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It's not about knowing better, it's about actual conflict of interest. Think about how much of the internet runs on advertising dollars. This leads to a situa

It's not about knowing better, it's about actual conflict of interest. Think about how much of the internet runs on advertising dollars. This leads to a situation where much of the internet serves the interests of people trying to maximize profits when selling stuff over the interests of people wanting to be well-informed about stuff they buy and looking for the best possible deal. -- When you search for "usb stick", of which there are gazillions, in an online store, which one will you be shown on page 1? The best product at the best price? Or the product made by the person who payed them to show their product first? (advertising expenses that they'll have to recoup by making that stuff more cheaply or selling it more expensively) Think about how copyright owners instrument digital rights management to try to maximize monetization of content over allowing users to make good use of rights in copyrighted material that they already possess. -- If you're 70 years old, and you're into the beatles, you probably paid for that music at least four times. You bought a record when it came out, buying the right to listen to that music for the rest of your life. But for some reason, you paid for buying that right a second time when it came out on CD. A third time when you bought an MP3 download. A fourth time as part of a subscription package that you now have. -- The development of the technology did not serve the interests of the user. Otherwise, a RW-medium like minidisc would have won over CDs, allowing you to maybe record from vinyl to minidisc. "Copy Protected" CDs would have never happened but instead ripping-friendly CDs would have been produced because this was what would have been in the user's interest. And streaming would have happened on the basis of making micropayments when streaming stuff you don't already own instead of turning everything into a subcription package. Think about how insurance companies might use the information gathered by the surveillance system which is the internet. People THINK that when they are the ones paying for a computer, for an internet connection, etc that they are paying for technology that should now serve THEIR interests. The fight for user control is the fight to actually make that happen. And a fight it is. It's not a given that technology is made to serve the user's actual interest.

scarface74 7y ago
If you're 70 years old, and you're into the beatles, you probably paid for that music at least four times. You bought a record when it came out, buying the right to listen to that music for the rest of your life. But for some reason, you paid for buying that right a second time when it came out on CD. A third time when you bought an MP3 download. Why would you buy an MP3 download if you already had the CD? The most popular MP3 player at the time - the iPod was used with iTunes that it made it very easy to rip your own CDs. There was a way to rip CDs in Windows 2 decades ago. A fourth time as part of a subscription package that you now have. If you didn’t want the benefits of having access to all the music out there and just wanted your own library, you still wouldn’t need a subscription service. In the case of iOS, you could pay a one time fee of $25 for Apple Match and you would have up to a year to use it. With Apple Match, it will match all of the music in your library no matter where you obtained it and count it as purchased song that you can redownload from iTunes DRM free. The development of the technology did not serve the interests of the users. The user has a choice between subscription music that has DRM, purchased music that is DRM free, or easy to use software that lets you convert physical CDs. Otherwise, a RW-medium like minidisc would have won over CDs, CD-RWs were already backwards compatible with CDs. I was burning CDs using a parallel port CDRW in the late 90s. allowing you to maybe record from vinyl to minidisc. You’ve been able to take a record player, connect it to the audio in Of a computer, record the audio and burn it to a CD. I’m sure there were standalone boxes that let you do it. ”Copy Protected" CDs would have never happened but instead ripping-friendly CDs would have been produced because this was what would have been in the user's interest. Copy protected CDs were really never a big thing. And streaming would have happened on the basis of making micropayments when streaming stuff you don't already own instead of turning everything into a subcription package. People wanted subscriptions and not micropayments.
- stakhanov 7y ago
  You're coming at it from the POV of a "power user". Most people aren't that. > Why would you buy an MP3 download if you already had the CD? The most popular MP3 player at the time - the iPod was used with iTunes that it made it very easy to rip your own CDs. There was a way to rip CDs in Windows 2 decades ago. ...actually, if you ripped a CD with iTunes, it would turn into a format that almost no software other than iTunes could read. The same thing was true about Windows media player. So you COULD rip stuff, but you would get from one kind of vendor lock-in into another kind of vendor lock-in. If you wanted MP3, you had to put a fair amount of thought into it, download special software, etc, i.e. you had to be a power user, and you had to put a lot of work into it if you had a couple hundred CDs on the shelf and wanted your collection to go on a hard disc. Besides myself I know only one other person who did that. Also: I was making a more general point here. Substitute "DVD" for "CD" and "movie" for "music" and the argument still holds. DVDs had encryption that had to be cracked by somebody, the crack having to be obtained illegally by anybody who wants to rip a DVD. The actual point I was making was the following: These examples show how, in one area, the tech industry will be hard at work trying to make certain things DIFFICULT (like cancelling a subscription deal, where they might accept fax as the only method of communication, or copying copyrighted material) and hard at work trying to make other things EASY (like signing up to a subscription deal, re-purchasing stuff you already own). Most people go the way of what's EASY. But that does not usually serve their own interests. > The user has a choice between subscription music that has DRM, purchased music that is DRM free, or easy to use software that lets you convert physical CDs. Purchasing music that is DRM-free happened very late in the game and is still a niche topic. The first businesses to try and offer downloads that you'd pay for (like napster when it tried to go legit) failed because they couldn't get content deals, because the music industry didn't want DRM-free downloads for fear they would be copied illegally. The first service that actually made it commercially viable was iTunes, and they only managed it because they could get the content industry on board through introducing DRM. -- The fact that we now have DRM-free downloads in certain niche areas is a side-effect of the fact that most people have subscription packages now anyway, and offering DRM-free high-quality music is now a way to charge them YET ANOTHER time. (purchasing that Beatles album for the fifth time). > CD-RWs were already backwards compatible with CDs. I was burning CDs using a parallel port CDRW in the late 90s. You’ve been able to take a record player, connect it to the audio in Of a computer, record the audio and burn it to a CD. I’m sure there were standalone boxes that let you do it. That made YOU a 1-percenter when it comes to technology. Most people I knew in the late 90s could have never figured out how to hook up a record player to a computer, record a WAV file, and burn it back to a CD. -- You're not representative for how that industry works/worked at any point in history.

