How an idiot like this gets to lead a major corporation is beyond me. He needs to go after every, CD, Speaker, Amplifier, DVD player ect. manufacturer as well, since we know anyone who uses any device to listen to music is a thief! Oh don't forget auto manufacturers, my car has a CD player - DAMN BMW criminals!

I think the legal term for falsely accusing people of stealing is called slander! GREEDY RECORD LABELS think they own everything! I buy my music legally! And Apple's iPods and the iTunes music store is legally filling your greedy a** pockets by the millions Univeral. No one feels pity or will submit to your false accusations of slander.

Good luck Univeral in trying to blackmail Steve Jobs into giving you a penny for any hardware Apples sells. iTunes is the only online store making Univeral or any other record label any money. You cut off iTunes you cut off your only point of real sales numbers. 75% of all online music sales to be exact.

Doug Morris is a member of the board of directors at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a prestigious and influential scientific institution located on the north shore of Long Island, 35 miles east of Manhattan in New York City. If you are miffed as I am that this individual can so easily besmirch the many honest and law-abiding iPod owners, you can let CSHL know just how inappropriate it is for this guy to sit on their board. Let them know at pubaff@cshl.edu.

Not only will I NOT purchase any music from these idiots, I will send them any CDs that I bought from them.

Trying to learn about Universal Music Group and their web site is going spastic. Apparently, it doesn't play well with Firefox. Another reason not to deal with this bozos.

Wow, all that statement/accusation made me to was NOT want to buy a Zune and really want to boycott the Universal label entirely. You know, I bet the artists signed under Universal won't see a penny of those royalties either...hmmm who's the real thief?

Wow. That's high praise coming from a music label head. A real expert at stealing from both ends of the music food chain: the artists and consumers. Been doing it to us for decades now so they should know right? Wonder how fast he'll change his tune after Microsoft shafts them (you know they will, they always do) after the great Zune debacle of 2006. Hehehe. ; )

I assume this is similar to the "theft" tax that was assessed on VCR's to "compensate" for the fact that TV shows could be taped and viewed with FForwarding commercials. Does anyone know if that is true?

The rationale for a player tax does make a little sense, though, I assume the huge profit on electrons that they now get from iTunes would compensate for any product loss they might encure. You see any store has to factor loss and theft into the prices of their goods. The only other way to budget the loss is to take less profit or charge for people to enter your store. Maybe in a Walmart you might have to give the nice elderly lady a quarter to walk around, just to pay for the statistical probability that one in every 1,000 would steal a watch.

The labels need to admit to the new paradigm; make CD's more valuable with extra content 'a la DVD's and if profits go down, then so do CEO salaries and contracts for N'Sync ... oooohhhh there is a silver lining here already.

Hey Universal. Who's the real thief? Charging $18 for a new CD. How much does the artist or composer get? Do you guys steal the rest?

Here is the web address to let them know what you think:

http://www.universalstudios.com/homepage/html/contact_us/contact_form.cgi?email_id=35

Address them directly to CEO Doug Morris.

If enough people contact them, I'm sure we'll get a public apology soon. That should make the soon look good :)

By the way, since Microsoft looses money on the Zune, shouldn't Universal have to pay $1? Now that's truly sharing in the profits!

Whether comments by Universal prompt Zune sales is not the central issue. Other commenters have noted that this just reveals Univeral's greed, but it goes much farther. Everybody will recall that Steve Jobs, when renegotiating the 99 cent deal, called the labels greedy. What the Universal-Microsoft deal truly represents is a crack in the pricing model that Apple currently has with the record lables. Microsoft, eager to get Zune to the market and supported by companies such as Universal, has probably willingly caved in to pressure by the lables. Next it will be Apple's turn when the contracts are up for renegotiation. Ultimately we could see an end to 99 cents with some other pricing model.

Are they gonna just starting shooting us for owning ipods? This guy is a crackpot! If i owned 1500 CDs and put those on my ipod am i a thief? What if i play them on my new stereo?! M$ is out of it's mind for paying this. It's extortion. I'd love to see them try it on apple and watch apple laugh in their faces. M$ can do it because 200 million$ to them is a day's coffee at starbucks.

This CEO really should just fire himself, and take that 200$million golden parachute he just bought himself.

what a joke. pathetic. lame. Mr. Ceo, please join the thongs of morons who populate your industry. Oh, nevermind you already did.

