to take it back to the video store and pay them another rental fee to unlock it.
They showed this to a bunch of Disney executives. Their reaction was "We would NEVER distribute our movies that way. When the tape is played, we have ABSOLUTELY NO WAY OF KNOWING how many people are in the room."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Ouch! You are correct on the math, I was lame on my explanation of the deals.
IIRC the way it works is that the 5-picture deal was renegotiated after Toy Story came out. The previous deal was a three-picture deal where Disney got the lion's share of the revenues, and the new deal is a five-picture deal with more even cost- and revenue-sharing.
So, the two pictures so far are Bug's Life and Monster's Inc; as they were released after Toy Story -- with Toy Story II not counted as it was intended to be a direct-to-video sequel.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
That deal was negotiated after Toy Story, which was under a separate deal. Nemo, Invincibles and Route 66 are the three movies remaining to deliver to Disney.
And since ripping is an INTEGRAL part of music piracy, there does seem to be a claim that Apple is obliquely responsible.
You're entirely missing the fact that many people, such as myself, rip every cd they own and prefer to listen to mp3s and leave the Cd's in a case somewhere. This is entirely legal, and it's the way I like to listen to music that I paid for. As you mentioned, we don't prosecute fertilizer companies when bombs are made with their products, because their product is targeted at law abiding gardeners. Likewise, going after apple for iTunes/iPod would be ridiculous because they target their product at law abiding citizens who want to rip music. If any court ruling were presented against apple (unlikely; at this point t's just eisner talking), it would imply that the very concept of archiving your music collection on your computer (and transferring it to your mp3 player) was inherently at odds with the law. And that is absurd.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
It's really encouraging to see Apple stand up to this kind of misinformation, and to take a stand on fair use. I'd also like to point out that, for those that missed it, that Apple delayed the release of Quicktime 6 (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/13/04123 4&mode=thread) due to the unfair license. Apple was willing to shell out the $2 Million, but did NOT want customers to have to pay $0.002/minute for commercial streams. The point being that they could have released it for personal use and let the customer deal with it if they were streaming commercial content, but they didn't. They took a stand.
Thanks for putting your money where your mouth is, Apple.