5 ms·

Self hosting your stuff is the only reasonable way to publish these days. Everyone who could host it FOR you is falling prey to the DMCA, one after another. Eit

Self hosting your stuff is the only reasonable way to publish these days. Everyone who could host it FOR you is falling prey to the DMCA, one after another. Either that, or work to fix this broken system.

prodmerc 11y ago
And then they send DMCAs to your hosting company and you get your hosting account suspended. Yeah, gotta fix the system...
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
  In my experience, it's easier to explain to your hosting company than to a company with no meaningful mechanism for appeal. The system definitely needs to be fixed - I'm just proposing practical solutions in the interim. It seems unlikely to me that these problems will be fixed any time soon since fixing them would run counter to the agenda of those with the resources to lobby politicians.
deng 11y ago
Self-hosting is a huge PITA, especially if you don't want to give away your music for free: setting up and maintaining a streaming server and payment system is not trivial at all. Also, if you're not already a big name, self-hosting will make it unlikely for people to discover your music. This was the big thing about SoundCloud: you followed people you like and saw what they liked. The solution is what Bandcamp does: only host stuff where the copyright situation is clear. Which means: people selling the music they themselves created. This of course excludes mixes/remixes of copyrighted music.
- tel 11y ago
  So you're saying there's space for a "DIY self-hosting" product which integrates with a promotion network?
  - iphoneseventeen 11y ago
    A thousand times YES!!!
  - brador 11y ago
    Building out that promotion network is the hard part.
  - coderdude 11y ago
    Sounds like this is something Gumroad could do if they added a marketplace to list the items for sale on their platform. Difficult to categorize all those items but worth it. I'd browse.
    - wishinghand 11y ago
      I emailed them ages ago about being able to browse, but them and vhx.tv are not really into doing that now. Maybe later but for whatever reason they want people to reach their site and buy through the content creator's reach instead of having a searchable archive.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    If you're promoting music which is deemed to be copyright infringing you will have the same legal problems as if you were hosting it yourself.
  - deng 11y ago
    No, I don't think self hosting is the solution. I still remember the times when every label had its own little online shop for mp3s. Those were dark times: not only did you have to register at every shop separately, most of those shops where just plain unusable: no pre-listening, broken id3 tags, downloading each song from an album separately, charging extra for higher quality, no accompanying artwork, etc. As I've already written: I think Bandcamp does it very well, and IMHO it is currently the best shop for indie musicians to sell their music online.
rtpg 11y ago
You do know that the DMCA applies even when you're self-hosting right?
- tel 11y ago
  I'm highly out of the loop. Why would someone self hosting their own music be prey to DMCA?
  - masklinn 11y ago
    They might fall under Title I (which is the transcription of the WIPO treaty to US law), but most mentions of DMCA are about Title II (the "Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act") which only applies to service providers, not first-party content hosting. First-party hosting still needs an ISP though, and that ISP can be sent DMCA notices.
    - boomlinde 11y ago
      What is the responsibility of the ISP to its subscribers in that case? I.e. would I reasonably be able to take legal action against them if they deny me the service for what turns out to be a frivolous DMCA claim?
      - masklinn 11y ago
        > would I reasonably be able to take legal action against them if they deny me the service for what turns out to be a frivolous DMCA claim? The point of the DMCA Safe Harbour provision is that the OSP is protected if they don't involve themselves and just proxy claims assuming their are in good faith/correct. So no. You may have a claim if the OSP does not restore service after a counter-notice with no followup legal action from the claimant but they're allowed 10-14 business days for that one so you may be out for 3 weeks without any recourse, but OSPs can also rely on their TOS to make that moot and even ignore the counter-notice altogether. You probably won't even have a claim against the originally alleged copyright owner: the notice of copyright infringement only requires "good faith belief" under no penalty of perjury.
ryandrake 11y ago
Stop and think for a moment about all of the "cloud" services you use and rely on daily. Then think about what you'd do if suddenly some algorithm told the company running that service to cancel your account and bar you from access, without a way for you to appeal. For some services, you're really hosed. I've definitely been re-evaluating my decision to rely so heavily and exclusively on faceless companies for important things as E-mail and web hosting.

prodmerc 11y ago

And then they send DMCAs to your hosting company and you get your hosting account suspended. Yeah, gotta fix the system...

Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
In my experience, it's easier to explain to your hosting company than to a company with no meaningful mechanism for appeal. The system definitely needs to be fixed - I'm just proposing practical solutions in the interim. It seems unlikely to me that these problems will be fixed any time soon since fixing them would run counter to the agenda of those with the resources to lobby politicians.

deng 11y ago

Self-hosting is a huge PITA, especially if you don't want to give away your music for free: setting up and maintaining a streaming server and payment system is not trivial at all. Also, if you're not already a big name, self-hosting will make it unlikely for people to discover your music. This was the big thing about SoundCloud: you followed people you like and saw what they liked. The solution is what Bandcamp does: only host stuff where the copyright situation is clear. Which means: people selling the music they themselves created. This of course excludes mixes/remixes of copyrighted music.

tel 11y ago
So you're saying there's space for a "DIY self-hosting" product which integrates with a promotion network?
- iphoneseventeen 11y ago
  A thousand times YES!!!
- brador 11y ago
  Building out that promotion network is the hard part.
- coderdude 11y ago
  Sounds like this is something Gumroad could do if they added a marketplace to list the items for sale on their platform. Difficult to categorize all those items but worth it. I'd browse.
  - wishinghand 11y ago
    I emailed them ages ago about being able to browse, but them and vhx.tv are not really into doing that now. Maybe later but for whatever reason they want people to reach their site and buy through the content creator's reach instead of having a searchable archive.
- pjc50 11y ago
  If you're promoting music which is deemed to be copyright infringing you will have the same legal problems as if you were hosting it yourself.
- deng 11y ago
  No, I don't think self hosting is the solution. I still remember the times when every label had its own little online shop for mp3s. Those were dark times: not only did you have to register at every shop separately, most of those shops where just plain unusable: no pre-listening, broken id3 tags, downloading each song from an album separately, charging extra for higher quality, no accompanying artwork, etc. As I've already written: I think Bandcamp does it very well, and IMHO it is currently the best shop for indie musicians to sell their music online.

rtpg 11y ago

You do know that the DMCA applies even when you're self-hosting right?

tel 11y ago
I'm highly out of the loop. Why would someone self hosting their own music be prey to DMCA?
- masklinn 11y ago
  They might fall under Title I (which is the transcription of the WIPO treaty to US law), but most mentions of DMCA are about Title II (the "Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act") which only applies to service providers, not first-party content hosting. First-party hosting still needs an ISP though, and that ISP can be sent DMCA notices.
  - boomlinde 11y ago
    What is the responsibility of the ISP to its subscribers in that case? I.e. would I reasonably be able to take legal action against them if they deny me the service for what turns out to be a frivolous DMCA claim?
    - masklinn 11y ago
      > would I reasonably be able to take legal action against them if they deny me the service for what turns out to be a frivolous DMCA claim? The point of the DMCA Safe Harbour provision is that the OSP is protected if they don't involve themselves and just proxy claims assuming their are in good faith/correct. So no. You may have a claim if the OSP does not restore service after a counter-notice with no followup legal action from the claimant but they're allowed 10-14 business days for that one so you may be out for 3 weeks without any recourse, but OSPs can also rely on their TOS to make that moot and even ignore the counter-notice altogether. You probably won't even have a claim against the originally alleged copyright owner: the notice of copyright infringement only requires "good faith belief" under no penalty of perjury.

ryandrake 11y ago

Stop and think for a moment about all of the "cloud" services you use and rely on daily. Then think about what you'd do if suddenly some algorithm told the company running that service to cancel your account and bar you from access, without a way for you to appeal. For some services, you're really hosed. I've definitely been re-evaluating my decision to rely so heavily and exclusively on faceless companies for important things as E-mail and web hosting.