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I want to pay artists for their work. I don't want to lease the bytes representing my access from a company, and then have them vanish later, because some kind

I want to pay artists for their work. I don't want to lease the bytes representing my access from a company, and then have them vanish later, because some kind of licensing agreement changed. Metallica was a huge driving force and public supporter behind the shitshow behavior. Do you like rootkits? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
well the industry corrected itself by pushing a la carte subscription music services which is what the freedom fighters hate but it turns out it's exactly what the people wanted all along.
- blandflakes 6y ago
  I think it's pretty valid to want to pay a price for music, and then take that file wherever you go, without having to reconnect to update a license (I both pay for a subscription to Spotify and mp3s a la carte). Of course, that's also available today, but that's not really relevant to the problem being discussed, which is: it's possible to want to pay artists, while also finding overzealous enforcement of the DMCA problematic.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    I don’t think so. You have no right to ownership just because you buy the song. You didn’t commission it, you didn’t write it, produce it, market it, and so on. All you did was pay a couple dollars. In effect, all you’re doing is buying a license to play the song for personal use, not the right to keep the file forever.
    - blandflakes 6y ago
      This is a weird take. There are stores that literally grant you that right, today. I'm pretty sure that even in the US, a court is not going to grant a musician the right to force you to delete the MP3s you bought off Amazon music. What is the basis for your belief that you don't have a right to the file you bought? Or are you disagreeing with the existence of stores that operate that way? Or with... basically the entire history of hard copy distribution, like cassettes, CDs, vinyl...
      - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
        https://www.zdnet.com/article/who-owns-your-digital-downloads-hint-its-not-you/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/who-owns-your-digital-download... Amazon actually will delete music from your hard drive. 5. Reservation of Rights Except for the rights explicitly granted to you in the Terms of Use, all right, title and interest in the Service, the Software and the Digital Content are reserved and retained by us, our Digital Content providers, and our licensors. You do not acquire any ownership rights in the Software or Digital Content as a result of downloading Software or Digital Content. And yeah I do disagree with the license of hard copy distribution. I don’t think just because I buy a book I can do whatever I want, even burning it. I really think the supposed harm to consumers is vastly exaggerated in HN; on the other hand, the harm to artists and creators is serious, especially to those without the privilege of patronage.
        blandflakes 6y ago
        That article spends its whole time talking about whether you can transfer the rights. From your source, for example: You may copy, store, and burn iTunes Plus Products as reasonably necessary for personal, noncommercial use. All of the agreements cited are pretty clear that you can copy and store the bytes for your own use. I agree with the thrust that "purchasing" music is certainly weirder with these overreaching legal agreements (and I think it's more fraught when it comes to video or video games), but I disagree with the perspective that: A) That this is a lease of the music B) That that condition is justified because you didn't create an exclusive commission. It seemed to me that, legality aside (and forgive me if I'm misunderstanding), you were asserting that customers have no business expecting indefinite access to an MP3 they paid for, and I... disagree, but if the recording industry wants that to be the case, they're welcome to yet another scenario where pirates have a better customer experience than paying customers. Blech, an edit: What I have seen that applied to is subscription-based music, where the license agreement around whether that song is available for subscription changes. Is there an example of this happening to a "purchased "song or album? I've never seen an effort by a publisher to reclaim hard-drive-bound songs that have been paid for (and I imagine spicy legal cases about expecting refunds). Edit again: I realize I'm sort of meandering. My point is only that it's not unreasonable to expect that, I agree that licensing agreements for digital purchases of all kinds have surprising details about what you actually "own".
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Nobody said it’s what the people wanted all along. I miss the days where my songs don’t just disappear from Spotify because they renegotiated a contract. But there’s no risk of being sued and it’s cheap enough so it’s easy to subscribe even if it’s not your preferred solution
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
Metallica had nothing to do with what your issue is then. Not a single thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compact_discs_sold_with_Extended_Copy_Protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compact_discs_sold_wit...
- blandflakes 6y ago
  Metallica lobbied and was publicly the face of anti-piracy sentiment, and are therefore very much responsible for my issues AND their own, in this scenario.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    Let me guess, you also don’t like police.
    - blandflakes 6y ago
      Or maybe just engage the statement on its merits instead of trying to create a strawman.
      - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        Your whole argument is a straw man. You’re blaming Metallica suing napster for a sony rootkit. It’s nonsense. I pirated the shit out of music on napster. But Metallica was still right to shut it down. I didn’t have any right to that music. I didn’t have any right to the $10 people paid me to burn CDs of napster content for them either.
        blandflakes 6y ago
        Cool. I don't have a right to free music either. I pay for music, as I mentioned. But I'm frustrated to see that you rabidly think that any critique of how we enforce anti-piracy means that I don't think artists deserve income. Here's a twist for you. I work on a team responsible for, among other things, DRM for a major streaming video company. I believe in paying for multimedia. Please stop making assumptions about me that are not at all implied by my comments (that I steal artists' work). Also, it looks like the majority of HN readers understood what I was saying, and found your argument to be nonsense, so maybe... let's just let it go? I don't care to keep explaining this to you and you don't care to perceive any degree of nuance, whether the fault is mine in explaining or not.
Hydraulix989 6y ago
I wasn't aware Metallica ever rootkit'd anybody? I already knew about the Sony incident that you linked.
- blandflakes 6y ago
  The point is that efforts to prevent piracy, pushed by Metallica and obviously the recording companies at large, can be harmful, and it's possible to want to support artists but to prefer that they don't take measures which actively hurt consumers. This is the same community that really hates ebook lending, and it's very much the same set of consumer-limiting control over intellectual property that curtails piracy but also makes things really inconvenient for the legitimate customer. I'm surprised but also not that people aren't able to think about this as more than a (false) dichotomy.
  - Hydraulix989 6y ago
    Again, Metallica did not rootkit anybody. How are they hurting legitimate consumers of their work? Rootkits are not mere inconveniences, they are intentional data breaches. Obviously spreading mis-information using this particular false example is going to distort peoples' understandings of Metallica's actual stance and actions. Hacking consumers directly vs. using the court system to shut down an illegal piracy application is a very real dichotomy. Properly implemented DRM is fine! Spotify has been a huge success, for example. Watching Netflix fully brings the convenience of streaming to legal content consumption. The only inconvenience here is that you can no longer pirate anything.
    - blandflakes 6y ago
      > Again, Metallica did not rootkit anybody. And, to use a facile and touchy example, Donald Trump didn't revolt at the capital. But fine: > what is a very real dichotomy Help me out here - why are the only two choices: 1. rampant piracy 2. automated systems that allow corporations to trivially take down content, legitimate or not, with generally no recourse unless you get e.g. Google's attention on twitter? Why are people so convinced there's no middle ground here, and that everybody with an opinion that #2 is perhaps a little problematic must be totally pro-piracy? > Properly implemented DRM is fine! Perhaps the argument is that we don't yet live in the land of properly implemented IP controls. I didn't realize we'd reached utopia; I'll go back to buying ebooks and reusing them across whatever devices I please. Spotify and Netflix are great examples of exactly proof that a convenient form of consumption will get paying customers, and I was certainly more willing to buy MP3s when they stopped coming with DRM attached to them. The fact these work does not somehow render the point that, well, the original article, occurs, as a result of these things, and that it's ironic that it happens to Metallica, who would probably prior to this have been pleased that an automated system takes down anything approximating Enter Sandman.
ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
But that implies you own the song, which you don’t. You’re always leasing access to the song. Just because you pay a couple dollars doesn’t mean you get to listen to it forever.
- blandflakes 6y ago
  Already asked this, but where are you getting this interpretation? Not only is it now how most license agreements for music stores read today, it's also simply unreasonable.