As if Apple will feel the slightest bit of pressure to match Zune's Royalties model? Thankfully for us, Universal's threat comes in the form of an inferior device and brand. When will they learn - greed and good design don't mix. And thanks to Apple - everyday more and more consumers are discovering what good design truly is.

And when they're ready to start making some of the same money money from the iTunes Movie store - I'm sure Apple will make them eat those words.

Although that seems logical, it would be an easy enough counter to let one label rebel and drop them from the iTunes store. The other labels will wait to see what happens and the dropped label will come crawling back.

UNLESS, they illegally conspire to act in concert against Apple's iTunes. They could do that, but if they got busted... the penalty would be HUGE! ...now that I'd pay to see :)

Wait - don't they currently offer their content on iTunes which is iPod-only?? So they enable the stealing of their music while at the same time condemning it?

Tsk, tsk, tsk, can someone please tell these greedy hypocrites the fable of the little doggie who had a bone and saw his reflection in the water?

After reflecting on this for a bit... this really isn't so bad. I mean, if you can look past being called a thief...

Universal is extorting Money from Microsoft. What is so upsetting about that?

It just goes to show how weak Microsoft is compared to Apple.

Cool. I ought to buy a Zune, since that would make pirated tunes ok. Great. Why they h3ll should Universal get half & thousands of artists get half? How about these Apples- the artists sign with Apple and get $0.65 per song, s**** the labels. Coming soon. The labels are going to be irrelevent. And when they could have had a bigger peice of that pie, the whole pie, in prenapster times, they stuck their heads in the sand and kept pushing cds.

I do believe those b******* just slandered me... (and how many others?) Time for a class action lawsuit??? Mass-Defenation of character?

IANAL... Anyone here know how we can go about getting satisfaction for this slanderous act???

jwd

I am a non-Zune owner and I don't steal music. All of the music on my non-Zune MP3 player is my own. All the songs were ripped from my own CDs or paid for from non-Microsoft sources. Broad generalizations like that will make me specifically NOT buy an item like Zune now.

Is there a website where you can look up an album that you're about to buy and see if it's on a Universal record label and if so, download the music illegally? Oh yeah, Universal's: www.umusic.com.

Thanks, Douche. I mean, Doug.

This from an Executive of a major entertainment company. Condemn your consumers and call them theifs. Way to go. Is that what they teach on those million dollar consumer brand building retreats? I have never stolen music and once I purchased and iPod have gone purchased numerous albums from iTunes.

So they got suckered into getting a few bucks from Microsoft. Good luck on making a fifth of that compared to the iTunes Music Store. Sorry, I won't be buying anymore Universal Music and it's other siblings. Truly a stupid thing for any vendor to say.

My iPod is full of songs from old CDs and songs I bought on iTunes.

Doesn't this sound like that TV exec who said if you don't watch the commercials, you're stealing TV shows?

I wish I was an artist on Universal just to see if they ever get ANY paper trail indicating that they were paid even a fraction of a cent from this deal.

I just looked at Micro$oft's zune site and together with this story, the only thing that came to mind is PATHETIC! If you can't beat em buy em isn't this MS's tactic, I can assure Universal that I will never buy any of their music I will personally look at the back of the CD to be sure it isn't their music, and if it is I will buy a used cd somewhere. F*** MS and Universal. P.S. I own 3 ipods and all the music on them is legit either itunes or ripped CD's I purchased!

What was Microsoft thinking making this deal?! Are they going to pay every record company $1 of their sales? Do they know how to do math? Universal is not going to pull their music from other markets if they don't get a dollar for device sales, their Artists would all pack up & leave town. They are the pirates, stealing from Microsoft. Piracy isn't killing record companies, their greed is.

It has occurred to me that Microsoft may have dreamed up this scheme (or at least is doing this in concert with Universal) as a way to create problems for Apple, and damage the $.99 pricing model, as well as create unrest and demands from the big labels. They have deep pockets, folks, and will stop at nothing in their quest for world dominance. Even making absurd royalty deals.

I wonder Bono is thinking right now.

I meant to say, I wonder 'what' Bono is thinking right now....doh!!

Hmm: if you're using a device other than the Zune to listen or store an MP3/music/video file you're stealing music -- logically this would include any device: CD player, radio, or even a computer. Yes, if you're using a PC to get the music, you're a thief.

Gee microsoft, did you know that you're contributing to theivery?