scarface74 7y ago

If you're 70 years old, and you're into the beatles, you probably paid for that music at least four times. You bought a record when it came out, buying the right to listen to that music for the rest of your life. But for some reason, you paid for buying that right a second time when it came out on CD. A third time when you bought an MP3 download. Why would you buy an MP3 download if you already had the CD? The most popular MP3 player at the time - the iPod was used with iTunes that it made it very easy to rip your own CDs. There was a way to rip CDs in Windows 2 decades ago. A fourth time as part of a subscription package that you now have. If you didn’t want the benefits of having access to all the music out there and just wanted your own library, you still wouldn’t need a subscription service. In the case of iOS, you could pay a one time fee of $25 for Apple Match and you would have up to a year to use it. With Apple Match, it will match all of the music in your library no matter where you obtained it and count it as purchased song that you can redownload from iTunes DRM free. The development of the technology did not serve the interests of the users. The user has a choice between subscription music that has DRM, purchased music that is DRM free, or easy to use software that lets you convert physical CDs. Otherwise, a RW-medium like minidisc would have won over CDs, CD-RWs were already backwards compatible with CDs. I was burning CDs using a parallel port CDRW in the late 90s. allowing you to maybe record from vinyl to minidisc. You’ve been able to take a record player, connect it to the audio in Of a computer, record the audio and burn it to a CD. I’m sure there were standalone boxes that let you do it. ”Copy Protected" CDs would have never happened but instead ripping-friendly CDs would have been produced because this was what would have been in the user's interest. Copy protected CDs were really never a big thing. And streaming would have happened on the basis of making micropayments when streaming stuff you don't already own instead of turning everything into a subcription package. People wanted subscriptions and not micropayments.

stakhanov 7y ago
You're coming at it from the POV of a "power user". Most people aren't that. > Why would you buy an MP3 download if you already had the CD? The most popular MP3 player at the time - the iPod was used with iTunes that it made it very easy to rip your own CDs. There was a way to rip CDs in Windows 2 decades ago. ...actually, if you ripped a CD with iTunes, it would turn into a format that almost no software other than iTunes could read. The same thing was true about Windows media player. So you COULD rip stuff, but you would get from one kind of vendor lock-in into another kind of vendor lock-in. If you wanted MP3, you had to put a fair amount of thought into it, download special software, etc, i.e. you had to be a power user, and you had to put a lot of work into it if you had a couple hundred CDs on the shelf and wanted your collection to go on a hard disc. Besides myself I know only one other person who did that. Also: I was making a more general point here. Substitute "DVD" for "CD" and "movie" for "music" and the argument still holds. DVDs had encryption that had to be cracked by somebody, the crack having to be obtained illegally by anybody who wants to rip a DVD. The actual point I was making was the following: These examples show how, in one area, the tech industry will be hard at work trying to make certain things DIFFICULT (like cancelling a subscription deal, where they might accept fax as the only method of communication, or copying copyrighted material) and hard at work trying to make other things EASY (like signing up to a subscription deal, re-purchasing stuff you already own). Most people go the way of what's EASY. But that does not usually serve their own interests. > The user has a choice between subscription music that has DRM, purchased music that is DRM free, or easy to use software that lets you convert physical CDs. Purchasing music that is DRM-free happened very late in the game and is still a niche topic. The first businesses to try and offer downloads that you'd pay for (like napster when it tried to go legit) failed because they couldn't get content deals, because the music industry didn't want DRM-free downloads for fear they would be copied illegally. The first service that actually made it commercially viable was iTunes, and they only managed it because they could get the content industry on board through introducing DRM. -- The fact that we now have DRM-free downloads in certain niche areas is a side-effect of the fact that most people have subscription packages now anyway, and offering DRM-free high-quality music is now a way to charge them YET ANOTHER time. (purchasing that Beatles album for the fifth time). > CD-RWs were already backwards compatible with CDs. I was burning CDs using a parallel port CDRW in the late 90s. You’ve been able to take a record player, connect it to the audio in Of a computer, record the audio and burn it to a CD. I’m sure there were standalone boxes that let you do it. That made YOU a 1-percenter when it comes to technology. Most people I knew in the late 90s could have never figured out how to hook up a record player to a computer, record a WAV file, and burn it back to a CD. -- You're not representative for how that industry works/worked at any point in history.