What a headache of an industry to get into. Seeing the direction that Pandora, Soundcloud, and others have gone, I wouldn't touch this vertical with 10-ft pole and a billion in capital.
Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
131–140 of 347 posts
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#132Added another source to assist discussion for more context: " https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/spotify-hit-16-bil... And Quote : "The Settlement Agreement is procedurally and substantively unfair to Settlement Class Members because it prevents meaningful participation by rights holders and offers them an unfair dollar amount in light of Spotify’s ongoing, willful copyright infringement of their works," ... "…
This is a bit confusing. My understanding of how music publishing works is that the copyright is usually assigned to the publisher (for a limited amount of time), so any rights of the copyright holder are rights of the publisher. They wouldn't have to explicitly assign litigation rights to the publisher. Disclaimer: IANAL, and with big artists, publishing deals can be very very different from boilerplate.
There are creation rights and performance rights, which may be treated differently. Plus artists can recover their copyrights after 35 years, under 17 U.S. Code § 203.
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
It scales really well for the owner of the service... it does not scale really well for the internet as a whole (sadly).
How so? There only issue I can think of is upload speed, which is improving for many, and would improve more prevalently if more average users had a clear need.
The original BitTorrent wasn't aware of network topology at all, so it could randomly use a relatively expensive or congested link just as easily as a LAN connection. You could get better use of network resources overall if you usually preferred to get pieces from peers that are closer to you on the network.
I think the BitTorrent company and/or community were studying this issue at some point and so they may have come up with alternative algorithms that prefer at least AS-locality or something.
As an extreme case, imagine that there are two seeds, one being another computer on your LAN and another being a host in Timor-Leste (which at one point in the 2000s reportedly had a single T1 connection for the entire country). It will be nicer for you and for the Timorese if you can somehow arrange to simply download the file from your LAN seed.
Here's one example of someone trying to improve this property: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopBT
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#134The pieces don't quite fit together here - Harry Fox handles a LOT of licensing (they're one of the places you can get mechanical licenses for cover songs via self-service) and I'd assume that a big contract for an organization the size of Spotify would include at least some indemnification for any legal issues. And, naturally, the damage amount is wildly unrelated to actual revenues - not quite the "one download on…
It's just a starting point for negotiation. Same way people slip in a store and sue for $1M, even though they end up settling for 50k.
It's also an attempt to force negotiation. "You want to negotiate a settlement with us, because if you lose..."
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#135> In May, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company agreed to pay more than $43 million to settle a proposed class action alleging it failed to pay royalties for some of the songs it makes available to users. This number seems closer to reality. It may be Tom Petty, Neil Young, and the Doors, but they're not worth nearly 10% of Spotify's valuation, and that certainly wouldn't match a compensatory amount in revenue that Spo…
That's not how damages work though. A factory worth $1 million can create hundreds of millions of dollars of damages with a spill or accident.
Plus copyright has statutory damages, so they don't even need to prove actual damages.
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think only music owners are allowed to post to YT, so they don't need a license like Spotify would.
Nope! You can totally pay for royalties and the entire right to perform on YouTube. It’s usually automatic.
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
It scales really well for the owner of the service... it does not scale really well for the internet as a whole (sadly).
How so? There only issue I can think of is upload speed, which is improving for many, and would improve more prevalently if more average users had a clear need.
Well, doesn't your answer of "it's improving for many" admit to the reality that it sucks right now, answering your own question? Besides, even if we have more bandwidth, it doesn't change the fact that p2p would require more of it.
Also, if you asked the average person if they want Spotify to be peer-to-peer + use more bandwidth vs centralized + use less bandwidth, do you think they are in a position to care much beyond the bandwidth difference? Especially on mobile devices?
I certainly would choose the latter. What do I care about making Spotify's operations cheaper at my own expense?
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you see, the thing is with commercial music is that the music owner is not a single entity. There is a composer, if there are lyrics there is a lyricist, if it was translated then there is a translator, if it’s a cover or remix there is an arranger, there is a publisher that published the music, there might be a sub-publisher, then there is a record label… One of the main reasons behind the existence of this comp…
Isn't this the reason vevo exists? youtube pays a single royalty based on playback and leaves it to the uploader to split it up between all the interested parties.
Yes, that’s a common arrangement.
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#139I was one of the original engineers on MP3.com. Shortly after our music locker service debuted, we got sued by all the major labels. I spent 4 months writing tools to pull all the discovery data for their lawsuits. When it was apparent our court case was going south, the major music publishers sued us as well (lead by Harry Fox Agency). I spent another 4 months pulling discovery data for those lawsuits. When those co…
> When it was apparent our court case was going south, the major music publishers sued us as well (lead by Harry Fox Agency).
From the OP:
> Wixen also alleged that Spotify outsourced its work to a third party, licensing and royalty services provider the Harry Fox Agency, which was “ill-equipped to obtain all the necessary mechanical licenses”.
If there's any justice, if they lose at all in court Spotify will be suing Harry Fox for damages too.
Re: Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s an endless boon to piracy, which should have largely died if not for the rampant greed and incompetence of publishers.
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.