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago

well the industry corrected itself by pushing a la carte subscription music services which is what the freedom fighters hate but it turns out it's exactly what the people wanted all along.

blandflakes 6y ago
I think it's pretty valid to want to pay a price for music, and then take that file wherever you go, without having to reconnect to update a license (I both pay for a subscription to Spotify and mp3s a la carte). Of course, that's also available today, but that's not really relevant to the problem being discussed, which is: it's possible to want to pay artists, while also finding overzealous enforcement of the DMCA problematic.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  I don’t think so. You have no right to ownership just because you buy the song. You didn’t commission it, you didn’t write it, produce it, market it, and so on. All you did was pay a couple dollars. In effect, all you’re doing is buying a license to play the song for personal use, not the right to keep the file forever.
  - blandflakes 6y ago
    This is a weird take. There are stores that literally grant you that right, today. I'm pretty sure that even in the US, a court is not going to grant a musician the right to force you to delete the MP3s you bought off Amazon music. What is the basis for your belief that you don't have a right to the file you bought? Or are you disagreeing with the existence of stores that operate that way? Or with... basically the entire history of hard copy distribution, like cassettes, CDs, vinyl...
    - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
      https://www.zdnet.com/article/who-owns-your-digital-downloads-hint-its-not-you/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/who-owns-your-digital-download... Amazon actually will delete music from your hard drive. 5. Reservation of Rights Except for the rights explicitly granted to you in the Terms of Use, all right, title and interest in the Service, the Software and the Digital Content are reserved and retained by us, our Digital Content providers, and our licensors. You do not acquire any ownership rights in the Software or Digital Content as a result of downloading Software or Digital Content. And yeah I do disagree with the license of hard copy distribution. I don’t think just because I buy a book I can do whatever I want, even burning it. I really think the supposed harm to consumers is vastly exaggerated in HN; on the other hand, the harm to artists and creators is serious, especially to those without the privilege of patronage.
      - blandflakes 6y ago
        That article spends its whole time talking about whether you can transfer the rights. From your source, for example: You may copy, store, and burn iTunes Plus Products as reasonably necessary for personal, noncommercial use. All of the agreements cited are pretty clear that you can copy and store the bytes for your own use. I agree with the thrust that "purchasing" music is certainly weirder with these overreaching legal agreements (and I think it's more fraught when it comes to video or video games), but I disagree with the perspective that: A) That this is a lease of the music B) That that condition is justified because you didn't create an exclusive commission. It seemed to me that, legality aside (and forgive me if I'm misunderstanding), you were asserting that customers have no business expecting indefinite access to an MP3 they paid for, and I... disagree, but if the recording industry wants that to be the case, they're welcome to yet another scenario where pirates have a better customer experience than paying customers. Blech, an edit: What I have seen that applied to is subscription-based music, where the license agreement around whether that song is available for subscription changes. Is there an example of this happening to a "purchased "song or album? I've never seen an effort by a publisher to reclaim hard-drive-bound songs that have been paid for (and I imagine spicy legal cases about expecting refunds). Edit again: I realize I'm sort of meandering. My point is only that it's not unreasonable to expect that, I agree that licensing agreements for digital purchases of all kinds have surprising details about what you actually "own".
mrgordon 6y ago
Nobody said it’s what the people wanted all along. I miss the days where my songs don’t just disappear from Spotify because they renegotiated a contract. But there’s no risk of being sued and it’s cheap enough so it’s easy to subscribe even if it’s not your preferred solution

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

Metallica had nothing to do with what your issue is then. Not a single thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compact_discs_sold_with_Extended_Copy_Protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compact_discs_sold_wit...

blandflakes 6y ago
Metallica lobbied and was publicly the face of anti-piracy sentiment, and are therefore very much responsible for my issues AND their own, in this scenario.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  Let me guess, you also don’t like police.
  - blandflakes 6y ago
    Or maybe just engage the statement on its merits instead of trying to create a strawman.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      Your whole argument is a straw man. You’re blaming Metallica suing napster for a sony rootkit. It’s nonsense. I pirated the shit out of music on napster. But Metallica was still right to shut it down. I didn’t have any right to that music. I didn’t have any right to the $10 people paid me to burn CDs of napster content for them either.
      - blandflakes 6y ago
        Cool. I don't have a right to free music either. I pay for music, as I mentioned. But I'm frustrated to see that you rabidly think that any critique of how we enforce anti-piracy means that I don't think artists deserve income. Here's a twist for you. I work on a team responsible for, among other things, DRM for a major streaming video company. I believe in paying for multimedia. Please stop making assumptions about me that are not at all implied by my comments (that I steal artists' work). Also, it looks like the majority of HN readers understood what I was saying, and found your argument to be nonsense, so maybe... let's just let it go? I don't care to keep explaining this to you and you don't care to perceive any degree of nuance, whether the fault is mine in explaining or not.

Hydraulix989 6y ago

I wasn't aware Metallica ever rootkit'd anybody? I already knew about the Sony incident that you linked.

blandflakes 6y ago
The point is that efforts to prevent piracy, pushed by Metallica and obviously the recording companies at large, can be harmful, and it's possible to want to support artists but to prefer that they don't take measures which actively hurt consumers. This is the same community that really hates ebook lending, and it's very much the same set of consumer-limiting control over intellectual property that curtails piracy but also makes things really inconvenient for the legitimate customer. I'm surprised but also not that people aren't able to think about this as more than a (false) dichotomy.
- Hydraulix989 6y ago
  Again, Metallica did not rootkit anybody. How are they hurting legitimate consumers of their work? Rootkits are not mere inconveniences, they are intentional data breaches. Obviously spreading mis-information using this particular false example is going to distort peoples' understandings of Metallica's actual stance and actions. Hacking consumers directly vs. using the court system to shut down an illegal piracy application is a very real dichotomy. Properly implemented DRM is fine! Spotify has been a huge success, for example. Watching Netflix fully brings the convenience of streaming to legal content consumption. The only inconvenience here is that you can no longer pirate anything.
  - blandflakes 6y ago
    > Again, Metallica did not rootkit anybody. And, to use a facile and touchy example, Donald Trump didn't revolt at the capital. But fine: > what is a very real dichotomy Help me out here - why are the only two choices: 1. rampant piracy 2. automated systems that allow corporations to trivially take down content, legitimate or not, with generally no recourse unless you get e.g. Google's attention on twitter? Why are people so convinced there's no middle ground here, and that everybody with an opinion that #2 is perhaps a little problematic must be totally pro-piracy? > Properly implemented DRM is fine! Perhaps the argument is that we don't yet live in the land of properly implemented IP controls. I didn't realize we'd reached utopia; I'll go back to buying ebooks and reusing them across whatever devices I please. Spotify and Netflix are great examples of exactly proof that a convenient form of consumption will get paying customers, and I was certainly more willing to buy MP3s when they stopped coming with DRM attached to them. The fact these work does not somehow render the point that, well, the original article, occurs, as a result of these things, and that it's ironic that it happens to Metallica, who would probably prior to this have been pleased that an automated system takes down anything approximating Enter Sandman.

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago

But that implies you own the song, which you don’t. You’re always leasing access to the song. Just because you pay a couple dollars doesn’t mean you get to listen to it forever.

blandflakes 6y ago
Already asked this, but where are you getting this interpretation? Not only is it now how most license agreements for music stores read today, it's also simply unreasonable.