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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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.