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I had to look that up: Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosin

I had to look that up: Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing this information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola I'm not a big fan of how tech companies have and continue to ignore existing regulations and legislation simply because "on the internet" or "it's an app" is somehow perceived by them as different. By analogy: like we have analogue drug laws that deem substances prohibited even before they're invented, we should have analogue services law where a fucking taxi company is a fucking taxi company regardless of what technology underlies it, and a radio service is a streaming service etc. You don't get to ignore broadcasting rules just because the delivery tech is Internet Protocol based rather than radio. Whether or not one agrees with the existing legislation on either of those particular matters is beside my point here, so let's skip straight past that distrsction please.

al2o3cr 6y ago
There's an important part in that definition: "commercial radio station" - the general premise of telecommunications regulation has been that using a finite resource (radio spectrum) comes with obligations (FCC licensing, content restrictions, etc). That's also why you'll see the giant "THIS IS A PAID PROGRAM" warning on late-night infomercials. Internet streaming doesn't fit into that "finite resource" model.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  Well, internet bandwidth is a finite resource, but it's limited on the consumer side. If the consumer doesn't stream Spotify, his/her bandwidth is not used. By contrast, spectrum is consumed whether a given consumer tunes in or not. In this sense, the spectrum is a shared public resource whereas the consumer's bandwidth is a non-shared private resource.
- powvans 6y ago
  The finite resource in the Internet model is attention. We could redefine our regulations with that in mind. Perhaps that would helpful for addressing the filter bubble phenomenon.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  I think this widely misses my point. Maybe I can rephrase it? Interacting with someone comes with obligations. This, then, allows us to peer deeper in to the problem: some people think it's okay to run roughshod over existing norms because "on a computer". I'd argue it's not okay to exploit people's weaknesses just because "implemented using new(er) / different technology". Other people seem to be quite happy to build an empire doing so. I guess this is why I'm likely to remain relatively poor.
kortilla 6y ago
> You don't get to ignore broadcasting rules just because the delivery tech is Internet Protocol based rather than radio. Of course you do, the whole purpose of the Payola law has jack shit to do with music. It’s about sponsored airtime being transmitted over public frequencies without being identified as such. It’s very specifically a property of how the FCC wants public radio incentives disclosed. Payola doesn’t apply to MTV and it certainly doesn’t apply to a TCP/IP connection from a browser to a server requesting a song download. Payola doesn’t even apply to Sirius/XM. It’s a property of public broadcast, not music.

al2o3cr 6y ago

There's an important part in that definition: "commercial radio station" - the general premise of telecommunications regulation has been that using a finite resource (radio spectrum) comes with obligations (FCC licensing, content restrictions, etc). That's also why you'll see the giant "THIS IS A PAID PROGRAM" warning on late-night infomercials. Internet streaming doesn't fit into that "finite resource" model.

bilbo0s 6y ago
Well, internet bandwidth is a finite resource, but it's limited on the consumer side. If the consumer doesn't stream Spotify, his/her bandwidth is not used. By contrast, spectrum is consumed whether a given consumer tunes in or not. In this sense, the spectrum is a shared public resource whereas the consumer's bandwidth is a non-shared private resource.
powvans 6y ago
The finite resource in the Internet model is attention. We could redefine our regulations with that in mind. Perhaps that would helpful for addressing the filter bubble phenomenon.
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
I think this widely misses my point. Maybe I can rephrase it? Interacting with someone comes with obligations. This, then, allows us to peer deeper in to the problem: some people think it's okay to run roughshod over existing norms because "on a computer". I'd argue it's not okay to exploit people's weaknesses just because "implemented using new(er) / different technology". Other people seem to be quite happy to build an empire doing so. I guess this is why I'm likely to remain relatively poor.

kortilla 6y ago

> You don't get to ignore broadcasting rules just because the delivery tech is Internet Protocol based rather than radio. Of course you do, the whole purpose of the Payola law has jack shit to do with music. It’s about sponsored airtime being transmitted over public frequencies without being identified as such. It’s very specifically a property of how the FCC wants public radio incentives disclosed. Payola doesn’t apply to MTV and it certainly doesn’t apply to a TCP/IP connection from a browser to a server requesting a song download. Payola doesn’t even apply to Sirius/XM. It’s a property of public broadcast, not music.