Richard Bullwinkle is Macrovision’s Chief Evangelist. You remember Macrovision, right? If not, allow us to refresh your memory:
Back in February, Macrovision — In Love With DRM Since 1983 — posted a response from CEO Fred Amoroso to Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ open letter calling for DRM-free music which was subsequently translated from Assholian into English by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. Some bits:
• We’ve been helping and encouraging the entertainment industry to annoy its paying customers for more than 20 years.
• Remember those squiggly lines when you tried copying a commercial VHS tape? You can thank us for that.
• We recognize that if getting rid of DRM works for the music industry, it’s going to open the eyes of executives in other fields, and it could unravel Macrovision’s entire business.
• I have, to date, succeeded in convincing the entertainment industry that DRM can stop piracy.
• The solution is more DRM. DRM everywhere.
• Without DRM we don’t have control over what people can do with their media.
Read Gruber’s full translation – highly recommended – here.
Anyway, CNET (who else?) has published a piece by Macrovision’s Chief Evangelist, Richard Bullwinkle, in which he disingenuously sets himself up as “an Apple fanboy.”
Bullwinkle, conniving corporate mouthpiece that he is, then proceeds to excrete nuggets such as, “If I step outside my fanboy shoes, perhaps I would discover [that} I could buy and own songs and videos that I could use on any player…not just an iPod. I could have an open environment to share my media content across my other entertainment devices instead of a closed environment that locks all my content in one brand.”
MacDailyNews Take: Set yourself up as an “Apple fanboy” in order to push your corporate agenda with incorrect and/or misleading propaganda. Lovely. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too! The fact is that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called for an end to music DRM and this is BAD for Macrovision which is obviously a place that gives Microsoft a serious run for its money when it comes to lack of business (and just plain human) ethics. Bullwinkle, who’s not fooling anybody, seems like just the type who’d take that as a compliment. Nasty piece of work. How some of these scumbags sleep at night is beyond us. Apple, of course, sells DRM-free music from EMI and is reportedly continuing to work to convince the other music cartels to allow them to do the same with their music catalogs. Such music can be played on any player that supports the successor to MP3, the superior “MPEG-4 Audio,” also known as AAC. Apple’s iPod does not require use of the iTunes Store. Apple’s iTunes Store does not require use of an iPod. Apple supports both Mac users and Windows PC sufferers. Microsoft, for example, does no such thing. Apple’s FairPlay DRM, when required by the music cartels, supports more users than Microsoft’s now-defunct PlaysForSure and bound-for-defunctness Zune thing, both of which were/are Windows-only. Zune and PlaysForSure were even incompatible with each other!
Bullwinkle, who, with one article, now makes us picture a weasel instead of a cartoon moose, continues his indefensible, slimy, and gross douchebaggery via CNET (of course) in his full piece, Think Before You Click™, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Since_IIci” for the heads up.]
Yuck. Does anyone have any Pepto?
“How some of these scumbags sleep at night is beyond us.”
On their stomachs?
Evangelist Richard Bullwinkle = Whacking, insultable driveller.
“Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a load of unmitigated bullshit out of my hat!”
“Again? That trick never works!”
“This time, for sure!”
-jcr
Where is this open digital music and video? Show me and I’ll use that and play it on my iPod – it’s open after all.
Brilliant article! Highly recommended reading!
Where are Boris and Natasha when you need them?
Tell all the CNET editors what you think.
http://www.cnet.com/4520-13403_1-6722502-2.html?tag=byline
This guy is right on the mark! Thank you Bullwinkle for having the courage to tell the truth—and he’s an Apple fanboy!
Don’t let Apple control your media and player choices! Let DRM open up all kinds of possibilities for your content and player choices. My favorite choices are Microsoft’s Janus DRM and Microsoft’s Zune. The new Zunes are really great. I’m going to buy one. It’s much better than those I-PODs.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Anyone who starts off describing themselves as an Apple Fanboy is obviously an Apple-hater. That’s is the most transparent straw-man I think I’ve ever seen.
“Let DRM open up all kinds of possibilities for your content and player choices.”
Bravo! That is the funniest thing I have read today! Thanks, I needed that.
douchebaggery
….Brilliant!!!!
Bingo, Spark!
If somebody writes that they’re an Apple “fanboy,” they’re not.
Frickin MS astroturfers!
Bullwinkle? BULLWINKLE? I actually thot MDN was making this up and making fun of Macrovision until I got half way thru the article and realized that was the guy’s real name.
I’m sorry, but anyone with the name Bullwinkle should simply not be allowed to have the title “Chief Evangelist.” in any company except Disney or Hanna-Barbera. Was the personnel committee on vacation that week? Was the PR department on drugs?
You are completely correct, jANUS and zune go together, a match made in heaven!
How do these douchebags sleep at night? Very uncomfortably. Lying on all of those lumpy bags of cash and gold krugerrands would probably misalign your spinal column. Poor guy, he probably has to wake up his live in masseur first thing in the morning, and then jump in his hot tub…(sniff)…
Richard Bullwinkle? Is this Rocky’s sadistic evil twin brother who likes to torture talking squirrels?
“Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. Nothing up my sleeve.”
Or is there..
Go back to Frostbite falls.
DRM is one of those things… if you piss your customers off enough, they’ll eventually go elsewhere.
Steve gets it, why don’t the other guys?
MW: light.
Wow. I’m not making it up. I’m putting a tin-foil hat on right now, just in case MDN is tapping into my mind. Scary stuff!
Zune Tang says “I am going to buy one.” Even Zune Tang is waiting for M$ to have to give their “new” catch up Zunes away.
My freedom. Apple’s passion.
I know Richard Bullwinkle. Richard Bullwinkle is a friend of mine. He’s even a neighbor of mine. While I (and anyone else who knows & loves him) freely admit he’s a douchebag, I will say that he coveted my Apple products for years until he switched. He’s a true believer who honestly wants all his media to play on his beautiful Apple products.
C
MacDaily “News”, stop suckin’ Jobs’ dick, Mactard asswipes.
Richard Bullshitter:
“If I step outside my fanboy shoes, perhaps I would discover [that] I could buy and own songs and videos that I could use on any player…not just an iPod.”
Lying tool, that Bullshitter.
My primary machine is a G4 Mac Mini, but I’ve got a laptop that dual boots XP and Ubuntu. Now, I’ve got iTunes Plus tracks that I’ve played on my laptop not only under Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon but also running under XP in Foobar2000.
They would also play on a Zune if I were stupid enough to buy one.
Lying tool, that Bullshitter. I know he’s lying, because I’ve done it.
I can also play not only iTunes Plus downloads but my downloads that I’ve bought from other companies that don’t use DRM — and, of course, my own rips.
AAC is an open spec. Apple don’t need to rely on lock-in like Microsoft and Macromedia, because they compete in an open market with decent products attractively presented. IOW, they’re a legitimate business – not lying scumbags.
Isn’t it funny how all of these unimaginitive Windows lovers have latched onto Fake Steve Jobs’ blog terminology, now affixing the —tard suffix to every word? Shows they must love reading all about Apple, fictional or not.
@ Reality Check
Always an intellectual treat.
“I could have an open environment to share my media content across my other entertainment devices instead of a closed environment that locks all my content in one brand.”
When will people realize that an environment with Macrovision (or Microsoft, or any other) DRM is not magically “open” just because it has 3rd party hardware devices? All your content is still locked up under one brand – the only difference is that it’s now a brand whose reason for existence is to obtain licensing fees from music and movie cartels, rather than to make a nice device that people want to buy.