David Coursey raises an excellent question in Pixar Promises Change for Disney's Media. Now that he's the biggest stockholder in Disney, will he be able to effect change?

I think the answer is Maybe, but don't count on much. He's known for branding, design, and style, not technological innovation. While he did fight for 99 cent pricing, that was neither unique nor I argue critical to the success of iTunes.

There is no evidence that he's going to make big changes like Mark Cuban and collapsed video release windows, or do anything radical like accept P2P.

Furthermore, the obstacles to innovation in the film business are similar to the music business - organizational and contractual - where he is going to make little difference.

Coursey writes:

"Jobs has already shown he can give consumers what they want, and the fair licensing terms at the Apple Music Store have played a huge role in the iPod's success. Jobs has proven that people are willing to pay for music online, given reasonable prices and excellent selection.

Jobs' consumer bona fides have been enhanced by complaints from the recording industry that they don't get a large enough piece of Music Store sales. On the other hand, some of the video content pricing already seems high to me.

His new role at Disney also makes it less clear whose side Jobs will find himself on. At Pixar, Jobs had to worry about digital content issues, but those concerns are nothing like those he'll have at Disney, a company with much broader interests to protect.

Disney has, for example, been instrumental in getting Congress to lengthen copyright protection, usually when Mickey and Minnie are about fall into the public domain. I can appreciate the company's interest in this, but its efforts also extend protection for all sorts of other content and probably hurt content users.

Maybe Jobs can convince Disney and congress that Mickey and Minnie deserve their own special law and everything else can get more reasonable-and less long-lived-protection. The problem isn't with the content that people are actively trying to sell, it's with all the content that no longer has big commercial value, but can't be distributed in small quantities because of copyright issues. "