Rip, Mix, Disney?
In February of 2002--almost exactly four years ago--Michael Eisner went in front of the United States Senate to complain that customers of Disney’s record labels were actually listening to it. As part of his complaints, he singled out Apple for encouraging piracy through its iTunes music software. He said that Apple’s ad campaign tells buyers “that they can create a theft if they buy this computer.” In other words, he was complaining that Apple advertised that consumers could convert their CDs to MP3s and listen to them on their computer.
Today, you can go to the Hollywood Records web site--Hollywood Records is one of Disney’s labels--and download Lolita in MP3 format, a track from Elefant’s The Black Magic Show.
Today, Michael Eisner is out of Disney, and Steve Jobs--the head of Apple--is in. Jobs will soon be on Disney’s board. He owns 50.6% of Pixar stock, and when the purchase is over, he’ll be, at about 6%, the largest single shareholder of the Walt Disney Company. Eisner, the current largest shareholder, has 1.8%.
Jobs recently sent an e-mail to Apple employees when Apple’s market capitalization exceeded Dell’s, reminding them of Michael Dell’s suggestion in 1997 that Apple should just shut down. If boardmembers get an office at Disney HQ, I suggest that Jobs put “Mix, Rip, Burn” above the doorway. In big old black and bloody letters, ten feet tall.
- Disney boss accuses Apple of fostering piracy
- “Eisner accused the computer industry of considering piracy its new ‘killer app.’ He singled out Apple’s ‘Rip, Mix, Burn’ ad campaign of 2001 as an example of this type of behavior.”
- Apple Unveils New iMacs With CD-RW Drives & iTunes Software
- “Apple today introduced a new line of iMacs with CD-RW drives and iTunes, Apple’s amazing new ‘jukebox’ software, which lets users create and manage their own music library and burn their own custom audio CDs.”
- The Black Magic Show
- “Elefant. Download a free MP3 of their brand new single The Clown from their forthcoming sophomore album The Black Magic Show.”
- Disney in Talks to Acquire Pixar
- “Greenfield estimated that Jobs could gain a 6 percent stake in Disney as the result of a merger. Disney’s largest reported individual shareholder now is former CEO Michael Eisner, who owns 1.8 percent of outstanding shares.”
- Michael Eisner, Steve Jobs, & Digital Copyrights
- “Steve Jobs, after accepting a technical Grammy award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences last week told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal that ‘If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own,’ referring to the encryption methods being tested on consumer CDs that block mp3 encoding from computers. This same wonder technology also prevents them from playing on many existing CD players and car stereos.”
- Disney to Acquire Pixar
- “Pixar President Ed Catmull will serve as President of the new Pixar and Disney animation studios... Pixar Executive Vice President John Lasseter will be Chief Creative Officer of the animation studios, as well as Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering... Pixar Chairman and CEO Steve Jobs will be appointed to Disney's Board of Directors as a non-independent member.”
- Jobs sends ‘email chuckle’ on marketcap
- “Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.”
- There Won’t Be No Country Music (There Won’t Be No Rock ’N’ Roll)
- “It’s only gonna be about an eye-blink, boy, ’til they pull out the wool to blind us, so we just can’t read all the messages on the wall. But the only words that matter oughta be scribbled all over them billboards in big old black and bloody letters, ten feet tall.”
More Apple
- Apple’s spinning mirror: exploiting children for dictatorships
- Apple has decided on “child porn” as the root password to disable privacy on their phones. But the system they’re using appears to be mostly worthless at detecting the exploitation of children, and very useful for detecting dissent from authoritarian governments.
- How does Apple’s supposed anti-conservative bias matter?
- If you think Apple has a bias against conservatives or Christians, you definitely don’t want Apple to build a tool its employees can use to help guess an iPhone’s password.
- We have met the enemy, and he is our carrier
- If you want a phone that works as well as your Macintosh, you need a network that works as well as the Internet.
- Stephen Fry on iPhone killers
- “You’re only on this planet once—do something extraordinary, imaginative and inspiring. That’s the difference, ultimately.”
- The Ringtone Racket
- John Gruber adds his 99 cents to the iTunes ringtone debate, and comes to the same conclusion: Apple is losing its battle for the hearts and minds of consumers. It might make more money in the short-term, but it faces a significant chance of becoming just another company in the long-term.
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