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It's been dead a while because of big tech. YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter - they have no way of effectively managing IP and so you basically see people's s

It's been dead a while because of big tech. YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter - they have no way of effectively managing IP and so you basically see people's stolen content and they monetise it, so <shrug> TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle. Purely IMO, big tech normalised the taking of other people's content, and it's getting to the point where content creators (as in, ones that are capable of producing unique content, not wealthy YouTubers per se) have simply had enough. The idea of authorities and primary sources is rapidly diminished with the hodge podge we have to navigate through in information discovery.

ronsor 3y ago
> big tech normalised the taking of other people's content This was normalized by large media companies long before big tech.
- ricardo81 3y ago
  Do you have examples? Obviously it's hard to compare scales though.
  - TuringNYC 3y ago
    Any case where a small player cannot effectively defend patents they hold, but at any time, can be sued for infringement and cannot effectively defend themselves either.
  - jachee 3y ago
    Record labels spring immediately to mind.
  - ricardo81 3y ago
    @TuringNYC and @jachee What had sprung to mind for me was the wholesale rip off of European IP by the US in its commercial development in the 19th century and China now with the US. I guess what I'm thinking of is at the individual level, no one cares much for re-appropriating someone elses work. It has been normalised.
  - pjmorris 3y ago
    "Everything is free now That's what they say Everything I ever done Gonna give it away Someone hit the big score They figured it out That we're gonna do it anyway Even if it doesn't pay" - 'Everything is Free', Gillian Welch, 2001
    - ricardo81 3y ago
      Ah "No one's gonna notice if you're never right or wrong And if you and your next neighbour, yeah, ya don't quite get along No one's gonna notice if you're singing anyway Those not coming in for free will learn they gotta pay" Ian Brown, 2004.
willmadden 3y ago
The pharmaceutical industry continues as a giant, blood sucking, vampire squid because of IP.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  > The pharmaceutical industry continues as a giant, blood sucking, vampire squid because of IP. Let's be honest here. In order to get that way, they needed to stomp out and eradicate every trace of "evidence" that natural medicine was efficacious, because herbs, botanicals, and other natural substances can't be patented, can't be synthesized in factories, and can't be exploited for profit at megascale. If word ever leaked out that, for example, selenium, valerian root or St. John's wort were equivalent/better than synthetic, patented medications, we'd all be in trouble.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    I can buy valerian root tea at multinational grocery store. The problem with supplements isn't that they're disenfranchised, and it's not even that they strictly don't work. It's that the huge businesses that make tons of money off of them have so aggressively resisted regulation based on effectiveness, or even contents, that you can't count on what you're buying not poisoning you, let alone helping. And I'd love to see a natural replacement for insulin that doesn't kill people, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. So maybe pharmaceutical technology does a few things that natural remedies can't?
    - willmadden 3y ago
      >And I'd love to see a natural replacement for insulin that doesn't kill people, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. No sugar, no alcohol, low carbohydrate diets are the answer to the diabetes epidemic. If you want to regulate something, start with the corporations marketing processed, poisoned garbage to people as "food" and "beverages".
      - BobaFloutist 3y ago
mschuster91 3y ago
> TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle. Napster didn't kill the music industry, torrents didn't kill the movie industry because people still want to see movies on a big screen experience. And so, actors, directors, VFX artists, cutters, riggers, lighting staff, costume/mask people, they all continue to have jobs. But now, with AI being already able to do very realistic photos, and in a few years likely to create short movie sequences all based upon a prompt, not only will all these people be replaced by one prompt artist feeding a massive AI engine... but the diversity the AI can generate will always be limited by the diversity of its training material. It is by definition incapable of trying something entirely new, and since there will be no economic incentive to try anything entirely new there will be no expansion. (Oh, and guess what, movie prices aren't going down but since the expenses for all the humans vanish the profit concentration will accelerate!) Widespread AI will freeze our culture in an era of about 2020-2030 forever simply because capitalism will not offer any incentive to feed the AI with new, creative things.
- Ukv 3y ago
  > torrents didn't kill the movie industry because people still want to see movies on a big screen experience Given you believe the reason torrents didn't kill the movie industry is because people weren't satisfied with smaller screens: would you be satisfied with content that is stuck in "2020-2030 forever" and can never produce anything "entirely new"? Personally I think novelty in art thrives when the entry barrier is low and experimentation is possible without a huge budget - which AI can help achieve.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > Given you believe the reason torrents didn't kill the movie industry is because people weren't satisfied with smaller screens: would you be satisfied with content that is stuck in "2020-2030 forever" and can never produce anything "entirely new"? I fear the enshittification of movies - similar to, say, the situation in video games or residential ISPs: when everyone has silently agreed to a common level of base bullshit, customers won't move (because why move from a pile of cow dung to a pile of dog dung? it's all dung in the end), and everyone can keep fleecing the customers. > Personally I think novelty in art thrives when the entry barrier is low and experimentation is possible without a huge budget - which AI can help achieve. Oh even now even utter novices and two-three person teams can produce hours of high quality content, youtube is enough proof of that. Experimentation is not the problem, the problem is all the marketing to get people to sit in the cinema. For a lot of modern movies, music and video games the cost of production is at least on the same order of magnitude as the cost of marketing - even a blockbuster movie like Avengers Endgame [1] reportedly had 356 M$ of production cost vs 200 M$ of marketing cost, and of the production cost at least 100 M$ were compensation for the star actors. [1] https://collider.com/avengers-endgame-box-office-budget/ https://collider.com/avengers-endgame-box-office-budget/
dandellion 3y ago
There was no other outcome possible from the moment we invented a technology that allowed everybody to create infinite copies of digital content at almost zero cost. If tomorrow we discovered a source of infinite free energy, oil and energy companies could try anything they wanted, their current business model would end up obsolete sooner or later.
- ricardo81 3y ago
  Can't say I disagree it was inevitable but could have been legislated for, which seems to be years behind the times as always. My main concern is just unique content that is adequately rewarded that isn't siphoned off by large platforms that can viralise said content, or along those lines. Maybe even if the big tech could pass on some (most) of the proceeds because of the (content share), it'd be far less a thing. Otherwise, 90% of people being made aware of an idea see it somewhere beyond the original source and those secondary sources capitalise because... simply because it's the norm.
- neonsunset 3y ago
  Just look at what happened to nuclear energy :)
  - k__ 3y ago
    So, nuclear proponents are now going so far to call the catastrophes of the past a big oil psyops?
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    Nuclear power plants have a dramatically higher upfront cost than personal computers. You can't really ignore the capital cost and call the energy free. A better example is solar power, which is slowly but surely whittling away at fossil fuels.
peab 3y ago
That's not true at all - content ID on Youtube works quite well, and the Music Industry has strong ties to Youtube

