The Music Industry: Now Personified By Scrooge McDuck

noah | December 5, 2007 1:00 am
donaldduck.jpg

So the new issue of Donald Duck‘s Dutch edition has a little tale about Huey, Dewey, Louie, and the cranky duck himself dipping into the dark world of music piracy–only to get thoroughly schooled by Scrooge McDuck on the rights and wrongs of copying CDs for the purpose of making bank. The full comic is at the above link, but here’s TorrentFreak’s (naturally biased) summary, for those of you who, like us, aren’t up on your Dutch:

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).

The publishers are denying allegations that the Dutch antipiracy organization BREIN had anything to do with the comic’s themes, and I’d have to say that I agree. I mean, would they really agree to having their side of the story spouted by Uncle Scrooge? Especially after all of the Shmoo-related angst that Doug Morris has revealed over the past two weeks?

Moraalridders bij de DD [dumpert.nl, via TorrentFreak]