How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup • Hacker News Board

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#71

Post by Polecat » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #37

hamburglar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, although I think he sort of predisposed me to this attitude right off the bat with the desperate-seeming link to google results that are supposed to prove people called them an "itunes killer" (note: I could not find a single instance of anyone referring to them as an "itunes killer" in any of those results).

Being called "{Apple product there} killer" never turned out to be good for the "killer" involved.

Or anything "killer" in general. As evident by every MMORPG that is coming out being the "World of Warcraft killer" an then disappearing into obscurity after a few months of hype while WoW keeps on going.

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#72

Post by kenrikm » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #51

guelo wrote: post #45

They were crawling the web for mp3s the same way that Google does. Though admittedly Google hides the mp3s much better nowadays then they used to. And the web is way more balkanized into all these corporate walled gardens so there are fewer free roaming mp3s on random websites as there used to be. But technically it was a search engine the same as Google. It always bothers me that this area of the law seems to be ent…

I was under the impression that the UI was pretty incidental in most judges' interpretations that platforms used mainly to locate copyrighted material were on shakier ground than platforms which incidentally, and despite ostensibly significant efforts on the part of developers to limit it, could be used to locate copyright material. It's not like Google doesn't get hit by content-provider lawsuits either, it's just t…

When people think of "copyrighted" material they usually think Songs, Movies etc. However if you stop and think about it most content on the web is copyrighted, from the news articles you search for to images and websites themselves. With that in mind Google also is used "mainly to locate copyrighted material"

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#73

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #70

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you can show the intention of the developer was to aid the user in taking a certain action, if that action can be legal in some cases, how can that be held against the developer? Is a gun scope illegal because it helps a shooter hit their targets where sometimes shooting those targets is an illegal action? Should torrenting be banned because it is often used to transfer illegal files even though there are a l…

The beauty of law being a human institution is you get to look past such fig leaves. Here, the fact that the author billed SeeqPod as a "streaming music startup" tells you all you need to know about whether his service just incidentally facilitated copyright infringement, or was designed to profit from its users' copyright infringement on a mass scale.

Clearly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#74

Post by saiya-jin » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

JohnyLy wrote: post #2

This is why large companies should be more regulated. They should not be able to put pressure on labels or producers and get all the benefits. What Apple did by killing this startup is not ethical. Plus, by killing it, they tried to get a monopole. Microsoft got so many fines at the time because they had the monopole on PCs. If a large company tries to destroy startups just because they feel threatened, they should b…

I mean, dude, seriously... what?

by no means I am an apple fan, never owned any of their device (mainly because how they treat their customers, but that's completely different topic) and still living, but - case is clear simple here. Apple paid owners of copyright agreed amount, and startup was stealing this content without anyone's approval. I don't care who gave list to whom, etc. Justice has been done. If you don't like copyright laws, that's again another story altogether. No rocket science...

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#75

Post by milesskorpen » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:37 PM UTC

". I also spent time through the years developing algorithms and predictive analytics associated to uncovering patterns in historical stock market data. "

A bizarre comment — did he expect to see it coming? How does this relate to the story at hand? "Somehow, even someone as sophisticated as me, didn't see the downturn coming" ... if he could predict any kind of change in the stock industry better than investing professionals he wouldn't be running a questionably-legal streaming startup.

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#76

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #63

IshKebab wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe modern Xorg config files are not rocket science, but surely you remember the days of manually listing video modes, and trying endless combinations of video drivers. Hell I think you even needed to add special directives to get three button mice to work properly. Fortunately those days are gone, but you definitely could debug xf86 config files.

It wasn't so much debugging as it was laying our your video card and monitor manual, listing the config file and making sure all the little numbers match up.

The coolest thing one could do with a legacy XF86 config and a CRT monitor was invent new "overclocked" video modes. I had one monitor that was rated for 1280x1024 running at 1600x600 to match another monitor for a Xinerama setup.

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#77

Post by lectrick » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

So they intelligently crawled the web for music files to download which were... not purchased.

The reason why they failed is because they, like many others, were "nebulously/quasi legal." (You know what was ALSO awesome yet not legal or respectful of creator pay? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiogalaxy .) At least Apple was trying to make it all legit. They did start with DRM (note: no longer the case for years) but this was to make the record companies more comfortable with it.

The reason why SeeqPod was sued is because Warner Music (and others) had a case. It was not a purely frivolous, harassing lawsuit.

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#78

Post by TheCowboy » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

milesskorpen wrote: post #75

". I also spent time through the years developing algorithms and predictive analytics associated to uncovering patterns in historical stock market data. " A bizarre comment — did he expect to see it coming? How does this relate to the story at hand? "Somehow, even someone as sophisticated as me, didn't see the downturn coming" ... if he could predict any kind of change in the stock industry better than investing prof…

He's expressing that he didn't see it coming:

  Even with this knowledge base I failed to pay attention to what I knew was a deep systematic fissure in the financial markets signaled by the fall of Bear Stearns. I was focused on user acquisition, growth and resolving litigation as opposed to revenue, a mistake when the Black Swan appears.

He's not claiming to have the ability to time markets perfectly. He had enough experience where he might have some awareness of the bigger economic and financial picture. He's saying that even people in the financial industry were caught off guard, especially investing professionals who are key to keeping startups funded.

I found this context to be the most interesting part in addition to the role of how companies behaved in an oligopolistic way.

It could also be taken as an argument for greater financial transparency, or recognizing that the stability of the financial sector is another risk to startups and innovation.

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#79

Post by wuliwong » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #21

asadhaider wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built a third party app using their API, I always wondered the reasons for shutting down the site as it just went down one day with along with its API and a vague message on their homepage. They had a web crawler indexing all publicly accessible songs or mp3 files which made up their search, the API let you query this database including a cached version of the song hosted on their servers. They weren't just a searc…

So they were like a "jukebox" for playing the copyrighted content, streaming it themselves, just like Google's YouTube does. The conceptual difference is that the users themselves upload the material to YouTube, whereas SeeqPod cached the content of other sites (like Google search does, albeit not with music and videos). I'm not surprised that they were on the list of "problematic" companies of record companies. It's…

That is my intuition on this as well. YouTube is allowed to continually play 'wack-a-mole' with people putting up copyrighted material. I don't see why it would be any different with SeeqPod indexing it. Further, Google probably indexes tons of images which are infringing on someone's copyright and you can view these right in their search results.

Re: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup

#80

Post by curun1r » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 4:17 PM UTC

dxhdr wrote: post #4

I read this half asleep and a little inebriated but it seemed to evolve into some kind of bizarre self-aggrandizing pitch on how this Kasian Franks is a super-human with deep hard-to-duplicate knowledge and insights spanning multiple important and lucrative industries. Almost some kind of cred piece bolstered by his proxy encounter with Steve Jobs. Weird.

Beyond that, it simply lacks credibility. I can't imagine that a Warner executive would be stupid enough to tell him that Steve Jobs was behind an unresolved lawsuit. It's even somewhat unbelievable that the executive would be allowed to speak to him, in the first place, without counsel being present.

The whole piece feels like it has some ulterior motive and he's taken the facts and added his own narrative rather than the truth. Perhaps he's trying to get a new venture funded and he believes a glorified retelling of his previous startup will help.