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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

#261

Post by dmitriid »

daics wrote: post #255
dmitriid wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. I just realized another thing. 30 million songs can easily fit into a database running on a Macbook Air. Stick it on a medium-sized server, and you can already serve thousands of users. Blockchain meanwhile... something something ... 4 txns/second ... 1 terrawatt per txn ... up to several days to clear a txn when network is congested

UMG, Warner, Sony and Spotify cannot share bills for running a common database on AWS today without creating yet another corporation and relinquishing power over the data to it. Blockchains are not the next big thing in databases. They are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other witho…

> Blockchains are not the next big thing in databases

Blockchains are the next big thing in nothing. They are not here to revolutionise anything [1]

> hey are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other etc.

Nope. There are about zero things in blockchain that help with that. Because at the end of the day someone has to do all the job of, you know, adding all the info about who owns what percentage of what song in which region of the world.

Oh wait. Which song was that? A Japanese LP that's 2 seconds longer than the original single released in Europe? Or that remastered song on a "Best of album" that was published by a different publisher than the remastered version published on the "Remastered" album that is published by a different combination of publishers than the original 1960s album that is different from that singular French copy of a concert in 1995...

All that for a single song that ends up being attributed to the same singers and songwriters, except that one cover by all the same people sans that one guy, and except that different cover that will be attributed to the same songwriters, but a different singer, and except...

All that info has to be: standardized, assigned to every single one of those 30 million songs, and any new releases should contain the same standardized info.

You know, something the publishers could agree on right now, and they don't. So how in the seven hells is blockchain going to help?

[1] https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#262

Post by thomastjeffery »

pas wrote: post #260
thomastjeffery wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, but that distinction does not exist with internet distribution. It's arbitrarily enforced via DRM (which doesn't really work ), which is in turn enforced by Section 1201 of the DMCA. > The former scenario could see you, for instance, buying a CD because you liked a song you heard on the radio; that is probably not as likely with Spotify. That depends on whether you want to support the record label/artist, a…

For the vast majority of the internet users, it does. They won't "hack" the online radio to download (rip) the stream. Even if it's just a click away via countless stream downloading services found via any web search engine. DRM raises that technical bar by a few notches, but it doesn't really work for non-interactive content, because there are again countless sites that offer non-DRMed access. (So DRM works for game…

> So DRM works for games, because it takes a while to crack them.)

It really doesn't.

> For the vast majority of the internet users, it does.

The significant majority of internet users have been carefully conditioned with propaganda to be afraid of file sharing and other more convenient options.

The idea that it works just enough to be valuable is what these media corporations are constantly telling themselves, and each other. They have managed to cultivate a culture where that is almost true, so they continue to believe it.

What they are too afraid to believe is that DRM devalues their product more than it controls customers' spending. If that isn't true now (I am quite certain it is), it will be soon.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#263

Post by thomastjeffery »

tylerhou wrote: post #239
emodendroket wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem outlandish to claim there's a distinction between a broadcast, where you might hear a song at a particular time of day, and having an on-demand copy of a song at any time. The former scenario could see you, for instance, buying a CD because you liked a song you heard on the radio; that is probably not as likely with Spotify.

Broadcasting a song and on-demand streaming is technically isomorphic. 1. Clearly on-demand streaming implies broadcasting. 2. Presumably I could turn a broadcast into an on-demand radio stream by setting up a radio station which loops through all songs. Then I get into my rocket ship and travel away from Earth at near lightspeed and return, arriving exactly when the song I want to hear on-demand is being broadcasted…

> Clearly on-demand streaming implies broadcasting.

That's the trouble with words.

The words imply that one thing is the other, but that just doesn't work out in reality.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#264

Post by thomastjeffery »

freeone3000 wrote: post #212
emodendroket wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem outlandish to claim there's a distinction between a broadcast, where you might hear a song at a particular time of day, and having an on-demand copy of a song at any time. The former scenario could see you, for instance, buying a CD because you liked a song you heard on the radio; that is probably not as likely with Spotify.

