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

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

#91
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are certainly mp3s on websites that are not infringing on any copyright. When you bill your service as a "streaming music service" 99.5% of your users will use it to listen to Taylor Swift, and by billing it as such single apparent inference is that you intend for them to do that. The non-infringing uses are just a fig leaf--something you point to trying to cover up the obvious. Google Image search is differe…

> Google Image search is different. People don't primarily use GIS to find images that are hosted on the internet without the copyright owner's permission, nor does Google do anything to market to that use. I agree with your general interpretation of the case here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the primary use case of GIS actually is copyright infringement: finding images to paste into your Web site, PowerPoint pres…

And notably Google did face the billion dollar lawsuit with Viacom vs YouTube and had to fight for survival under DMCA. The key argument is "knowledge" of copyright material being improperly hosted, the same standard in theory being applied to all these services from Napster to YouTube to Mega.

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

#92
post #70

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.

Good to know that all streaming music is copyrighted and there is no legal music one can stream. Except that isn't the case, and so it goes back to my point. Perhaps he actually meant for it to be used by people streaming all the free, legal, and often hard to find mp3s out there. You can go to OCRemix for a lot of free music, but searching through all the musicians who put out their own song on their own website isn't at all simple without a tool like this.

Compare it to Tor. Lots of legal uses (at least legal in the US, maybe not in the country where one would need something like Tor for said uses). But the majority of its use is for a few illegal activities. Are we to judge intent based off of how the majority of uses use it? Good bye torrenting.

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

#93

". 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 ex…

It doesn't seem to say whether he had any further success with that approach, other than predicting one event which may have been a coincidence.

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

#94
post #90
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Hosted by the copyright holder. A crucial distinction!

And, in the case of websites, _almost always shared with the copyright holders' permission_.

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

#95
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Apple had all of this great power over the labels, why did it take so long to get the Beatles? That was a trademark dispute, see Apple vs. Apple.

Actually it was a dispute between EMI and Apple Corps (not invoking Apple Computer Inc) over royalties that held up the Beatles music licensing.

Oh, I see. Thanks. When was it settled? Apple vs. Apple was settled in 2007. I would be surprised if the trademark dispute had no bearing on the licensing dispute internally, but I guess we can't know.

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

#96
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

May be it matches more to Bing Video search? It allows users to play them inside Bing.

With Bing, are they not streaming directly from the original provider? They are indeed embedding it in the search results pop-over, but I didn't think they were hosting any of that themselves.

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

#97
post #90
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Hosted by the copyright holder. A crucial distinction!

Yes, except those pesky infoboxes.. Google is starting to serve answers right on search result pages, which to me seems a bit murkier.

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

#98

" If I could compile and debug kernel issues along with X11 X86Config files with assistance from a good friend at the QNX-based Caprica Internet in LA and the 2-person Slackware “helpdesk” on the East Coast every few days then I’d be able to continue to test NCSA webserver over SLIP and PPP to deliver electronic faxes with a web interface for the Mosaic Browser for a sugar company in Marin County to save them a few t…

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.

Yes I do remember those days. And running XF86Configurator (or whatever the tool was) to try and guess a sensible setup. Guessing the modes for CRTs when it didn't work was a headache. Listening to your monitor going WHEEEEEEEEEEE and screaming in the wrong mode whilst hammering Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to exit before it blew up in your face.

But that article seems to be a strange mismash of odd name-dropping and a list of personal achievements.

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

#99

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.

... and then debugging when it inevitably didn't work.

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

#100
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it was a dispute between EMI and Apple Corps (not invoking Apple Computer Inc) over royalties that held up the Beatles music licensing.

Oh, I see. Thanks. When was it settled? Apple vs. Apple was settled in 2007. I would be surprised if the trademark dispute had no bearing on the licensing dispute internally, but I guess we can't know.

It was in April 2007, details are unsurprisingly confidential but "mutually acceptable"

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/emi-apple-corps-deal-go...

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