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Schroedinger's streaming service just died

pluralistic.net

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Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#61

“but at least it's a law, created by a democratically accountable legislature.” I feel like we need to stop lying to ourselves like this. Copyright is getting ridiculously out of hand because lobbyists hold the power and the system is not really accountable anymore.

I think he's talking about the original copyright law from 1790, back before congress lost the ability to pass productive legislation

Well that was a top down undemocratic law designed to enforce censorship and stop the proles getting out of line, so not really.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#62

“but at least it's a law, created by a democratically accountable legislature.” I feel like we need to stop lying to ourselves like this. Copyright is getting ridiculously out of hand because lobbyists hold the power and the system is not really accountable anymore.

We need to have a national proposition system that let citizens put forth legislative bills into the ballots, to let the citizens vote on the strongly concerned matters. When Congress obviously is not doing their jobs, the citizens should have a way to pick up the slack. It's a better way to check and balance the sellout of the legislative branch to the lobbyists.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#63
post #62

“but at least it's a law, created by a democratically accountable legislature.” I feel like we need to stop lying to ourselves like this. Copyright is getting ridiculously out of hand because lobbyists hold the power and the system is not really accountable anymore.

We need to have a national proposition system that let citizens put forth legislative bills into the ballots, to let the citizens vote on the strongly concerned matters. When Congress obviously is not doing their jobs, the citizens should have a way to pick up the slack. It's a better way to check and balance the sellout of the legislative branch to the lobbyists.

Our system was literally designed to prevent citizens from having any say. See the supreme court and the reasons Alexander Hamilton said it was needed

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#64
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But how do I prove I own an MP3 file? The letters N, F, and T echo about in the background.

Which will then contain a link to the file, since storing the whole file on the chain is too expensive. Still, you'll now pay >50$ for each file, 98% of which are transaction fees - surprisingly surpassing the already horrible pay ratio of music labels.

> Which will then contain a link to the file

Why? You already have a copy on your local machine ("local machine" being anywhere you'd want to play that file). What's more important is the hash; if you really care about remote storage, IPFS kills both those birds with one stone.

> Still, you'll now pay >50$ for each file, 98% of which are transaction fees

There are other NFT-capable blockchains besides Ethereum, you know :)

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#65
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quantum superposition thing is just a cheeky metaphor for a sketchy-sounding accounting practice, I wouldn’t read too much into the wave-function collapse analogy.

It's a metaphor which makes it sound more complex than it is. All they are describing is that they have agreed to different royalty rates for different types of sale. I have zero doubt that the contracts will have very clear definitions of what counts as a 'sale' and what counts as 'licensing', but this article just pretends that it is highly ambiguous in order to make a strange analogy to quantum mechanics.

No post body was provided.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#66
personal anectode: I'm born in 1986 and had internet since 1998. Immediately got into contact with IRC's XDCC file-sharing and Usenet bin groups. Never paid for music, started burning CDs in 1999 and owned the first commercial MP3 player. Only when Spotify came around, I started to pay for music out of lazyness to further take care of my HDD sized, tediously managed and tagged MP3 (and later M4A) library.

So at least for a large part of my life, that crazy industry didn't get a dime from me. Reading about their practices now makes me feel even less sorry.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#67
post #63
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to have a national proposition system that let citizens put forth legislative bills into the ballots, to let the citizens vote on the strongly concerned matters. When Congress obviously is not doing their jobs, the citizens should have a way to pick up the slack. It's a better way to check and balance the sellout of the legislative branch to the lobbyists.

Our system was literally designed to prevent citizens from having any say. See the supreme court and the reasons Alexander Hamilton said it was needed

I feel that both are needed, almost like a third house that is a populist based voting system. You get issues with mob mentality and it can cause tragedies just as easy as representative systems can.

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#68
post #63
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to have a national proposition system that let citizens put forth legislative bills into the ballots, to let the citizens vote on the strongly concerned matters. When Congress obviously is not doing their jobs, the citizens should have a way to pick up the slack. It's a better way to check and balance the sellout of the legislative branch to the lobbyists.

Our system was literally designed to prevent citizens from having any say. See the supreme court and the reasons Alexander Hamilton said it was needed

"Prevent us from having any say"??

Legislators are directly elected, president is elected somewhat indirectly but largely by popular vote, administrative rule making has notice and comment process, Article 3 judges are appointed by President and confirmed by legislature... everything derived from the will of the people. It sounds like you are upset that more people aren't as upset at the same things you are. That's not a problem with the government, that's a problem with the populace.

Organize a petition to have your congressional rep submit a bill for what you want. If they refuse, find someone to run who will do it. Actually do something, don't just post online about how the government isn't working... make it work for you!

Re: Schroedinger's streaming service just died

#69
Could I sell my bandcamp account?

The irony of this is that bandcamp seems to be a far more direct-to-the-artist model than any streaming service (which is why I use it), because it (it's hard to avoid puns here) records which albums I've purchased so that I can listen to them via the app / website or download lossless copies of said albums for my own curated library and to be able to listen to offline. This, however, gives my account a certain value as to the content accessible through it, and therefore my account has some resale value* - but this resale pays nothing to the artist or label or bandcamp; it's much more like a physical item (other than that if bandcamp goes under then it's lost, or if bandcamp don't like their accounts being re-sold it could get terminated due to breach of terms of service or something like that).

* my musical taste means that this resale value is very low and it would be difficult to find a purchaser, but that's beside the point.

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