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Someone Is Stealing Tracker Songs and Selling Them
- lolc 7y agoThe way I understand the tracker scene, most don't care about restricting distribution of their tracks. But when others are actually selling, I'd think some authors might disagree with that. The original authors can sue. And given the extensive documentation on these tracks, it would be an easy case. But whether there'd be any money to recover is unclear. Given the paltry damages you likely get when you're not selling yourself and tolerating copying anyway. Also the seller might be hard to reach legally, and you'd still have to actually sue, which comes with costs. So the other route is sending notices to at least damage the business model.
- mikekchar 7y agoJust a quick note because it's often confused: the fact that you tolerate infringement in one place will not affect a judgement in another. That will happen with trademark, but not copyright.
- lolc 7y agoYes, I didn't want to imply that not suing in other cases would change the legal options. And while I'm not deeply familiar with the topic, I just remember that determining damages depends in part on the price you charge for licences. So I think when you don't licence but tolerate unlicensed distribution, it becomes harder to argue for damages. Though as another commenter has pointed out, in the U.S. at least there are statutory damages.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> Given the paltry damages you likely get when you're not selling yourself and tolerating copying anyway. Aren't there statutory damages?
- henriquez 7y agoYes, statutory damages of $150,000 for each work infringed. The fact that it was commercial infringement would be aggravating and more supportive of the full penalties if litigated. But lawyers often repeat the phrase "you can't squeeze blood from a turnip." It's unlikely that whoever infringed the copyright would be able to afford a judgement like this, and so suing them would be pointless. DMCA would be an easier way for the actual copyright holders to take this down without bankrupting themselves on fruitless litigation. A note to the OP: copyright infringement is not "stealing" because infringement does not deprive someone else of the use of the work. You wouldn't download a car.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoSure, but "you can't recover damages because the other person has no money to take" is a totally different argument from "you can't get damages because the other person didn't cause any harm".
- lolc 7y agoThanks for expanding on it. But just to be clear, statutory damages are "up to" $150,000 in the U.S. I don't think a court would award that much in this case. Do you know of comparable cases that got the maximum?
- 29athrowaway 7y agoThere are people not only hijacking copyrights in this genre, but in every genre.
- tsukurimashou 7y agodoesn't make it less disgusting, does it
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dmos62 7y agoOthers among us find copyright off-puting.
- rjmunro 7y agoIs it possible that the original author of these tracks is the one who has uploaded them to DistroKid? In which case it's not stealing at all. I guess it's fairly unlikely, though.
- kortex 7y agoIt's possible but I doubt they would change their artist name. Usually when artists have multiple handles, for both legal and artistic reasons, they re-release a song using the original name. The exception is when a solo artist wants to "cover" a song they wrote as part of a band.
- duskwuff 7y agoSeems unlikely. The tracks that Erik was able to identify were by a wide enough range of artists that it's hard to imagine that they'd all collaborate on a CD release.
- petee 7y agoAm i the only one who has no clue what a "Tracker Song" is? The article barely touches on this, saying vaguely "The songs that were stolen were often used in keygen cracking software that was popular in the 2000s to pirate software" -- so the music was used as a key for the keygen? Or was it just included for giggles? Or is it a fingerprint intended for actual tracking? edit: thanks for all the replies, some really great info below!
- indigochill 7y agoKeygen cracking software would sometimes play music while the software was open. It was just for giggles AFAIK.
- Can_Not 7y agoGreat for waking up your parents, too!
- yipbub 7y agoI think they were just artistic flourishes added by the tracker groups, crackers, etc. I think "Tracker" is the name for a service that keeps track of p2p links. Some trackers are/were extremely exclusive and tight-knit with interviews and quizes to get in. You also had to work hard to maintain an upload/download ratio. Some, like thepiratebay are open and simply highlight quality downloads. What.CD was a legendary private tracker if you want to look further into it.
- harel 7y agoI believe Pud is on HN. He can perhaps provide the DistroKid response?
- blackandblue 7y agodespicable. i am curious what legal protections these kinds of art forms/music have?
- joosters 7y agoThere's some irony when people are complaining about music stolen from keygen cracking software. How dare they steal from us while we stole from others!
- archi42 7y agoI believe the author just gave this as a popular example where tracker music can be found. Not a lot of people are fully aware of the "demoscene", where this music/tech is still quite popular. The cracker scene and demoscene have some common roots (and I think still some personnel overlaps), but I met/know plenty of people who aren't into stealing/distributing cracked software, but are very much into the demo scene, producing wonderful pieces of art without breaking any copyright or other laws ;-) If you have no idea what I'm talking about (and mind that I'm not involved with either scene), check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene