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This was not Spotify vs CD sales. By 2005 everybody (even the labels) knew the writing was on the wall and physical media was going to be legacy niche. Digital

This was not Spotify vs CD sales. By 2005 everybody (even the labels) knew the writing was on the wall and physical media was going to be legacy niche. Digital retail grew fast from there (faster than CDs replacing tapes for a few years) and by 2011 (still limping through the trench of the 2008 crash) the yearly revenue was not only growing it was outdoing physical media and rising. Not just Apple. Amazon, Google, Bandcamp, Bleep, half a dozen others plus artists and indie networks experimenting with direct marketing and retailing. The physical vs digital fight was over at all levels of industry strategy when Spotify was founded and smartphones were a rumor, and music was well on track to a complete digital transition by the time the monster escaped scandinavia. What Spotify actually did was cannibalize digital retail. Because of course it did: it used massive capitalization AND ignoring pesky laws/policies about actually compensating people creating the work Spotify's service depends on to give that work away to consumers for essentially free, until they'd created that expectation in the market and had enough pull as a channel to buddy up with labels (and the ironic thing is it's not even clear how profitable they can be, maybe leading the charge to the bottom has downsides). > Copyright, in particular, should not exist in its current form, especially with digital data that is not bound by the laws of physics or physicality Copyright conventions become more important in the face of falling barriers to reproduction and transmission, not less. That's how they got created in the first place: physical copying got industrialized and could take place with scale and ease that was unheard of before then. And the rationales behind them are still solid today, because they're about the economics of creation, not distribution.

pdntspa 3y ago
The economics of creation are meaningless if distribution lacks physical scarcity. That is the entire problem with copyright in the digital age -- it is physically impossible to control (i.e. prevent) consumption once the consumer has the data, and for IP like music this is impossible to control. Sure, we can attach DRM and technological controls to our work, we can form massive databases of royalties distribution, we can falsely moralize until our faces turn blue, we can even try to craft laws and legislation to get what we ant. But all these things are meaningless in the digital land of infinite plenty to a determined enough adversary, and some music fans are adamant (yet also kind enough to share with others) If copyright (and DRM) was enforced the way some wanted, we wouldn't have a rich history of remixes, recontextualizations, or bootlegs that allow a work to live on far past its shelf-life. Memes would be a shallow husk of what they are today. We wouldn't have many, many genres of music, and things like the Amen break wouldn't exist and we'd all be worse off for it. For that reason copyright needs to be abolished. There are other ways of monetizing intellectual property. Once a given work is released to the public, its creators have literally zero control over it, despite the technological artifices we construct otherwise.
- wwweston 3y ago
  > The economics of creation are meaningless if distribution lacks physical scarcity. As if nobody has to actually create the first instance of a given work, it's just copies all the way down. That's why the economics of distribution/reproduction are distinct from the economics of creation. Maybe it's clearer if we use the term invention. The major input is time, time to develop the faculties needed to invent/create -- often years if not decades -- and then the time needed to put into a specific work. The legal claims/controls on distribution give inventors leverage they can use to get better returns on that time, which provide better incentives. > Copyright (and DRM) was enforced the way some wanted, we wouldn't have a rich history of [blah blah blah] Copyright was enforced for literally centuries and for much of that period we got a rich history of works which borrowed in a dozen ways from other works, because actual copyright law has both boundaries and blessed borrowing. I swear, so many tech folks got half a narrative in their heads about draconian DRM as digital gulags and lost their minds to a manichaean all-or-nothing view on the topic. Yes yes the evil suits from 1999 probably wanted to super-glue your 1/8" output and lock you out of control of your machine. Again, almost 20 years ago the basic truce on that battle was defined. There's always going to be some activity that can't be controlled, but that doesn't mean you can't define and encourage legitimate activity, so we keep the basic bargain because giving inventors/creators a say in how/where/pricing for their work is both helpful and decent, but we don't try suing individuals over their uh "freely-sourced" media collection or install policing malware. This isn't digital hitler on every last device vs total free-for-all. It's saying Amazon can't sell your ebook or music without compensating you. And maybe even that Spotify doesn't have the right to give away tracks for free or a pittance, that buffet streaming is close enough to ownership that it calls for artist payouts that are closer to the scale of retail than broadcast. You don't need total control to get there, and we have the levels of control to make this happen. > Memes would be a shallow husk of what they are today. Oh no not the memes, known for their fullness and depth. But also no, not the memes, since it'd be vanishingly unusual that any of them would end up in court let alone to be found to violate copyright law. > There are other ways of monetizing It's a well-known fact about creative paths that they're not littered with the luxury of money-making opportunities. There are a few ways of doing it, but they're legs of a stool, and the number of inventors/creators who have the stool up to even 3 legs is not large. Suggesting they give just one little leg knocks over a lot of stools, and for what?

