Dicey For Disney …

… and / or for the truth.

From MyDD, some thoughts on Disney’s new propaganda-based business model.

There is a window of time now for Mr. Iger to step up, an ‘apologize for Tylenol tampering’ moment. He needs to cancel this miniseries, and take personal responsibility for inadequate oversight. He should privately fire the people responsible for this total disaster of a project, and apologize.

That’s the only way to restore Disney’s brand among a large group of very angry people. Be brave, be public, and be honorable. It’ll work.

And what will happen if he doesn’t? Well, it’s not just boycotts. Those are probably going to happen, but that’s not what Iger has to worry about, or his corporate brethren. You see, Disney has a number of political objectives, as is obvious from the donor patterns of their corporate executives and their lobbying behavior.

One of them is the egregiously awful broadcast flag. Disney is leading the effort to give Hollywood control over how your TV and TiVo are built and what you can do with programs you watch. This is in the Stevens bill before the Senate. Democrats didn’t really have any reason to deny Disney its political candy, since Disney was thought to be responsible with its content, or at least not overtly insane. Their credibility on this front is going quickly, and donations to Chuck Schumer aren’t the palliative they once were.

Another is copyright extensions, which Disney has used to keep its perpetual license on characters like Mickey Mouse, who should by now have fallen into the public domain. Democrats didn’t really have any reason to think that this was anything but a dispute over intellectual property, with corporations like Disney having motives that are only as pure as Snow White, versus pirates bent on stealing songs and movies by hardworking artists. Now that Disney’s credibility is going, lobbyists for Disney are going to find it tougher on Capitol Hill, and lobbyists for the Creative Commons movement are going to find a much easier reception.

Iger knows there’s a movement bent on routing around his unreasonable and political control of free speech through copyright extremism. He’s got a choice on whether he gives that movement a whole lot of real political power.

And thing Disney wants is media consolidation. Disney wants to buy everything, since media is seen as a scale business. It’s pretty obvious to Democrats if this movie airs that Disney is not a responsible public steward of the airwaves it controls right now.

Why should they be allowed to engulf even more assets? Like Creative Commons, the free media movement is growing rapidly, and it is a real movement that could receive a dollop of political power thanks to Disney’s exceptionally and impressively poor judgment.

Mr. Iger has a choice about what to do here. I don’t imagine he’ll make the right choice, but he might.

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