Sony, Pioneer, JVC, etc. payed Universal for every CD player, cassette player, etc. it has ever sold. After all these things are built entirely on the music platform too, aren't they?

that I've stolen a lot of Universal music - there is this one DJ compilation CD series they put out which I totally love.

there's a lot of hysteria in these comments. Clearly the Universal dude made these intentionally inflammatory comments in order to attack the iPod. Universal is now in bed with Microsoft. M$ has probably promised Universal that if they can take significant marketshare from iTunes/iPod, they will help them s**** the music buyer - er, increase prices on downloads.

Steve Jobs showed the stupid, greedy music industry suits how to get people to buy legal music downloads - and now instead of being grateful to him and playing ball, they want to really stick it to music buyers, but Jobs won't let them because he makes his money off selling iPods, not iTMS.

There simply is never enough profit for these a*******. If someone's not getting bent over the barrel, they think they're not doing their job. They make their living s******* everyone involved, from the artists right through to the music fans. The entire histroy of the music business is littered with examples of the monumental greed and stupidity of these worthless con men.

I say downloading music is the duty of every music lover! It sends the message that if they don't play fair with us, we can just take it for free.

"Although that seems logical, it would be an easy enough counter to let one label rebel and drop them from the iTunes store. The other labels will wait to see what happens and the dropped label will come crawling back.

UNLESS, they illegally conspire to act in concert against Apple's iTunes. They could do that, but if they got busted... the penalty would be HUGE! ...now that I'd pay to see :)"

I'd love to see Jobs make an example of this kind of idiocy and dump UM. Universal knows they are making a lot off of the ITS. I'd really enjoy seeing how investors respond to the sudden loss of that income.

Only $1 per Zune? Pennies.

How many Zunes will they sell? I'm imagining under 1 million over the next year. The market is saturated with iPods, and according to Pogue's review, the software sucks among other things. This won't really be very much money to Universal, it will barely cover their fat salaries and give like 20 dollars each to their artists.

they want half... half!!! ... for what..? control! We dont need them... artists, recording studios and online services cover the market - the record company leeches are obsolete.

So, if MS has to pay every single major music company a percentage of their sales, as I can't imagine that BMG and SONY won't ask for the same thing, how long will this player be out?

As far as I am concerned, Universal had nothing to do with the creation of the Zune, so why should MS pay them for the right to produce their own stuff?

This business is crazy!

I guess the artists will have to start looking for a company not heading to obscurity. (But who has ever listened to c*** coming out of companies like this anyway ... I do not know of any artists on that company, but I have heard of the company name somehow ... :-).)

If you take a second to look at Universal's artists list, you'll find out that it's huge. Acts from 50 cent, to Andrea Bocelli, to Jimi Hendriix, to B.B. King, to Jay-Z, to Eminem, to Shania Twain and hundreds in between. Unfortunately (for consumers and the artists themselves), there is an enormous amount of incredibe talent locked up in Universal contracts. They literally have the biggest names of every musical genre.

Since U2 is also in this stable, perhaps Bono might be able to pull some weight, should Universal choose to remove their catalogue from iTunes next year when the contract negotiations (for increased pricing) fail?

This is great! I don't know what you all are complaining about.

Okay, I buy a Zune and I can now download the entire Universal catalog of tunes from P2P sites without having to worry about getting a knock on the door from the RIAA. By purchasing the Zune, one dollar of the purchase price has go to pay royalties to Universal for their catalog. This should really hurt the RIAA legal action against anyone using a Zune.

Shoot, I would pay an extra $5 for my iPod if that means I can download all the majors labels without worry of RIAA.

So CEO Doug Morris at Universal says I'm a thief just because I own an iPod that is filled with music from the CDs I legally purchased? Well, Mr. Morris, you are a blatant liar.

Boycott on.

Good luck trying to boycott them if you buy songs from iTunes. I just did a quick check and went to universalrecords.com and of the albums they were advertising is Endless Wire by The Who. In the iTunes store the label is listed as "Polydor Ltd. (UK)". I guess this is just one more incentive to buy CDs instead of downloading from iTunes (though, the only label I recall advertising themselves on the packaging is Sony).

