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Schroedinger's streaming service just died

pluralistic.net

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Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#11

Post by smallnix »

Closi wrote: post #7

> The confiscation of your rights to your digital media depends on the fiction that you are licensing the music, not buying it. The fact that there's a giant "buy now" button on the interface notwithstanding, tech and entertainment companies maintain that you are engaged in a licensing deal, like an advertiser buying synch rights for a hamburger commercial. This post makes everything seem needlessly complicated - you…

I understood the point of the post to be about musicians not getting licensing royals.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#13

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Closi wrote: post #7

> The confiscation of your rights to your digital media depends on the fiction that you are licensing the music, not buying it. The fact that there's a giant "buy now" button on the interface notwithstanding, tech and entertainment companies maintain that you are engaged in a licensing deal, like an advertiser buying synch rights for a hamburger commercial. This post makes everything seem needlessly complicated - you…

> How else would digital media / sale of MP3's work without licences? Is the author suggesting that everyone should legally be able to freely transfer/distribute their MP3's to anyone with no legal limit?

What would be wrong with the same first sale doctrine that applies to physical instances of digital media (such as CDs) ?

CD: You buy it, you are free to resell it to someone else; you are not free to make copies.

Digital data only: You buy it, you can resell it someone else (0); you are not free give additional copies to anyone else (1)

(0) not likely to happen (1) you can of course make your own copies, eg. for backup or across devices

Would enforcing such a legal structure be possible? Yes and no. Everyone knows that once you could rip CDs, the legal structure for that format was already severely challenged by people's actual behavior, so there's nothing particularly new there.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#14

Post by [deleted] »

Closi wrote: post #7

> The confiscation of your rights to your digital media depends on the fiction that you are licensing the music, not buying it. The fact that there's a giant "buy now" button on the interface notwithstanding, tech and entertainment companies maintain that you are engaged in a licensing deal, like an advertiser buying synch rights for a hamburger commercial. This post makes everything seem needlessly complicated - you…

[deleted]

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#15

Post by fabbari »

Closi wrote: post #7

> The confiscation of your rights to your digital media depends on the fiction that you are licensing the music, not buying it. The fact that there's a giant "buy now" button on the interface notwithstanding, tech and entertainment companies maintain that you are engaged in a licensing deal, like an advertiser buying synch rights for a hamburger commercial. This post makes everything seem needlessly complicated - you…

> where wave function collapse just means a contract that has different terms for a digital purchase instead of a physical purchase

That's not what the article states. The author is saying that the same transaction - IE: my 'buying' a track on iTunes, for example - is considered a license transfer, between me and the record company, and a sale, between the record company and the artist.

This superposition of license and sale for the same transaction is collapsed into a license - so: no transfer rights, no right to make copies, etc. - when the record company it talking to me.

On the other hand - when the record company is talking to the artist - the superposition collapses to a sale, so the artist gets 13% of the value instead of the 50% they would get if it was a license sale.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#16

Post by scoofy »

ghostly_s wrote: post #12

Except as noted in the linked BBC coverage, Four Tet's case was settled out of court (because he could not afford to fight it) and thus establishes no legal precedent for other artists to leverage.

>Four Tet

Wow... Haven't heard that name in a long time. Saw him at the MFA in Boston so long ago i can barely remember. Great artist, I'm glad he at least showed it could be a reasonable line of argument.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#17

Post by Closi »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #13
Closi wrote: post #7

> The confiscation of your rights to your digital media depends on the fiction that you are licensing the music, not buying it. The fact that there's a giant "buy now" button on the interface notwithstanding, tech and entertainment companies maintain that you are engaged in a licensing deal, like an advertiser buying synch rights for a hamburger commercial. This post makes everything seem needlessly complicated - you…

> How else would digital media / sale of MP3's work without licences? Is the author suggesting that everyone should legally be able to freely transfer/distribute their MP3's to anyone with no legal limit? What would be wrong with the same first sale doctrine that applies to physical instances of digital media (such as CDs) ? CD: You buy it, you are free to resell it to someone else; you are not free to make copies. D…

> Digital data only: You buy it, you can resell it someone else (0); you are not free give additional copies to anyone else (1)

Sounds like you are buying a transferable licence?

(If this isn't a licence, what would you call it? As presumably once you have 'sold' it, it can still reside on your laptop but you aren't allowed to play it).

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#18

Post by pessimizer »

ghostly_s wrote: post #12

Except as noted in the linked BBC coverage, Four Tet's case was settled out of court (because he could not afford to fight it) and thus establishes no legal precedent for other artists to leverage.

Yeah, there's no chance that this golden goose could ever be killed in a modern democracy. If the companies would still be profitable paying 50% royalties, then the 38% difference between that and 12% royalties represents the amount the industry will be able to spend (without thinking about it for a moment) to bribe politicians, create fake public-interest organizations and think-tanks, and settle cases like this.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#19

Post by Closi »

fabbari wrote: post #15
Closi wrote: post #7

> The confiscation of your rights to your digital media depends on the fiction that you are licensing the music, not buying it. The fact that there's a giant "buy now" button on the interface notwithstanding, tech and entertainment companies maintain that you are engaged in a licensing deal, like an advertiser buying synch rights for a hamburger commercial. This post makes everything seem needlessly complicated - you…

> where wave function collapse just means a contract that has different terms for a digital purchase instead of a physical purchase That's not what the article states. The author is saying that the same transaction - IE: my 'buying' a track on iTunes, for example - is considered a license transfer, between me and the record company, and a sale, between the record company and the artist. This superposition of license…

It's just a sale of a licence.

If I'm a Domino's franchisee, and I pay Domino's a different commission for an order placed online vs a customer walking into the store, the pizza isn't in a state of quantum superposition - that's just making a simple concept overly complex by incorrectly throwing quantum words at it. The concept is just that different things have different prices in the master agreement.

If I'm a movie theatre that happens to sell a DVD of the same movie, when a customer comes in they also aren't in a shrodingers-cat quantum dilemma superposition state, it's just the simple idea that different things have different prices and different compensation structures for artists.

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