The reality is more and more services will switch to the 'client-side-encrypted' model and then you're left trying to stomp out easily replicated and anonymously sharable lists of pointers to legally stored encrypted blobs. Good luck with that.
From an ideological point it seems hard to rationalize. We pretty much have an obligation to fix copyright law, build a digital Alexandria, and give it to the world. For Free. All art, movies, music, books, educational materials, everything. Free. We can figure out another way to reward creators without creating artificial marketplaces that demand most go without so the few left have reason to spend.
If we're going to fuck up the climate for later generations - I think we can manage to at least figure this out. It's pretty low hanging fruit from a technical perspective.
It should be noted that the current system is working pretty damn well. More content is being created in just about every medium than ever before, and more people are consuming it. Maybe the rewards don't go as much to the artists as they should, but the money flows towards the sorts of media that people actually want to consume, which is something that other systems would find difficult to emulate well.
> most go without so the few left have reason to spend.
I'm not sure this is true. Market segmentation is very successful -- if you don't see a movie in the theatre, you might see it on DVD or Netflix, and if you can't afford that then you can see it on TV later on (and pay for it by watching advertisements.) Ditto music with albums, itunes/spotify/whatever and the radio.
> educational materials
The market hasn't done very well here in the past, I'll grant, but this one is definitely sorting itself out, too. Free textbooks are not popular yet, nor are sites like Coursera, EdX and Udacity, but they're growing.
I agree with this, but I think it is still an extremely difficult problem to solve. Most of the political problems we have are low hanging fruit from a technical perspective, the thing that renders them almost impossible is the fact that they run contrary to vested interests.
Part of the reason that Uber and Airbnb have succeeded where other content-based startups have failed is the fact that they are dealing with city-based, rather than federal regulations. As copyright is regulated federally, the only way to fix it is by first fixing the broken system of electoral funding that encourages politicians in DC to follow the money that flows out of the RIAA and similar cashed up lobbying bodies.
>We can figure out another way to reward creators without creating artificial marketplaces that demand most go without so the few left have reason to spend.
I'd argue that we have already. Creating media is expensive, and if you take away the ability for people to monetize media you get rid of a segment who create media for the sake of media. The only people left are those wealthy enough to do so, and are no doubt looking to protect/expand their own profit centers.
The extreme view of this is that now Tarantino can only make his movies as long as he reminds everyone that "he gets the good stuff, Folgers® Brand Coffee, the best part of waking up."
It's interesting (at least to me) to think that without the likes of Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, Grooveshark, Pandora, etc. we would not have gotten to a place where the music industry is willing to play ball at Spotify's level. It's too bad that there was a lot of collateral damage in the process.
Yes, Spotify's value proposition to rights holders is "we're paying you something, it's better than Grooveshark." Another situation where a nominally powerful entity makes a major concession to avoid even higher losses to illegal activity is in tax policy. Many types of taxes are lower than they would be if evasion wasn't a partial substitute for compliance.
WARNING - the Grooveshark founders were Personally liable for the copyright infringement. This means its not just the Grooveshark company that has to pay the fine, but cofounders Tarantino and Greenberg will need to pay out of their own pockets.
From Pages 54-56 of the decision:
> Here, defendants Tarantino and Greenberg satisfy the criteria for corporate officer liability. Tarantino and Greenberg are the co-founders of Escape. Tarantino is the Chief Executive Officer and Greenberg is the Chief Technology Officer. Together, Tarantino and Greenberg manage all aspects of Escape’s business. They both directed the infringements at issue in the present litigation by: (1) creating a business model that was based upon the unlicensed sharing of copyright protected material; (2) sending written instructions to the entire company requiring employees to operate “seeding points” so that they could launch the Grooveshark P2P Network; (3) creating the Central Music Library and directing employees to upload files to the Library; (4) deciding to launch the Grooveshark Lite streaming service and instructing Escape employees to upload files for that service; and (5) personally uploading copyrighted protected material, Moreover, they both have a substantial equity interest in Groovershark and thus, directly benefit from the infringing activity.