pdntspa 3y ago

The economics of creation are meaningless if distribution lacks physical scarcity. That is the entire problem with copyright in the digital age -- it is physically impossible to control (i.e. prevent) consumption once the consumer has the data, and for IP like music this is impossible to control. Sure, we can attach DRM and technological controls to our work, we can form massive databases of royalties distribution, we can falsely moralize until our faces turn blue, we can even try to craft laws and legislation to get what we ant. But all these things are meaningless in the digital land of infinite plenty to a determined enough adversary, and some music fans are adamant (yet also kind enough to share with others) If copyright (and DRM) was enforced the way some wanted, we wouldn't have a rich history of remixes, recontextualizations, or bootlegs that allow a work to live on far past its shelf-life. Memes would be a shallow husk of what they are today. We wouldn't have many, many genres of music, and things like the Amen break wouldn't exist and we'd all be worse off for it. For that reason copyright needs to be abolished. There are other ways of monetizing intellectual property. Once a given work is released to the public, its creators have literally zero control over it, despite the technological artifices we construct otherwise.

wwweston 3y ago
> The economics of creation are meaningless if distribution lacks physical scarcity. As if nobody has to actually create the first instance of a given work, it's just copies all the way down. That's why the economics of distribution/reproduction are distinct from the economics of creation. Maybe it's clearer if we use the term invention. The major input is time, time to develop the faculties needed to invent/create -- often years if not decades -- and then the time needed to put into a specific work. The legal claims/controls on distribution give inventors leverage they can use to get better returns on that time, which provide better incentives. > Copyright (and DRM) was enforced the way some wanted, we wouldn't have a rich history of [blah blah blah] Copyright was enforced for literally centuries and for much of that period we got a rich history of works which borrowed in a dozen ways from other works, because actual copyright law has both boundaries and blessed borrowing. I swear, so many tech folks got half a narrative in their heads about draconian DRM as digital gulags and lost their minds to a manichaean all-or-nothing view on the topic. Yes yes the evil suits from 1999 probably wanted to super-glue your 1/8" output and lock you out of control of your machine. Again, almost 20 years ago the basic truce on that battle was defined. There's always going to be some activity that can't be controlled, but that doesn't mean you can't define and encourage legitimate activity, so we keep the basic bargain because giving inventors/creators a say in how/where/pricing for their work is both helpful and decent, but we don't try suing individuals over their uh "freely-sourced" media collection or install policing malware. This isn't digital hitler on every last device vs total free-for-all. It's saying Amazon can't sell your ebook or music without compensating you. And maybe even that Spotify doesn't have the right to give away tracks for free or a pittance, that buffet streaming is close enough to ownership that it calls for artist payouts that are closer to the scale of retail than broadcast. You don't need total control to get there, and we have the levels of control to make this happen. > Memes would be a shallow husk of what they are today. Oh no not the memes, known for their fullness and depth. But also no, not the memes, since it'd be vanishingly unusual that any of them would end up in court let alone to be found to violate copyright law. > There are other ways of monetizing It's a well-known fact about creative paths that they're not littered with the luxury of money-making opportunities. There are a few ways of doing it, but they're legs of a stool, and the number of inventors/creators who have the stool up to even 3 legs is not large. Suggesting they give just one little leg knocks over a lot of stools, and for what?