It does when there's no effective technical measure to stop you from getting one from the other. It shouldn't be possible to break laws by accident.

> It shouldn't be possible to break laws by accident.

There shouldn't be a law that anyone can break without affecting anyone else.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#265

Post by rebuilder »

shams93 wrote: post #87
DrJokepu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of a gray area, the whole performing/mechanical rights system was obviously invented before streaming. Radio stations pay for performing rights, so the question arises whether streaming is more like radio broadcast or manufacturing and distributing physical copies (e.g. CDs)? Without further legislation, ultimately only the courts can decide that. My guess is that ultimately streaming rights will end up as…

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.

Functionally, for the consumer, streaming is mostly identical to a recording. Want to listen to a song? Press play. The storage just happens to be on some server somewhere.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#266

Post by thomastjeffery »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #234
thomastjeffery wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the reason behind ridiculous things like DRM. The idea that there is a difference between broadcasting and copying, and that computers can emulate that difference is a pipe dream; nonetheless shared by most music labels.

Friendly reminder: when discussed in context of copyright laws, "broadcasting" and "copying" are colours, only tangentially related to technical meaning of those terms. The law deals with colours, not with physical reality. http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 (TL;DR: 'colour' captures those path-dependent aspects of a thing, like where did it came from and why someone is doing something with it. A song legally bought a…

> only tangentially related to technical meaning of those terms.

Let's get some new words then.

We need to be explicit.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#267

Post by caractacus »

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.

YouTube don't need a license because they say they are covered by safe harbors / DMCA, so the record companies have negotiated separate agreements with YouTube. The fact that safe harbors were designed for passive intermediaries like ISPs and not a service like YT that promotes and makes money and gets value from all the music people upload (including record companies) is glossed over by YouTube.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#268

Post by sideshowb »

QAPereo wrote: post #140
sideshowb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree publishers were incompetent (in clinging onto old models rather than adapting), but has streaming really helped the average artist? Having the option to distribute music for free has been good, for sure Setting the expectation that music should be near enough free, less so You could argue this is one of those public good situations universal income is designed to address, but it certainly hasn't yet.

For the vast majority of history, musicians were not some of the wealthiest members of society, far from it. Music has traditionally been “near free” and only ceased to be during a brief period necessitated by tech. That period has long since ended. I don’t see that an artificial value placed on music, rather than the previous real value set on its distribution, is necessarily a good thing.

Can we ignore any question about whether 21st century tech/economic changes are helpful to us by saying "for the vast majority of history, we lived in caves and many died in childbirth?"

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#269

Post by sideshowb »

state_less wrote: post #150
QAPereo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the vast majority of history, musicians were not some of the wealthiest members of society, far from it. Music has traditionally been “near free” and only ceased to be during a brief period necessitated by tech. That period has long since ended. I don’t see that an artificial value placed on music, rather than the previous real value set on its distribution, is necessarily a good thing.

Being a musical artist is not easy business for pretty much every artists except for a few outliers, though we do appreciate and consume music. If you made a graph with the x axis being percentile and the y axis being the amount of money made, on the far right side of the x axis there would be a huge spike where a tiny fraction are making a fortune. (I think) I'd prefer the spike to be smoothed out. What's interestin…

I think what you're doing (seeing this as an optimization problem) is asking the right sort of question

A related point is the FOSS-style model of "give away music for free, make money on tours/advertising/movie soundtracks" biases the search towards music that works well in live performance/in advertising/in a film. So we are missing huge parts of the search space.

Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit

#270

Post by Bilters »

saaaaaam wrote: post #106

There is a little (understandable) confusion in some of the comments here. The issue here is not that Spotify is infringing copyright (so it’s nothing to do with BitTorrent etc) but rather that Wixen says that it has not been paid correctly for the mechanical exploitation of the copyrights it administers. This is complex for several reasons. First of all: the recordings in question have without doubt been legitimatel…

Wow this a great explanation! The level of complexity is higher than I thought at first. Thanks for this!
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