European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs • Hacker News Board

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#71

Post by istvan__ » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:28 PM UTC

kiiski wrote: post #50

istvan__ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In early 2015, Bandcamp released an announcement that artists using the website had officially gotten $100 million in total from music sale" Total music industry is 15B (afaik). It is 1/150th of the entire music industry and that is just one site. I think the artist make more on Bandcamp and other music distribution platforms than on big labels, that might be the reason why Bandcamp is greatly successful.

You left out the source for that quote, but it appears to be from Wikipedia, which has this[1] as a source. From that article I get the impression that the $100 million refers to all money paid during the existance of Bandcamp, while I suppose the 15B is annual? The article says that Bandcamp has revenue of $3.5 million a month (= $42 million a year), most of which goes to artists. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/hug…

All correct what you are saying. This was exactly my point that Bandcamps revenue goes to artists (mostly).

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#72

Post by istvan__ » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

bhrgunatha wrote: post #21

istvan__ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In early 2015, Bandcamp released an announcement that artists using the website had officially gotten $100 million in total from music sale" Total music industry is 15B (afaik). It is 1/150th of the entire music industry and that is just one site. I think the artist make more on Bandcamp and other music distribution platforms than on big labels, that might be the reason why Bandcamp is greatly successful.

Well that's incredibly positive and I wasn't aware of that. I'm used to seeing more of the news that artists get almost no money through Spotify and similar channels or that consumer websites like Pandora getting legally harassed.

I never liked Pandora, I was forcing myself to use it but they have limited music and their recommendation engine was a joke. It might work for hip-hop vs. heavy metal context but when it comes to sub-genres in electronic music not so much.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#73

Post by CHY872 » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

2a0c40 wrote: post #63

antientropic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not undemocratic. Your parliament was democratically elected. It had a mandate to do things like ratifying new European treaties. The problem was holding the referendum in the first place. Direct democracy does not work because it's a recipe for paralysis.

Doesn't it? Did you check Switzerland?

Switzerland is ten times smaller than France, and in general the people who live there are far better off (GDP per capita is doubled between France and Switzerland ($90,000 vs $45,000)).

It's much easier to form a consensus when your constituents are all affluent. It's much easier to govern a small country than a big one.

Switzerland clearly works moderately well, but the barrier for success was far lower than for France.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#74

Post by loup-vaillant » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

antientropic wrote: post #57

loup-vaillant wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't make all these countries undemocratic. A few examples do show a blatant lack of democracy, though. In France, we had a referendum regarding the new European constitution. We refused it at 60% (not counting abstention, which by the way was relatively low). Then a dozen months later, the same constitution came back (sections were shuffled around, but it was mostly a copy-paste job). No referendum this ti…

It was not undemocratic. Your parliament was democratically elected. It had a mandate to do things like ratifying new European treaties. The problem was holding the referendum in the first place. Direct democracy does not work because it's a recipe for paralysis.

Democracy is supposed to be the power of the people. By definition. Moreover, most lay people will understand it that way.

When the government makes a decision that contradicts the will of the people, it is not democratic. Period. If the people really held the power, that decision wouldn't have been made in the first place.

The way the government was appointed doesn't matter, once you know of its actual decisions. Being democratically elected doesn't magically make all of your decisions democratic! Even if you stick to lawful decisions, I might add. Besides, there are a lot of ways for elected officials to have different interests than the general population.

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That said, "democratic" does not mean "good". It is quite possible (though unlikely in my personal opinion) that the will of the people was wrong, and that European treaty was a good thing. In which case it was a good thing to go against the will of the people.

Serious. I'm not saying this particular decision was bad. I'm just saying it was undemocratic.

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One last thing: you say our "democratically elected" parliament had, among other things, a mandate to ratifying European treaties. Only problem was, the entire political class wanted this particular treaty to happen. Very few thought otherwise. And those had other opinions about other subjects that often made them a big no-no for most people (extreme right and extreme left, mostly).

We did not have much choice when we elected our officials. It was like, this guy who wanted the treaty to happen, and that gal who also wanted the treaty to happen, and maybe that crazy fellow who did not want this, but had also a couple insane ideas we did not endorse.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#75

Post by loup-vaillant » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 6:18 PM UTC

CHY872 wrote: post #73

2a0c40 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it? Did you check Switzerland?

Switzerland is ten times smaller than France, and in general the people who live there are far better off (GDP per capita is doubled between France and Switzerland ($90,000 vs $45,000)). It's much easier to form a consensus when your constituents are all affluent. It's much easier to govern a small country than a big one. Switzerland clearly works moderately well, but the barrier for success was far lower than for Fr…

> It's much easier to govern a small country than a big one.

Then what about making small countries? We could then federate the result. Let the small regions take care of what can be handled locally, and let the federation take care about the big stuff (army, foreign policy…).

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#76

Post by JadeNB » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 10:15 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #10

JadeNB wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that any but the most naïve lawmaker believes that these laws will stop the behaviour they criminalise. Rather, they simply further the "3 felonies a day" state of being ( http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.asp... I will set aside (because I honestly don't know what I believe) whether that is an intended or unintended effect.

I'm in favor of anything that degrades the respect for the rule of law qua law. We'll have direct democracy on this stuff yet! Look at the Swiss.

> We'll have direct democracy on this stuff yet! Look at the Swiss.

Sorry, I'm not sufficiently up to date on this stuff to know at what about the Swiss to look. Could you elaborate?