I never really agreed with the whole "ignore copyright law" approach. I think tech companies in our increasingly examined world need to stand for righteousness and integrity.
The power of tech and ramping up of robotics is going to bring the pressure of public opinion on us all very soon -- we need to be on the right side of the fence, and so, although I enjoyed the technical capabilities and innovation from Grooveshark, I'm glad they've lost the war.
The founders are still smart and will be able to continue to do great things. They've proven their ability to build/design a functioning, beautiful product and amass an very large audience. Excited to see what is next...
I don't understand this statement, that wasn't the end of the 'war', Grooveshark lost a battle, just like Napster and Limewire were not ends of the 'war'.
Ultimately (as another poster has said) the reason we can get nice things like the Spotify, iTunes and Amazon music services is because people were fighting these battles and winning until the law smacked them down.
I think you should reflect on the first paragraph further, services such as Grooveshark and Uber are skirting the law and users prefer these methods for a reason. Without these disruptions maybe we'd have to buy albums on a USB thumb drive rather than download them over the net.
We also need a judge somewhere to rule against the shark who hijacked the Groovy codebase and turned it all into something it wasn't originally intended to be - surely that's a copyright infringement. Instead of a specified language with many open source implementations and much documentation as per its creator's vision, it's all being controlled by one corporate with hardly anyone contributing. The project person who makes the announcements is now using his own personal blog instead of the public mailing list to announce new versions, and is trying to replace the open communication channels by soliciting for subscribers to a personal mailout that mostly contains links to tweets.
I don't see how the judge could rule against Grooveshark. How is Grooveshark any different from Youtube, for instance?
The only difference is that the users, on their own, upload much less of their own content on Grooveshark than they do on Youtube. The users are more prone to upload illegal work.
But that seems like an arbitrary reason to make this ruling. It's unfortunate that the law can be so vague and ill-defined, and arbitrarily interpreted, usually to the benefit of larger corporations.
When will we stop hobbling ourselves with copyright? It's used to harass people or guarantee profits (or both; the evidence that copyright infringement has an effect on profits is debatable).
The failed business models of publishers is not my problem.
Awww, I loved their Programming broadcast. I originally went to groovshark after turntable.fm shut down. Now where should I go for a programmer radio stream?
The paywall kicks in after X free reads. People submitting links to paywalled articles may have subscriptions; they may not know about the paywall and not have reached the paywall limit yet; they may routinely use paywall evading methods.
Most advanced paywall companies have a feature that enable premium content publishers to make exceptions to the paywall for referral links. Yes, they want subscribers. But they still want to drive traffic from social sharing.
siliconc0w|11 years ago
From an ideological point it seems hard to rationalize. We pretty much have an obligation to fix copyright law, build a digital Alexandria, and give it to the world. For Free. All art, movies, music, books, educational materials, everything. Free. We can figure out another way to reward creators without creating artificial marketplaces that demand most go without so the few left have reason to spend.
If we're going to fuck up the climate for later generations - I think we can manage to at least figure this out. It's pretty low hanging fruit from a technical perspective.
repsilat|11 years ago
It should be noted that the current system is working pretty damn well. More content is being created in just about every medium than ever before, and more people are consuming it. Maybe the rewards don't go as much to the artists as they should, but the money flows towards the sorts of media that people actually want to consume, which is something that other systems would find difficult to emulate well.
> most go without so the few left have reason to spend.
I'm not sure this is true. Market segmentation is very successful -- if you don't see a movie in the theatre, you might see it on DVD or Netflix, and if you can't afford that then you can see it on TV later on (and pay for it by watching advertisements.) Ditto music with albums, itunes/spotify/whatever and the radio.
