Doug Morris, Old Person

I am not surprised. It's not even an age thing. We had a CEO at a company I was at years back that issued an edict that no one can link to our company's web site from our personal websites.

He went on to be VP at Real.

All your modern Internets frighten and confuse me! I don't understand the voices that sing to me from inside this magical box on my mahogany desk in my corner office. I think there must be tiny troubadours trapped inside it! I don't know. Because I'm a caveman -- that's the way I think...

You missed the even better quote where he makes an analogy to how would Coca-Cola survive if if poured freely from faucets. Apparently he isn't familiar with the multi-billion dollar bottled water industry.

Denholm: I'm gonna put you in I.T. because you said on your CV you have a lot of experience with computers.
Jen: I did say that on my CV, yes. I have a lot of experience with the whole computer thing you know, emails, sending emails, receiving emails, deleting emails, I could go on.
Denholm: Do.
Jen: The web. Using a mouse, mices, using mice. Clicking, double clicking. The computer screen, of course. The keyboard. The... bit that goes on the floor down there.
Denholm: The hard drive.
Jen: Correct.

Seriously? Record labels don't have email and networks and phones and COM-PEW-TORS like the other Hu-man corporations? They don't have websites? Nobody runs their blackberry servers? It never occurs to a CEO to consult with his CIO/IT department to make a hiring decision like this?

I call bullshit. Claiming that a company like UMG or Sony couldn't come up with a digital distribution network is a load of crap--they just decided that they'd rather file thousands of lawsuits instead.

To put it another way, Vivendi also distributes World of Warcraft, and that's certainly making money hand over fist.

What about Peter Rojas of Engadget and his record label, appropriately named RCRD LBL? so Web 2.0, and he'd know what he was doing.

I envision him barking commands into his mouse like Scotty in Star Trek IV.

Check out that forehead! Dude looks like a Klingon.

"I bet Doug Morris still has trouble dragging and dropping." Hell, at MY age, about all I CAN do is drag and drop. So to speak.

Gee, sorry Doug. How's the weather in Plato's Cave?

What about Time Warner's Gametap? Thats a great digital distribution run on a subscription based model that gives you unlimited access to all their games as long as you keep paying the subscription.
They can't do that for music as well?

I don't see why we need any of this. Everyone knows Rock reached perfection in 1974. :-)

While this is all probably true enough, it still doesn't get any sympathy from me. It is every business's own responsibility to watch for changes in technology, the market, public opinion, ANYTHING that might impact your business model. They were caught asleep at the wheel, failing to navigate through an emerging new use of their product. When there's a demand for something, and nobody supplies it, people start making it themselves. They also start stealing it. Not saying that makes it right, but you have to anticipate this effect regardless.

@Syphro: This is how Napster and Rhapsody and similar services now work. You pay a monthly fee and download anything you like. If you stop paying your monthly fee, you lose access to everything you've already downloaded.

Yikes. There are enough people on the other side of the digital divide; guys like this don't need to add to that by remaining willfully ignorant. Good grief.

does it take a genius to hire the guy that scares you the most?

>>“I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.”

with that line, he's a good 90% ahead of most of the CEOs out there.

Dragging and dropping? What's all this then? I checked on the google but nothing came up.

This really, really defies... well, I don't know exactly what it defies. Belief? Logic? Common sense? Faith in humanity? It is simultaneously terrifying and mildly amusing that people that idiotic are (technically) running large companies. Anyone who has been *alive* long enough to become CEO of a large company should have a lot more of a clue than that. I thought the ability to find things out for oneself came naturally with things like *living* and *having a brain*. Sheesh.

What most companies do is just buy the market leader that is doing what you want to do.

or

He could have talked to his grand kid and found out how to download Bobby Darren records and figured it out from there.

or

they all could have stuck there heads somewhere and pretended that it would all go away. :)

Sounds like his biggest problem is that he'd been an executive so long that he didn't trust anybody.

He sounds like chicken little, the sky is falling but I can't do anything about it!

Gee, on the one hand, we get CEO's arguing that they deserve the big bucks because they guide their businesses through the business jungle, having to deal with the changing competitive landscape, changing technology, and changing consumer demands.

On the other hand, we get this guy, who apparently is proud to loudly admit he's too scared to even try to do the work he's getting the big money for.

How pathetic.

I think this song was written about him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGc_4DeKBN4

The title, "Gubbar med Bluetooth headset" means, "Old Man with a Bluetooth Headset".

It fits Morris perfectly.

To all the nitpickers and naysayers, if you're so smart and he's so dumb, whom would you have had him hire back then? Seriously. Put yourself in his shoes, WITHOUT the benefit of hindsight to guide you.

Can't... stop... laughing... to type.
Disregard the luddites!

No CEO is this retarded. This guy is just a liar and making excuses for his own poor decisions.