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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."
"If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own," said Jobs.
Goddamned right.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
1. I remember Rogers used to run an ad campain that promoted their high-speed internet by describing how fast you can download audio off the internet (this was back in the Napster days).
2. I recently saw a commercial for some computer co. (I'm thinking Gateway, but I'm not sure) that promoted using it's built in CD-burner to record audio downloaded from the net.
3. And of course Apple.
If the people didn't want to download music and burn it themselves then these ads would not be successful. By showing that these ads are working, then what the people want is the ability to download such things. The RIAA (Disney, whoever) should just let it happen. The RIAA's role will not become obsolete even if the only means of distribution was via the net. Their role would definitly change, but it would not cease to exist. They just need to see this.
Amen. The last thing I want to see is have Pixar's creative freedom resrained even further. I want to see where that talent can go, and while childreb's films have worked well for them, there may come a time when they decided they should be doing something else. Better then that they can take their small company and move. To be part of Disney, I feel, would bind them to a certain genre unnecessarily.
-Erik
Rip - Copy songs from my CDs to my computer.
Mix - Change the order of these songs to create a playlist that is superior to the individual CDs.
Burn - Write this playlist to CDs so I can listen to these songs the way I want to listen to them.
I don't care how many laws Disney buys, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. What these ads really suggest is that Apple won't try to make listening to music impossible because of some misguided notion that pissing off your customers is good for business.
That only works if none of these burned copies are given to friends.
I was worried about that ad a lot just because I love my mp3 player. The more we gloat about how easy it is to get music without buying it, the more the RIAA is going to come down on people who actually do buy cds but only listen to them in MP3 form. You have to lay low sometimes.
By the time this posts it will probably get modded redundant, but nowhere did Apple's ad say "Rip, Mix, Burn, Steal", or even "Rip, Mix, Burn, Swap."
This is one of the most offensive aspects of Disney et al's push for the SSSCA; I don't begrudge them the desire to protect their IP from piracy, but the attitude that everyone who owns a computer (especially an Apple, apparently) is a dirty, dirty pirate really chaps my hide. Well, that plus the fact that the SSSCA would effectively put me out of work if passed in its current form.
God forbid I rip all of my CD's which I legitimately own by a particular band and burn all of the MP3s onto one mix CD that I can leave at the office.
Rip, Mix, Burn, Fair Use.
It is about time a large company got into this debate that wasn't on the accusing side.
For a long time, some companies (Apple, Sony, HP, Phillips, etc.) gave us tools to "rip, mix, burn" and told us to do so (I'll call them enabling companies), but when these sacks of shit that make up the content production companies complain and whine, these enabler companies didn't have much to say. Now, a big company (with their own healthy PR department/company) can take some of this brunt.
We can now have a debate between equals (or semi-equals, we'll see who else gets involved over the coming months) instead of having big companies attacking consumers for using products in seemingly fair ways (use the PC to rip and mix, and then use a CD burner to make CDs).
So, yeah, it seems pretty stupid and petty, but I think it is high time the enabling companies get into this debate.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
Precisely. If Apple is 'guilty' then so are Philips and Aiwa (?) which I believe both ran ads centered around making your own mix CDs. Once again, the RIAA's strategy appears to be to go after an enabler rather than the culprits. Its an old argument, but for Christ's sake, blame the individual who illegally shares the content, not the companies that enable content to be shared.
... oops, Sony's a member of the RIAA, too, right? How do you get music to your mini-discs? Or is every album that's available on CD available on mini-disc? Not at my BestBuy! This is the digital age, trying to put the genie back in the bottle is a waste of the artist's money! Come up with something else ... figure out WHY people aren't paying money for CDs and then see what you can do.
While they're bashing Apple, they might as well pull in Sony as well
Things have to change. If the money that's been spent bribing Congress and paying lawyers had been spent in a thinktank-like endeavor to come up with a new way of doing business and representing the artists, MAYBE everyone would be happier now.
what boggles my mind is how complete and utter morons with business degrees end up in cush houses while my hard working self, with above-average intelligence can barely scrape by. Maybe I should check my morals and feelings at the door and become cold-hearted like the rest of 'em.