> educational materials
The market hasn't done very well here in the past, I'll grant, but this one is definitely sorting itself out, too. Free textbooks are not popular yet, nor are sites like Coursera, EdX and Udacity, but they're growing.
jval|11 years ago
Part of the reason that Uber and Airbnb have succeeded where other content-based startups have failed is the fact that they are dealing with city-based, rather than federal regulations. As copyright is regulated federally, the only way to fix it is by first fixing the broken system of electoral funding that encourages politicians in DC to follow the money that flows out of the RIAA and similar cashed up lobbying bodies.
rbobby|11 years ago
If you do that first, then folks who's IP is to be given away free would more likely be on board with the idea.
wmf|11 years ago
nemothekid|11 years ago
I'd argue that we have already. Creating media is expensive, and if you take away the ability for people to monetize media you get rid of a segment who create media for the sake of media. The only people left are those wealthy enough to do so, and are no doubt looking to protect/expand their own profit centers.
The extreme view of this is that now Tarantino can only make his movies as long as he reminds everyone that "he gets the good stuff, Folgers® Brand Coffee, the best part of waking up."
munchbunny|11 years ago
baddox|11 years ago
tantalor|11 years ago
qq66|11 years ago
teachingaway|11 years ago
From Pages 54-56 of the decision:
> Here, defendants Tarantino and Greenberg satisfy the criteria for corporate officer liability. Tarantino and Greenberg are the co-founders of Escape. Tarantino is the Chief Executive Officer and Greenberg is the Chief Technology Officer. Together, Tarantino and Greenberg manage all aspects of Escape’s business. They both directed the infringements at issue in the present litigation by: (1) creating a business model that was based upon the unlicensed sharing of copyright protected material; (2) sending written instructions to the entire company requiring employees to operate “seeding points” so that they could launch the Grooveshark P2P Network; (3) creating the Central Music Library and directing employees to upload files to the Library; (4) deciding to launch the Grooveshark Lite streaming service and instructing Escape employees to upload files for that service; and (5) personally uploading copyrighted protected material, Moreover, they both have a substantial equity interest in Groovershark and thus, directly benefit from the infringing activity.
ztratar|11 years ago
The power of tech and ramping up of robotics is going to bring the pressure of public opinion on us all very soon -- we need to be on the right side of the fence, and so, although I enjoyed the technical capabilities and innovation from Grooveshark, I'm glad they've lost the war.
The founders are still smart and will be able to continue to do great things. They've proven their ability to build/design a functioning, beautiful product and amass an very large audience. Excited to see what is next...
nickonline|11 years ago
I don't understand this statement, that wasn't the end of the 'war', Grooveshark lost a battle, just like Napster and Limewire were not ends of the 'war'.
Ultimately (as another poster has said) the reason we can get nice things like the Spotify, iTunes and Amazon music services is because people were fighting these battles and winning until the law smacked them down.
I think you should reflect on the first paragraph further, services such as Grooveshark and Uber are skirting the law and users prefer these methods for a reason. Without these disruptions maybe we'd have to buy albums on a USB thumb drive rather than download them over the net.
rando289|11 years ago
pantaril|11 years ago
I agree but i think that current copyright is on the wrong side of the "fence".
Terr_|11 years ago
http://groovebackup.com/
vorg|11 years ago
We also need a judge somewhere to rule against the shark who hijacked the Groovy codebase and turned it all into something it wasn't originally intended to be - surely that's a copyright infringement. Instead of a specified language with many open source implementations and much documentation as per its creator's vision, it's all being controlled by one corporate with hardly anyone contributing. The project person who makes the announcements is now using his own personal blog instead of the public mailing list to announce new versions, and is trying to replace the open communication channels by soliciting for subscribers to a personal mailout that mostly contains links to tweets.
talmand|11 years ago
fragsworth|11 years ago
The only difference is that the users, on their own, upload much less of their own content on Grooveshark than they do on Youtube. The users are more prone to upload illegal work.
But that seems like an arbitrary reason to make this ruling. It's unfortunate that the law can be so vague and ill-defined, and arbitrarily interpreted, usually to the benefit of larger corporations.
wmf|11 years ago
ue_|11 years ago
diafygi|11 years ago
retroencabulato|11 years ago
bdb|11 years ago
DanBC|11 years ago
tinypass|11 years ago
zaroth|11 years ago
jediforce|11 years ago
Also, Paul Resnikoff's take on the story: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/29/breakin...