UMG claims they get $1 from every zune. half of that profit..or 50 cents...is distributed evenly to all its artists. thats fair. right? check out all of the record labels under UMG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Music_Group now...they have 105 total labels. now just assuming their is 1 artist per label (and we know there are tons more)...here is the math. say they sell 1 million zunes. that comes to about $4760 per artist. now...given labels can have 50 or more artists per...so lets go with the low road of 50...that comes to about $95 per artist. wow. riches. and the label pockets a cool half a million dollars. sounds fair to me. j/k

...perverts. Every Zune has the ability to wirelessly share photos almost anonymously, and photos don't expire like shared songs do. What a way for perverts to share pornography. For this reason alone, I expect the Zune to be a success.

They claim to "share" the $1 w/ their artists. What they don't say is they take away $1 from their artists in other already established compensation, meaning the artist gets $0 net gain. Universal can go to h***!

didn't know Universal held the patent for simply creating, storing and making music.

http://www.vivendi.com/corp/en/contacts/contact.php

Ask them if they want a dollar from the people that make guitars, microphones, amps, pianos, keyboards, the singer's parents. It's lame.

Also them them you don't like being called a theif.

Jam the phone lines...then call Microsoft and tell them the same thing.

My e-mail to them...

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. "So it's time to get paid for it."

Dear Mr. Morris:

Read your statement above please... I am absolutely appalled at your juvenile-like statement, and I am quite offended that you think all iPod owners are thieves. You need a little reality check from me, the buying consumer.

Recently, I purchased two iPod nanos (red) for myself and my wife - our first iPods. We own over 600+ audio CDs that we paid for with our own hard-earned cash. I purchase CDs from all over the world, mostly on Amazon, due to my extensive musical tastes. I am in the process of digitizing all of our audio CDs so I don't have to touch them ever again - they will be boxed up to protect them and put in my closet.

For your information, we do not steal music and we do not order music online at the Apple iTunes store either. Your statement is very offensive and it is a blanket statement that is undeserving in my opinion. Personally, I do not like all the "bubble gum" c*** music that you music labels release these days, and because of this, I am quite selective in what I purchase on audio CD. Quite possibly that is the reason for declining music sales, because most of the music released today is complete garbage.

As of this moment, my wife and I are boycotting the Universal Music Group along with any related businesses. We will not purchase any of your products ever again, because we both live by principles in life. Since I absolutely detest being accused of something I have never done, you have lost both of us as customers for accusing us of being common criminals. I am an honest man and have always been that way - you offend me greatly.

"So it's time to get paid for it." Paid for what may I ask? We already pay you indirectly when purchasing one of your products. Isn't that kind of like double dipping? You already rip off your own artists by being the expensive middlemen that add such a ridiculous surcharge to the price of audio CDs. Why do you need more money? Is it for you to double dip from the company's funds, so you can take a prostitute out for dinner, etc.? We can also make blanket statements about CEOs that we have never met.

To sum up... You are an a****** and your board of directors should fire your sorry a**.

Yours sincerely, James ******

How about this:

"Dear Mr. Morris:

I enjoy digital music, but I prefer the features and performance of the iPod over Microsoft's Zune player. Please let me know where I can send $1 so that I can legally download UMG's entire catalog. Thank you."

parsec_kadets: "Good luck with a boycott"

Considering I don't download, but rip from my existing CD collection, this shouldn't be a problem. The collection is sizable (6,500 +/-).

Now if 'Mr. CEO' with the diplomatic skills of a farting aardvark cares to publicly apologize, I may consider revoking my boycott. Meanwhile . . .

Boycott on.

The solution is simple. From now on, when you are going to download a song, check to see if Universal is the distributor/producer of the artist, and, if so, boycott that artist. Many customers who are legally purchasing music right now will probably grab Acquisition (Mac OS X) or Limewire (Windows), or use BitTorrent (both), and download the Universal songs using less-than-legal methods instead. It's both a boycott, and retribution for the comment, for these users, and I think Universal will have brought this on themselves. These dirtbags can trash their customers as much as they like, but when enough customers attach a negative price tag to their comments, they'll crawl back under their rocks and be a little more careful how they speak of those who pay to feed their families. These executives exist because they have customers. Without the customer, the executive is flipping burgers.

And, I, for one, will not be buying a Zune. I have no desire to see my money going into the pockets of these crooks and liars, and, so long as Microsoft has a royalty deal with Universal for the hardware, I'm not buying. Don't just boycott Universal, make this a Microsoft thing. They need to be aware of who they are sleeping with, and they need to pay for the comments of their partners. Pressure on MS is pressure on Universal, and vice versa.

that the CEO can lay blame on the 'repositories of stolen music', endorse Zune and not condemn the computer in which said stolen music was used to download the questionable content, but to also use for transfer to the 'repository' by either Linux, OSX and Windows.