The fundemental problem is Apple and Disney have fundementally different revenue models:
Disney has a huge backlist of contenet taht they can control, repackage and sell - on ethey add to every day. Anything that threatens the value of taht backlist by making it easy to acquire outside of Disney lower's Disney's expected return, and hence overall valuation.
Apple views itself as a hardware company - it makes money selling Apples, and teh software is an integral part of the product, and not one that forms a growing and valuable backlist (how many people are looking forward to the 25th aniversary edition of Finder?). Hence, they are driven by consumer desires, and consumers want to be able to burn CDs (and increasingly, DVDs). If they don't include features consumers want, people will either:
1. Buy add-ons elsewhere; or
2. Buy something else.
In either case, Apple loses potentially profitable revenue streams.
Apple, whoever, is also a software company and values IP (although for quite some time they gave away updates to their OS - until they realized it was a good source of revenue), so they really don't want people to steal music or videos, but must try to walk a fine line between providing what people want and not giving people ways to steal other's property. In the end, however, revenue trumps a desire to take the high road - they are after all, in business to make money, and for Apple, the money is in the hardware/software combination; not in softwrae alone - so they will do what it takes to push iron out the door, no matter what Mickey wnats or thinks.
Now, what would be interesting if Apple secretly tagged al copies of CDs/DVDs burned with their software - so copies could ultimately be traced to the original source.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Ripping music is much more directly related to music piracy than any of those stupid examples you gave anyway.
Obviously. Axe Murder doesn't have anything to do with ripping music... I do know what you MEANT though.
Did you know that the cold medicine pseudoephedrine is a primary ingredient in Meth Labs production? So should we outlaw pseudoephedrine? [Love cut and paste, I couldn't type that twice!]
So, by your logic, not being able to RIP should massively reduce piracy? I don't think so. It would also drastically reduce your CONSTITUTIONALLY guananteed use of "fair use."
Granting the ABILITY to do something is almost never a problem. Doing it might be another matter. The general rule of law in this country is "innocent until proven guilty." This extends to enabling items as well. We prosecute you for ACTS, not ideas. Ripping is the IDEA. Copyright infringement is the ACT.
You accept the law because it protects you as much as it limits you. Care to use an example? I'm sure you can come up with one. Not that I totally disagree, but how about some concrete examples we can sink our teeth into huh?
Cheers!
buying Senators creates infinite corporate copyrights...
Oh, wait...is that offtopic for a Disney thread? *cough*
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
There is another issue I'd like to clarify. Disney and other content owners are not seeking to stop home taping or eliminate "fair use." We are not here because we want to hinder libraries and college professors in using portions of creative works for scholarly research. Nor are we here because we want to interfere with consumers who wish to make a home copy of Broadcast and basic cable TV programs for their own personal time-shifted viewing. We are confident that the government can act to facilitate the needed technology standards without endangering home taping or fair use.
So if you take him at his word here, he wants to preserve fair use, including personal taping for time-shifting and that sort of thing. Do you think he can be believed here?
Amen to that. Here at my art school, and I can tell you first hand that there are very few students at my school (pop: 5500 students) that are planning on going into buisness for themselves. Sure, some film students dream of indie work, and the Illustration students are planning on going into solo work (living job-to-job), but the rest of us are being prepared for work as part of a company. From 2d animators to 3d animators, from fashion designers to jewlery designers, from sequential artists to graphic designers, we all understand that we will most likely end up doing work for a big megacorporation, because that's the only way to make a living as an artist any more. Independent work in today's market simply can't survive -- thanks to companies like Disney, Microsoft, Sony, etc. I'm going into 3d animation, and while I'd love to work for Sony/Verant or Blizzard or Pixar, I'd much rather be able to do my own work or work for a smaller company (id, Valve, etc) and still make an honest living. If this media consolidation continues, artists won't be able to create anything without the blessing of a majour corporation. And media consolidation is the next logical step if this legislation gets passed...
