Where's the love, people? Check it out: we always suspected that Disney's Michael Eisner was an ear or two short of a Mickey hat, but now we're totally sure of it. Faithful viewer Aaron pointed out that today's Hollywood Reporter quotes Eisner as saying that "the killer app for the computer industry is piracy," and that Apple's "Rip. Mix. Burn." ad campaign was specifically telling people "that they can create a theft if they buy this computer."

That statement, of course, probably has most right-minded individuals wondering whether Eisner has been drinking the fluid from the jar containing Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen head. Actually, though, strange as it may seem, copyright law isn't exactly crystal clear about a consumer's right to copy legally-purchased music onto another medium for personal noncommercial use. Certainly the Recording Industry Association of America claims that's it's even illegal to buy a CD and make a copy to play in the car; the Home Recording Rights Coalition says "nuh-uh" and cites the famous Betamax case as precedent that "the fair use rights of consumers include private, noncommercial home recording, such as making a tape for your car." As far as we know, this issue hasn't been definitively resolved-- but we haven't seen anyone getting hauled off to court for making mix tapes for the road.

Besides, regardless of the specific legal issues, you really have to wonder what Eisner was smoking when he publicly announced that Apple was pushing Macs as a bootlegger's tool. A sane and sober Disney CEO might have opted instead to interpret Apple's ads as selling a means for good little consumers to enjoy their legally-purchased music in perfectly innocent ways, such as burning a compilation disc full of "Music To Sharpen Pencils By." For one thing, doesn't "rip" imply that a source CD is present before the "mixing" and "burning" can commence? Maybe if Apple's commercial had said "Download. Mix. Burn." we'd be a little more sympathetic to Eisner's insane ramblings, but it didn't, so we're not. C'mon, you know Eisner's out of line when even (as faithful viewer Sledgehammer Smythe discovered) the Executive Vice President of Intel writes a letter defending Apple: "The ability to rip, mix, and burn in a protected manner is not piracy, it is simply fair use of content as permitted by law."

But most interesting of all is Eisner's brazen willingness to call Apple little more than an accessory to countless crimes, considering who happens to run that naughty little company. Perhaps Mikey was too stoned to remember that Steve Jobs also heads up Pixar, the company that's given Disney four of its best animated features over the course of the past six or seven years. Maybe it's just us, but if we were Steve, we'd be at least a tad miffed, if not downright incensed.

So we guess this means that the long-rumored Disney-Apple merger is shelved for good, right? Well, that's okay-- as it turns out, that's probably a darn good thing... even more so than usual. Faithful viewer Mastgrr informs us that a Nettavisen article states (and we're taking his word for it, here, because we don't know Norwegian) that Disney's been parading itself around for a buyout, and the only viable "interested buyer" is none other than-- Microsoft. A Microsoft-owned-Disney-owned Apple? Now that a scenario that would have us reaching for the Pepto. And possibly a shotgun. Pardon us, but now we've got to go listen to the "Aural Valium" playlists on our evil, entertainment industry-destroying iPods for a while just to unwind...