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Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

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Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#231
post #99
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediately makes me think of the vitriol here on HN for the UK trying to enforce their age verification law outside their borders. Will the principle stand, or will it reveal that "USA is always right" is a common held belief

Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay. Piracy has a very specific sting to it. This was a deliberate choice. We don't call burglary "piracy", yet if we relax the definition enough to include IP theft, it is also piracy. GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said. GabeN is in fact a…

> GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said.

It is a supply problem. Steam regional pricing and game passes have demolished piracy in countries where people wouldn't have dreamed of paying for a game 15 years ago. And so did Netflix for a while with video, but then everyone had to jump on the bandwagon and now piracy is flourishing again.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#232

How do people safely download from these torrent sites? Isn't there a risk that you'll download something you wouldn't want on your computer? Yet I hear of many people actively using them, so there must be more to it.

It's easy for others to see what you're downloading: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com. So if you're unsure if the torrent is legitimate, I'd probably avoid it.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to see a streaming service where my payment goes to artists I listen to. Spotify pays 70% of their music revenue to publishers based on the total number of listens. All revenue is put together and split based on the global numbers. Which means that niche band I like will get next to nothing. Instead if they account for 50% of my listening time in one month, they should get 35% of what I paid to Spotify that…

But, unless they put some thresholds on minimum listens, isn't basically the same thing what they do and what you propose? 35% of 1 is the same as 0.000000035 of 10.000.000

If you and I both pay $10/mo to listen to Spotify, and we are the only subscribers. If I listen to 1 song by Sabrina Carpenter, and you listen to 99 songs by Taylor Swift. Then of our $20 (after Spotify's share) 1% of the money will go to Sabrina and 99% of the money will go to Taylor. Because Taylor was played 99x more than Sabrina. Even though for both of us as users, our respective artist was 100% of our listening.

It doesn't calculate your amount of listening and determine the payout based on that. All listens are pooled together and all subscription money is pooled together. And the payout is determined based on that.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all listens show the same intention. If I go to the barbershop and they're playing Spotify top-40 playlists running all day long, that is very different from me actively choosing what I want to listen to for a few hours a months while I'm listening in my car, or putting on Friends Per Second while doing the dishes. My $7/mo should be going to the artists I actually chose to listen to, not the stuff that droned pa…

I mean, I understand and agree, and I'm pretty sure that Spotify Premium users are very skewed towards less mainstream tastes, so I agree it would be better for smaller artists and would probably change the power balance (well, if we forget that music labels exist). But yeah, if as others pointed out you were to give 70% of your subscription cost to the artist that composed/performed the single track you listened thi…

At the end of the day, indies need to be on Spotify much more than Spotify needs them there. But for mainstream artists, it's the opposite; so the representatives of top-40 artists are the ones dictating the terms of how the system works for everyone, and unsurprisingly the system they've settled on is one that seems fair enough as long as you don't think too deeply about it, but ensures that the biggest slice of the pie goes to themselves.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube thing doesn't sound right. They had a ¿10? minute video limit for a long time and it was really annoying to watch pirated stuff on there. Google Video had a lot of full movies before they bought YouTube and shut it down.

Still remember those times watching movies or documentaries by parts. Sometimes I started watching just to discover that part 8 was missing :( edit: in previous years some anime communities uploaded episodes to photo sites. They chunked the episodes in small JPGs with the video data encrypted. Just download hundreds of photos, join them and you got the episode :)

Wild to see the usenet/uuencoding model reproduced on the web w/ jpegs.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#237

They will never see a single cent from that, AA will continue to rotate domains and nothing was accomplished, except for spotify's legal team which earned easy money arguing against empty chair in court. BTW, you can donate and get faster downloads: https://annas-archive.gl/donate Just donated in honor of this. Up yours spotify!

I don't know how to feel about any of this. First and foremost, I feel like Spotify is scummy. I don't like what they did when they were founded, I don't like what they do to artists. I hate the hyperscalers being in this business (Google, Apple, Amazon) as that's another thing they do that devalues an otherwise healthy market. Bringing in outside business division revenues to dump on another market's prices is ecolo…

If I like an artist I buy a physical copy of the album.

I just brought Light Years on cassette by Nas.

I’m an hobbyist musician and I’m going to sell actual cassettes and donate the profits. I’m never going to get the 500 million streams you need to make money off Spotify

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#238

They will never see a single cent from that, AA will continue to rotate domains and nothing was accomplished, except for spotify's legal team which earned easy money arguing against empty chair in court. BTW, you can donate and get faster downloads: https://annas-archive.gl/donate Just donated in honor of this. Up yours spotify!

Maybe it's not about the money primarily. There are enough parties out there that want the people behind Anna's archive behind bars and I'm afraid this will end the same way as for the Pirate Bay guys in the best case and like it ended for Aaron Schwartz in the worst.

If the operators of Anna's Archive live somewhere like Russia or China, there's a good chance nothing will ever come of any of this legal action. Anna's Archive's biggest challenge is just maintaining availability of infrastructure.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#239

They will never see a single cent from that, AA will continue to rotate domains and nothing was accomplished, except for spotify's legal team which earned easy money arguing against empty chair in court. BTW, you can donate and get faster downloads: https://annas-archive.gl/donate Just donated in honor of this. Up yours spotify!

I don't know how to feel about any of this. First and foremost, I feel like Spotify is scummy. I don't like what they did when they were founded, I don't like what they do to artists. I hate the hyperscalers being in this business (Google, Apple, Amazon) as that's another thing they do that devalues an otherwise healthy market. Bringing in outside business division revenues to dump on another market's prices is ecolo…

I've always liked China's business model for music. In China, all music is free to stream and download. Musicians make their money the more traditional way, through performances, merchandise, promotions/advertising, etc.
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