~Aaron
student of animation and the fine arts
All disney has to do is expand the Copyright term by 4 more years and we can pounce on them!
Jacob Grimm died in 1863. Disney's Snow White and the 7 dwarves came out in 1937. That's 74 years later.
All Disney needs to do is expand the copyright term by 4 more years and we can point out that if this copyright term had been in effect when Disney started out, they wouldn't have been able to make the world's first full length animated feature film.
I always find it ironic that Disney makes such a big deal about copyright, yet they made their living off other people's past-copyrighted work. Snow White, Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty.
Disney owes their livelihood to public domain works.. particularly The Grimm Brothers' intellectual property.
Record companies should loosen their grip
Quote: Jobs suggested that recording labels need to make it easier for consumers to use their own music however they want. "If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own," said Jobs.
But the average Mac user isn't the average Slashdotter; he or she has neither the will nor the knowledge to capture the analog signal
I know a lot of people slam Mac users, but do you really think they don't know how to use a tape recorder?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Oh, certainly! The original article. Donald must be quite the stud, huh? Hope this helps!
They might have actually had a case. AT&T broadband in my area currently has a slogan on one of their commercials, "I want to download the top 40 while it's still the top 40." Where as "rip, mix, burn" in most cases constitutes fair use (notice they didn't say "rip, mix, upload", or "borrow, rip, mix and burn", or anything to suggest copyright infringement), I don't see how downloading the top 40 while it's still in the top 40 can possibly constitute fair use (unless AT&T has some deal which I don't know about, in which case I'm getting AT&T Broadband). It seems to me this is good news for us, as Apple simply have to remake the Sony/Betamax timeshifting case all over again. I'm glad they didn't find AT&T Broadband first to irreversibly muddy the waters. AT&T would be the straw man argument. Thank god they are finally going after what they really want rather than some rediculous straw man.
Hmmm... perhaps the corporations really *aren't* fighting for the interests of the artists...
Nahhh.
Hmm... ironic that a man who is notoriously bad at sharing profits with talent both past and present has a bone to pick with the idea of royalties not getting to those who deserve it. Perhaps he should go talk to some of the original animators of some of the Disney classics who were working hard to make Disney a legendary force in animation before Eisner was even born. Maybe they could remind him that he was the one who decided that Disney didn't need to share the profits of the video releases of those classics because their contracts didn't include video tape releases (duh... didn't these guys know back in 1940s...? Ahem.) Maybe he could talk to Robin Williams who refused to do the voice of the genie in the sequel to Aladdin because he was fucked over by Disney. Maybe he could talk to the countless animators who have left Disney because they can barely get by on the pittance... er, paycheck they are given.
Yeah, I love how these corporate guys don't seem to get these ethical issues until they are the ones who are getting screwed. Then suddenly stealing from those who deserve the royalties is just plain wrong and bad... and shame on any of you for even thinking about doing it.
Me personally, I do not buy less cd's because I can download them from the net, because since the rise of mp3 I'm much more occupied with music and thus buy more cd's as well.
What really puts me off at buying cd's is the constant moaning and threat and suing of piracy by the big cd labels. Their greed and selfishness really pisses me off. The more because they are selling content that they havent created themselves. Sometimes if I read the latest article on the subject I really consider finding myself another hobby, allthough I am a musician myself. (one that doesnt mind spreading his music across the net, I even encourage it)
I think the whole music industry is becoming way too much top loaded. The labels think they can just do everything because they got money (our money!) and can afford the lawyers.
Remember what happened to the Mayan priests and kings? In the end they too became too top loaded, and the people got annoyed by them so much they just rejected them.
The big labels, like the Mayan kings, can not exist without us. They need our money because its their business. I hope for them they are wise enough to not piss us all off too much. They allready have done damage to themselves, I hope that they realise that the knife they are holding really is on their own throats.
my $0.02...
/x4