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Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

reuters.com

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Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#181

Post by nightcracker »

dharmon wrote: post #159
turc1656 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a starting point for negotiation. Same way people slip in a store and sue for $1M, even though they end up settling for 50k.

And think about the timing. Just before Spotify wants to go public? Nobody wants to go public with a pending lawsuit, so added pressure to settle.

> Nobody wants to go public with a pending lawsuit

I'm pretty sure every large company in the world is involved in multiple lawsuits at any point in time (both offensively and defensively).

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#182

Post by alsetmusic »

DrJokepu wrote: post #99
bambax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is replay; you can search many radio stations playlist for a specific title and play it. What about Youtube? It seems most / all music is on YT, what licence do they use? Streaming services seem a lot like YT.

YouTube is different though because as soon as you have visuals accompanying the audio you are in sync rights territory which is the kind of royalty that e.g. television broadcasters pay. Same goes for Twitch.

> YouTube is different though because as soon as you have visuals accompanying the audio you are in sync rights territory which is the kind of royalty that e.g. television broadcasters pay. Same goes for Twitch.

There are endless uploads to YouTube with a static title slide accompanied by a popular song. I see them constantly when searching for genuine music videos from my adolescence. Infringement seems pretty clear in these particular cases.

This is obviously distinct from Spotify’s streaming business, of course. I’m only attempting to address this specific subtopic.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#183

Post by scarface74 »

QAPereo wrote: post #175
scarface74 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much FOSS software is actually funded by big companies that are either trying to upsell support or non free offerings, trying to get others to contribute for free to help them,or by companies who are trying to "commoditize their compliments"? Most major open source software is not done as a labor of love.

Whereas most music is clearly the muses working through mortal souls, right? Come on...

Whereas most music is clearly the muses working through mortal souls, right? Come on...

I'm saying just the opposite, he seems to implying that the majority of well known, popular open source software is done by starving programmers as a labor of love. Their is usually a financial motive.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#184

Post by thomastjeffery »

user5994461 wrote: post #173
thomastjeffery wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad to see that peer to peer is not utilized more, since it scales so well. The overbearing copyright propaganda has given BitTorrent a bad name, even though it has so many other uses.

It doesn't scale well. It saturates the upload bandwidth and grinds the connection to a halt. It ruins the internet for the entire family or office. Office sysadmins will block the software and start a witch hunt once they realize the problem. Also, connecting doesn't work with NAT, carrier grade NAT and firewalls. They need a client-server model with a server that is accessible.

> It doesn't scale well

in every circumstance.

Just because ISPs love to skimp on upload speed does not mean that it is reasonable to do so.

Infrastructure is reactionary. If users need more upload speed, they will pay for it, and ISPs will update the infrastructure accordingly.

> Also, connecting doesn't work with NAT, carrier grade NAT and firewalls. They need a client-server model with a server that is accessible.

That's another arbitrary issue caused by overbearing ISPs. There is an awful lot that people would be able to do if they had reasonable control over their ports.

ISPs - especially the 6 massive incumbents - build the absolute minimum infrastructure they can get away with. That is simply their fiscal incentive. We shouldn't be afraid to give them new incentives.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#185

Post by saalweachter »

redwall_hp wrote: post #171
saalweachter wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, the "an unjust law should not be obeyed" rhetoric works better when the principle being upheld isn't "I want to be entertained for free". I can get behind the "the information wants to be free, man" line when we're talking about overpriced textbooks and academic journals and bytecode for tractors, but when it comes to entertainment, I have a hard time caring. I don't think producers have a fundamental right to c…

If it's "just entertainment," then why should the government (and by extension, we the people) be engaged in propping up the profitability of their industry? If you can't find a way to make your entertainment profitable without legal protectionism, maybe you don't deserve too.

I don't really care if the government is in the business of "propping up the profitability" of the entertainment industry. If the laws were changed to reduce or eliminate copyright protections, I'd be fine with that.

I do care about rule of law. If copyright laws are the law of your land, I think that is sufficient reason to follow them, even if you are actively working to get them changed, either because you don't like them specifically or because you don't believe the government should be engaged in unnecessary activities. I don't believe that the existence of copyright law abrogates a fundamental right or denies a fundamental need, so I don't believe there is a legitimate basis for "protest" non-compliance.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#186

Post by thomastjeffery »

schoen wrote: post #133
thomastjeffery wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? There only issue I can think of is upload speed, which is improving for many, and would improve more prevalently if more average users had a clear need.

The original BitTorrent wasn't aware of network topology at all, so it could randomly use a relatively expensive or congested link just as easily as a LAN connection. You could get better use of network resources overall if you usually preferred to get pieces from peers that are closer to you on the network. I think the BitTorrent company and/or community were studying this issue at some point and so they may have co…

I would argue that in the long run, it is better to demand more bandwidth than is available, so that infrastructure builders can react accordingly.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#187

Post by wang_li »

cortesoft wrote: post #126
wang_li wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but without the underlying tech, there is no way for the end user to access that content. iTunes Music Store, Amazon MP3 downloads, and actual brick and mortar record stores beg to differ.

Brick and Mortar stores don't count, because they aren't streaming services, and are not really competing for the same market. The other two count (although Apple Music and Amazon Music Streaming, not the music store and downloads), but I didn't say there was only ONE distributer, just that there were only a few. A good distributer, with a wide audience, is able to take a big cut and not have producers run away. Appl…

>Brick and Mortar stores don't count, because they aren't streaming services, and are not really competing for the same market.

I guess I misunderstood your point when you said there was no way to access the product. Even if you want to exclude purchasing music there is a mechanism that's been around for decades: radio.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#188

Post by bogomipz »

akvadrako wrote: post #127
bogomipz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Doesn't having an offline mode run counter to this claim? That's clearly reproducing it." I agree with this. Even if it only lives an encrypted cache you are effectively doing a bit by bit reproduction when you offline sync. They do expire once the user hadn't logged in for some amount of time, I believe it's something like after 30 days of not logging in or refreshing a token. Before streaming when someone bought…

That's an implementation detail - which is not what copyright is about. Even radio is on the receiving end reproduced bit by bit, copied multiple times and stored in some kind of memory, which could be analog or digital.

>"That's an implementation detail - which is not what copyright is about."

No thats exactly what copyright it about. Its called a mechanical license and it is a type of copyright. See:

https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights

And Specifically:

"Mechanical licenses apply to reproduction and distribution of musical works on records and CDs, in permanent digital downloads, and in some other digital uses."[1]

>"Even radio is on the receiving end reproduced bit by bit, copied multiple times and stored in some kind of memory, which could be analog or digital"

Copying bytes of a track into a buffer for transmission is not the same as storing a complete copy of the track on persistent storage i.e a downloaded copy done as part of an "offline sync."

[1] http://guides.lib.umich.edu/permissions/music

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#189

Post by asdjasldkjkljd »

bambax wrote: post #92
shams93 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a logical level it should be treated the same as broadcast radio, however it gets hazy because you can store playlists and play tracks on demand so its really not clear cut. With radio you can hear the song if it happens to be playing but there is no on demand, no playlists.

There is replay; you can search many radio stations playlist for a specific title and play it. What about Youtube? It seems most / all music is on YT, what licence do they use? Streaming services seem a lot like YT.

You can download songs to play offline later, which is definitely more on the mechanical end though... ultimately I think they'll need to create a new category. It's like light being both a beam and a particle.
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