Donald Duck Is a Music Pirate, and His Nephews Too
Written by Ernesto on December 04, 2007The latest issue of the Donald Duck magazine in The Netherlands features Donald and his nephews as music pirates and (who else) Uncle Scrooge as the big boss of a record label threatening with fines. Has the anti-piracy lobby infiltrated the Donald Duck magazine?
The short comic presents the Dutch youngsters with a short lesson in copyright. Huey, Dewey and Lewey don’t have money for the latest “Jan Goudsmid” album, so they decide to download it (presumably with BitTorrent). They argue that they can always buy it later when they have the money. When the nephews tell this to Donald he realizes that he can make a lot of money from this by copying and selling CDs on the street.
Huey, Dewey and Lewey are shocked by Donald’s plan, and tell him it’s not fair because the CD is copyrighted. “If nobody buys CDs anymore, the record labels and artists will become beggars,” they add. Donald doesn’t listen of course and tries to make 100 copies of a CD he bought. In the end Donald’s plan is stopped by Uncle Scrooge, who warns Donald that he will have to pay a huge sum of money if he doesn’t stop the pirating (yes, it’s all about money).
… ain’t that a great message Disney is sending to the Dutch youngsters?
Several Dutch websites suspected that the anti-piracy organization BREIN was somehow behind this propagandists comic. However, the Donald Duck magazine denied the involvement of BREIN, or any other organization. Thom Roep, the head editor of the Donald Duck magazine, further apologized for the preaching tone used in the story, especially when the nephews were talking about copyright. He explained that they decided to run this story because it is a nice illustration how Huey, Dewey and Lewey outsmart their uncle once again.
It’s certainly smart to download music if you don’t have the money to buy a CD. The nephews were smart enough not to become commercial pirates, they just did it for personal use, which is not that bad according to the comic (downloading music is not illegal in the Netherlands). If BREIN really was involved, I think the nephews wouldn’t have downloaded the CD at all, they would lose their “merit patch in respecting copyright” if they did.
On top of this, I don’t think any anti-piracy organization would make Scrooge the boss of a music label, even though they know it is a pretty accurate comparison. Here is a link to the comic in Dutch.
Previously: Stop Downloading Fakes and Junk From BitTorrent
Next: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk48)
53 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All
Good idea. Brainwash the kids, so they will snitch on their parents. Sounds familiar…
Whoo, my brain got mixed up on seeing this — I first read “anti-piracy” as “anti-copyright”, and thought someone from the Dutch Pirate Party had infiltrated the comic or something and planted a PRO-piracy message.
That would be very ironic since Donald Duck is owned by Disney.
It sounds like the comic is against for-profit street piracy, but doesn’t really say filesharing is bad?
Interesting.
It actually says: “Downloading is illegal”. They clearly don’t know what they are talking about.
Also Scrooge is taking the law into his own hands by violently poking Donald with a kane, entering Donald’s house illegally and threatening Donald with a 10.000 euro fine (but will let him off the hook because he is his nephew, haha!). Sounds like a crooked music boss alright.
Heh, anyone can translate?
[quote comment="230819"]Also Scrooge is taking the law into his own hands by violently poking Donald with a kane, entering Donald’s house illegally and threatening Donald with a 10.000 euro fine (but will let him off the hook because he is his nephew, haha!). Sounds like a crooked music boss alright.[/quote]
A good point! Lets sue Scrooge and teach him to not bully on pirates! :P
thx for publishing!
Translation:
Picture one: Uncle donald, have you got us 20 euro’s? - What? I’m not santa clause!
Picture two: But we want to buy the new CD of Jan Goudsmid. - Then you’ll go and save money.
Picture three: They always buy candy of their money, so it’ll take months before they can buy the CD.
Picture four: A few hours later: Huh? But!
Picture five: How did you got the money to buy the CD? - Don’t worry uncle Donald, we DOWNLOADED the disc.
Picture six: And then we burned it to a disc. We will keep this disc until we can buy the original CD.
Picture seven: Then why don’t you keep this one? - That’s not nice, if nobody would buy CD’s then the record companies and artists would become beggars.
Second part.
Picture one: An empty disc cost almost nothing. But an original cd almost 20 euro’s. If I sell such a copy for halve the money then…
Picture two: First I’ll buy the original cd of Jan Goudsmid.
Picture three: Oh oh, uncle donald is getting himself in trouble again.. - So now I’ll make a hundred copies.