(specifically speaking of course) Can anyone elaborate on the patent Universal owns that allows a user to play music via an electronic/digital device?

Not only that, but just when the market warmed up to buying music online and more specifically what the end user wanted in terms of just that one song or the whole album, Uniscrew is now encouraging the theft of their music?

I'm willing to bet that the installation failure picture (one clearly not happy) of the Zune is hocked from some p*** flick to which both Microturd and Universal enjoy deliverance of to the END user.

The comments from Universal are contemptious at best. Are there any web sites out there focused around getting a Consumer backlash going against these distrustful, incompetent executives?

A letter-writing campaign could be started:

Universal Music Group 2220 Colorado Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90404

Universal Music Group 1755 Broadway New York, NY 10019.

communications@umusic.com (310) 865-5000

Universal will go down in history as one of the most deceitful record companies in business. Guess what MS loyalist?! The Zune is going to FAIL, and it's going to FAIL BIG. I hope Apple refuses to sell your songs STARTING TOMORROW. Go F*CK yourself Universal. FIRE your CEO and we'll talk.

WOW ANOTHER WAY FOR THE MAN TO GET THE MONEH

"GIMME ALL THE MONIES!!!" Grrr i shake my fist at you!!!!111!!!1111

and why? It's an act in an attempt to validate Universals reasons which are obviously lame. When people had no other download options but to steal it was called theft. That was understandable. Now that billions of songs have been sold legally and millions continue to purchase legal music, this jerk has the nerve to still call everyone a thief. What a way to thank Apple and the milliions of people who have chosen to purchase and download music legally. "Gee thanks for the millions you made us but you're still a bunch of thiefs." Thanks for the insult you jerk, maybe we should just stop buying legal music and go back to finding illegal copies and download them. How about that. After all, we're thieves still right.

Anyways, I don't see how just $1 a zune will somehow compensate for someone who steel hundreds of songs. Because of the $1 Universal is getting, will they not call an owner of a Zune a thief. Is that $1 somehow going to stop people who do steel music from steeling. Are they not a thief because MS gave a dollar to Universal for thier Zune. You quickly see the stupidity of this. Let me put it this way. Even if you buy a Zune, you are still a thief to Universal. Don't be fooled buy this attempt by Universal to force a new way of making money they didn't earn. They are the thieves, taking money from MS for something they didn't create, invest in or help produce.

Lets say for instance that M$ sell 2 million Zunes, and then Universal gets to keep half of that money leaving the remaining $1m split amongst all their artists which would no doubt be done on an artists volume sales.... hmmm who is this benefitting again?

people with linux installed on their pc instead of a hacked windows are thieves

mac users who get their OS bundled with their pc's are thieves

why? because they can't run the crappy Zune software and they haven't bought a Zune in the past 15 years.

this guy is not insulting us. we all know we should have waited our entire life for the Zune to appear and try to use it on our non-windows pc's. failing to use this c*** means you don't get to listen to music. ever! universal IS all music!

I'm feeling very sorry for ever buying cd's. Buying them was actually theft, because it wasn't Zune.

Universal is pathetic. Any musician still abused by Universal is also pathetic. Start your own labels, make money by selling over iTunes!

If Universal is thinking that they can get the same kind of deal from Apple, i.e. royalty for each iPod sold the CEO must be smoking something from the sixties. Watch this back-fire on Universal and all Doug will get is bad-press for calling iPod owners thieves. When the board tosses him for his comments, maybe Billy Gates will give a job. He can handle their PR stuff, hey it couldn't get any worse!

I know it's fun to hold Microsoft and all it's partners in the highest of contempt and everything, but I think this is just bad reporting. check the source, http://billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003380831 - I think this is fairly bad representation of what Doug Morris was saying. I don't read Morris making ANY exemption of the Zune from using stolen music - and is simply saying something to the effect of: We know the Zune will be used to hold music stolen from us, so we might as well get something from the deal.

wow an Imbecile. must be nice getting paid for being the Imbecile the industry.

anyway, if that's his logic then Every hard drive in billions of computers in the world is a repository for stolen music and hence all owners of all devices with hard drives are thieves. this is very interesting mr. morris because this makes you a thief. why is Universal employing a thief like you?