WebProNews

Tag: Copying

  • OK Go Says Apple Copied Its Video

    Did Apple rip off band and interesting video makers OK Go during Tuesday’s big iPhone 6/Apple Watch event?

    The band sure thinks so.

    “The videos speak for themselves and you can draw your own conclusions,” says band manager Andy Gershon, according to Bloomberg.

    You probably didn’t see it, because Apple couldn’t get its shit together yesterday and totally bungled its livestream, but the company showed a short video called “Perspective” during the event. Through the use of tricky camera angles, Apple was able to achieve some neat wordplay by manipulating spacial relationships and objects. The whole premise of the ad was to honor “those who have always seen things differently.” Check it out:

    Cool, right?

    Do you remember OK Go’s June song “The Writing’s On the Wall”? Like most OK Go songs, it got a lot of attention thanks to an innovative music video. It has amassed over 10 million views.

    So, what do you think? Is Ok Go right? Did Apple rip them off? Gershon provides more evidence to Bloomberg:

    He says the band met with Apple in April to pitch that visual concept as a potential video collaboration. Apple declined, so the band made its own video. Apple then hired 1stAveMachine, the production company behind OK Go’s video, to make a video for its iPhone launch event; it also used the same director.

    Apple didn’t get to where they are now by not being crafty, that’s for sure.

    Apparently, the band is looking into legal action – but that’s going to be tricky. OK Go’s not the first to manipulate objects and angles, and although Apple’s ad bears a striking resemblance to parts of OK Go’s video, it appears that Apple simply riffed on a concept. Still, OK Go may have a case. If nothing else, it may become a bit of a hassle for Apple.

    Image via Apple, YouTube screenshot

  • Warner Brothers Still Struggles With That Whole Ownership Concept

    Warner Brothers archaic, “we don’t like the idea of distributing our content in a non-physical format” has been well documented at WebProNews and beyond. Basically, Warner Brothers does not want your renting their home video content, they’d prefer you buy it on DVD. Furthermore, after you buy one of their DVDs, that’s it. They have never supported the concept of ripping the contents of the DVD to other devices, at least, not until now.

    Provided you consider Warner Brothers’ new approach to converting a DVD into a digital file progress. Many don’t, including the collective at PublicKnowledge.org. To demonstrate just how much they can adapt to the digital revolution, Warner Brothers has introduced perhaps the most cumbersome “Disc-to-Digital” program, one that actually dissuades people from using, which is perhaps the WB’s goal all along.

    Does this mean that Warner Brothers is releasing ripping software–or, well hardware, I guess–to the public to facilitate this transformation process? Of course not. That would be entirely too easy. No, what Warner Brothers proposes is something entirely different and absolutely inconvenient. Public Knowledge has the details:

    …the first phase in this process is to let DVD owners bring their DVDs to a store that will handle the digital conversion. Tsujihara described this process as allowing consumers to convert their libraries “easily, safely and at reasonable prices.”

    You did read that last paragraph correctly. The head of Warner Home Entertainment Group thinks that an easy, safe way to convert movies you already own on DVD to other digital formats is to take your DVDs, find a store that will perform this service, drive to that store, find the clerk who knows how to perform the service, hope that the “DVD conversion machine” is not broken, stand there like a chump while the clerk “safely” converts your movie to a digital file that may only play on studio-approved devices, drive home, and hope everything worked out. Oh, and the good news is that you would only need to pay a reasonable (per-DVD?) price for this pleasure. [Emphasis added]

    To demonstrate this process in action, Public Knowledge has also put together an incredibly handy diagram of how the process works:

    (image)

    Considering the fact we has consumers have been able to rip music CDs to other devices for, well, longer than some have been around, the movie industry’s approach to ripping content from DVDs is laughable, but it’s not going away anytime soon (PDF). I suppose Warner Brothers could be credited for at least being open to the idea, but the method they want consumers to use is absolutely absurd.

    Maybe one day these movie studios will understand the concept of ownership and digital distribution a little better than they do. Until then, there are still copies of DVDShrink floating around the Internet. Just flex those Google muscles a little and you should be rewarded with the appropriate exe file.

    In others news, it’s clear Frank Zappa and his awesome t-shirt were well ahead of their time.