[marapuru]

Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There is some more in this Article [0].

https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files...

Funky quote:

> Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained ‘Scene’ labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn’t been obtained officially.

[techjamie]

Crunchyroll was originally an anime piracy site that went legit and started actually licensing content later. They started in mid-2006, got VC funding in 2008, then made their first licensing deal in 2009.

https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technol...

https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-ani...

[Cyph0n]

Yep, they were huge too - virtually anyone who watched free anime back then would have known about them.

My theory is that once they saw how much traffic they were getting, they realized how big of a market (subbed/dubbed) anime was.

[haiku2077]

Good Old Games started out with the founders selling pirated games on disc at local markets.

[Shank]

And now Crunchyroll is owned by (through a lot of companies, like Aniplex of America, Aniplex, A1 Pictures) Sony, who produces a large amount of anime!

[dathinab]

not just Spotify pretty much any (most?) current tech giant was build by

- riding a wave of change

- not caring too much about legal constraints (or like they would say now "distrupting" the market, which very very often means doing illigal shit which beings them far more money then any penalties they will ever face from it)

- or caring about ethics too much

- and for recent years (starting with Amazone) a lot of technically illegal financing (technically undercutting competitors prices long term based on money from else where (e.g. investors) is unfair competitive advantage (theoretically) clearly not allowed by anti monopoly laws. And before you often still had other monopoly issues (e.g. see wintel)

So yes not systematic not complying with law to get unfair competitive advantage knowing that many of the laws are on the larger picture toothless when applied to huge companies is bread and butter work of US tech giants

[benced]

As you point out, they mostly did this before they were large companies (where the public choice questions are less problematic). Seems like the breaking of these laws was good for everybody.

[pjc50]

"recording obtained unofficially" and "doesn't have rights to the recording" are separate things. So they could well have got a license to stream a publisher's music but that didn't come with an actual copy of some/all of the music.

[pembrook]

It wasn’t just the content being pirated, but the early Spotify UI was actually a 1:1 copy of Limewire.

[KoolKat23]

There's plenty of startups gone legitimate.

Society underestimates the chasm that exists between an idea and raising sufficient capital to act on those ideas.

Plenty of people have ideas.

We only really see those that successfully cross it.

Small things EULA breaches, consumer licenses being used commercially for example.

[hinterlands]

The problem is that these "small things" are not necessarily small if you're an individual.

If you're an individual pirating software or media, then from the rights owners' perspective, the most rational thing to do is to make an example of you. It doesn't happen everyday, but it does happen and it can destroy lives.

If you're a corporation doing the same, the calculation is different. If you're small but growing, future revenues are worth more than the money that can be extracted out of you right now, so you might get a legal nastygram with an offer of a reasonable payment to bring you into compliance. And if you're already big enough to be scary, litigation might be just too expensive to the other side even if you answer the letter with "lol, get lost".

Even in the worst case - if Anthropic loses and the company is fined or even shuttered (unlikely) - the people who participated in it are not going to be personally liable and they've in all likelihood already profited immensely.

[dathinab]

but it's not some small things

but systematic wide spread big things and often many of them, giving US giant a unfair combative advantage

and don't think if you are a EU company you can do the same in the US, nop nop

but naturally the US insist that US companies can do that in the EU and complain every time a US company is fined for not complying for EU law

[Barrin92]

>Society underestimates the chasm that exists between an idea and raising sufficient capital to act on those ideas.

The AI sector, famously known for its inability to raise funding. Anthropic has in the last four years raised 17 billion dollars

[jowea]

Uber

[pyman]

There's no credible evidence Spotify built their company and business on pirated music.

This is a narrative that gets passed around in certain circles to justify stealing content.

[reaperducer]

Apparently it's a common business practice.

It's not a common business practice. That's why it's considered newsworthy.

People on the internet have forgotten that the news doesn't report everyday, normal, common things, or it would be nothing but a listing of people mowing their lawns or applying for business loans. The reason something is in the news is because it is unusual or remarkable.

"I saw it online, so it must happen all the time" is a dopy lack of logic that infects society.

[marapuru]

You are right on that. I’ll edit my post to reflect that.

Edit: Apologies, I can’t edit it anymore.

[cmiles74]

Google Music originally let people upload their own digital music files. The argument at the time was that whether or not the files were legally obtained was not Google’s problem. I believe Amazon had a similar service.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1447323/google-reporte...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

This isn't as meaningful as it sounds. Nintendo was apparently using scene roms for one of the official emulators on Wii (I think?). Spotify might have received legally-obtained mp3s from the record companies that were originally pulled from Napster or whatever, because the people who work for record companies are lazy hypocrites.

[idonotknowwhy]

The Nes classic console. The roms had an iNes emulator header lol.

And the playstation classic used an opensource ps1 emulator.

There was also some steam game ported from GameCube, and it had the Dolphin Emulator FPS counter in the corner of part of the trailer :D

I also remember reading that 2 of the PCSX2 devs ended up working on the EmotionEngine chip emulator for PS3 consoles with partial software emulation of PS2 (The CECH 02 and later models where they removed the EmotionEngine chip)

[Workaccount2]

The common meme is that megacorps are shamelessly criminalistic organizations that get away with doing anything they can to maximize profits, while true in some regard, totally pales in comparison to the illegal things small businesses and start-ups do.

[leviathant]

YouTube's initial success came from being able to serve, on a global scale, user-uploaded, largely uncredited copyright violations of both video and audio.

Facebook's "pivot to video" similarly relied on user-uploaded unlicensed video content, now not just pulling from television and film, but from content creators on platforms like YouTube.

Today, every "social" platform is now littered with "no copyright infringement intended" and "all credit to the original" copy-and-paste junk. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of remix culture – but I believe appropriating and monetizing the work of others without sharing the reward is a destructive cycle. And while there are avenues for addressing this, they're designed for the likes of Universal, Sony, Disney, etc. (I've had original recordings of original music flagged by megacorps because the applause triggered ContentID.)

AI slop further poisons the well. It's rough going out there.

[lysace]

You are missing the point. Spotify had permission from the copyright holders and/or their national proxies to use those songs in a limited beta in Sweden. They didn't have access to clean audio data directly from the record companies, so in many cases they used pirated rips instead.

What you really should be asking is whether they infringed on the copyrights of the rippers. /s

[motbus3]

They had a second company (which I don't remember the name) that allowed users to backup and share their music. When they were exposed they dug that as deep as they could

[pyman]

No. There's no credible evidence Spotify had any secret second company that allowed users to back up and share music without authorisation

[pyman]

It was the opposite. Their mission was to combat music piracy by offering a better, legal alternative.

Daniel Ek said: "my mission is to make music accessible and legal to everyone, while ensuring artists and rights holders got paid"

Also, the Swedish government has zero tolerance for piracy.

[eviks]

Mission is just words, they can mean the opposite of deeds, but they can't be the opposite, they live in different realms.

[pyman]

I know this might come as a shock to those living in San Francisco, but things are different in other parts of the world, like Uruguay, Sweden and the rest of Europe. From what I’ve read, the European committee actually cares about enforcing the law.