Picture four: This is gonnna get me rich!
Picture five: And then you’ll pay me 100 times the rights to copy that disc which is published by MY record company.
Picture six: Plus a fine of 10.000 dollars for PIRACY. - Have mercy, besides I purchased the original disc!
Picture seven: Hooray, now we have the REAL cd. Which the song lines. Away with this copy. - Alright, because you’re family I’ll allow this one time..
Translation:
Part one:
Picture one: Uncle donald, have you got us 20 euro’s? - What? I’m not santa clause!
Picture two: But we want to buy the new CD of Jan Goudsmid. - Then you’ll go and save money.
Picture three: They always buy candy of their money, so it’ll take months before they can buy the CD.
Picture four: A few hours later: Huh? But!
Picture five: How did you got the money to buy the CD? - Don’t worry uncle Donald, we DOWNLOADED the disc.
Picture six: And then we burned it to a disc. We will keep this disc until we can buy the original CD.
Picture seven: Then why don’t you keep this one? - That’s not nice, if nobody would buy CD’s then the record companies and artists would become beggars.
sry for triple post.. :P
The link below is the comic is entry on coa.induks.org the Disney comic database.
This story is far form notable so it will propably not see a day of light in most other countries.
http://coa.inducks.org/discuss.php?url=/story.php?c=H+26308&search=
“If nobody buys CDs anymore, the record labels and artists will become beggars”
I rather think they’ll just hang themselves. Good idea to prevent global warming! The message is fine by me. Pro-profit pirates are scum. They even provide a good excuse for file-sharing. What more can you expect?
Yeah, pro-profit pirates kinda suck… Unless they, like, just run a torrent site that has ads on it. But then they’re not really pirates, just setting up a useful sharing service with many legal uses, so yeah.
I would assume that P2P is driving most for-profit pirates out of business, no?
So Disney is with the anti pirates too. Too bad the comic itself seems to create more confusion than actually being comical.
P.S. I know you Gamespot editors come here and read up on the lastest. That was cruel to fire Jeff Gerstmann after all the years he has put in. Stop keeping his departure a big secret. Admit it that you fired him for giving a low score to K&L.
I’m surprised Disney would allow any of its rated ‘G’ characters to be portrayed supposedly breaking the law. Looks like the anti pirates got to Disney with a nice pay off. Maybe with a check worth 5 million US dollars which is like small change to the anti pirates. Nice try anti punyrates. Try your luck teaching innocent babies to download music.
Thank you very much for your translation Julian
Damn what a good idea Donald had there, why didn’t I think of that! Lol J/K. Piracy is okay as long as it is for private use in my opinion…. I mean cmn you can’t charge people for this, it’d be like selling sand lol, you can get it everywhere. I believe that we should educate the youth to use torrents, warez and newsgroups for good of man kind and not for evil.
I just want to say that we did actually have this in scandinavia too!
“If nobody buys CDs anymore, the record labels and artists will become beggars,” they add.
Gawd, how I wish that this could happen… At least for the record labels. The true artist are already beggars…
Donald Duck shouldn´t be confused with Mickey Mouse.
Well selling is not sharing, thus there is actually nothing bad with the comic :f
ppl downloading stuff to sell and make money of it are not part of the community, they infact aren’t any better than the greedy organisations.
“Of course, you realize, this means war!”
This is why the Looney Tunes have always been superior to Disney’s half-assed gay characters and stories.
I would like to see Scrooge trying to threat Bugs Bunny. Bugs would leave him bankrupt just to teach him not to threat others. :D
I think this strip exactly shows what downloading etc is about (or should be); to check it out, and to buy it if you like it enough (and have the money).
It’s clear that what the three nephews are doing is what most (honest) p2p users do. What Donald does it obviously wrong, as everyone will agree with. And there’s Scrooge, which is, as said, the perfect personification of a big commercial label; all money for himself, as little as possible for others. Typical music industry (puke) behavior.
Guess I’m one of the few that likes this strip. (except panel 7 on page 1 for the preaching tone indeed).
And seriously, €20 for a CD is sickenly outrageous.
Dutchy
Dutchy, that would have been fine were it not for the absurd line “If nobody buys CDs anymore, the record labels and artists will become beggars,”
Also, it would have been better if it focused on Huey et al.
I Just want a larger picture of that Donald Duck Pirate on top of the page. He’s cool.
Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All
Add your response