ronsor 3y ago

> big tech normalised the taking of other people's content This was normalized by large media companies long before big tech.

ricardo81 3y ago
Do you have examples? Obviously it's hard to compare scales though.
- TuringNYC 3y ago
  Any case where a small player cannot effectively defend patents they hold, but at any time, can be sued for infringement and cannot effectively defend themselves either.
- jachee 3y ago
  Record labels spring immediately to mind.
- ricardo81 3y ago
  @TuringNYC and @jachee What had sprung to mind for me was the wholesale rip off of European IP by the US in its commercial development in the 19th century and China now with the US. I guess what I'm thinking of is at the individual level, no one cares much for re-appropriating someone elses work. It has been normalised.
- pjmorris 3y ago
  "Everything is free now That's what they say Everything I ever done Gonna give it away Someone hit the big score They figured it out That we're gonna do it anyway Even if it doesn't pay" - 'Everything is Free', Gillian Welch, 2001
  - ricardo81 3y ago
    Ah "No one's gonna notice if you're never right or wrong And if you and your next neighbour, yeah, ya don't quite get along No one's gonna notice if you're singing anyway Those not coming in for free will learn they gotta pay" Ian Brown, 2004.

willmadden 3y ago

The pharmaceutical industry continues as a giant, blood sucking, vampire squid because of IP.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
> The pharmaceutical industry continues as a giant, blood sucking, vampire squid because of IP. Let's be honest here. In order to get that way, they needed to stomp out and eradicate every trace of "evidence" that natural medicine was efficacious, because herbs, botanicals, and other natural substances can't be patented, can't be synthesized in factories, and can't be exploited for profit at megascale. If word ever leaked out that, for example, selenium, valerian root or St. John's wort were equivalent/better than synthetic, patented medications, we'd all be in trouble.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  I can buy valerian root tea at multinational grocery store. The problem with supplements isn't that they're disenfranchised, and it's not even that they strictly don't work. It's that the huge businesses that make tons of money off of them have so aggressively resisted regulation based on effectiveness, or even contents, that you can't count on what you're buying not poisoning you, let alone helping. And I'd love to see a natural replacement for insulin that doesn't kill people, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. So maybe pharmaceutical technology does a few things that natural remedies can't?
  - willmadden 3y ago
    >And I'd love to see a natural replacement for insulin that doesn't kill people, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. No sugar, no alcohol, low carbohydrate diets are the answer to the diabetes epidemic. If you want to regulate something, start with the corporations marketing processed, poisoned garbage to people as "food" and "beverages".
    - BobaFloutist 3y ago

mschuster91 3y ago

> TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle. Napster didn't kill the music industry, torrents didn't kill the movie industry because people still want to see movies on a big screen experience. And so, actors, directors, VFX artists, cutters, riggers, lighting staff, costume/mask people, they all continue to have jobs. But now, with AI being already able to do very realistic photos, and in a few years likely to create short movie sequences all based upon a prompt, not only will all these people be replaced by one prompt artist feeding a massive AI engine... but the diversity the AI can generate will always be limited by the diversity of its training material. It is by definition incapable of trying something entirely new, and since there will be no economic incentive to try anything entirely new there will be no expansion. (Oh, and guess what, movie prices aren't going down but since the expenses for all the humans vanish the profit concentration will accelerate!) Widespread AI will freeze our culture in an era of about 2020-2030 forever simply because capitalism will not offer any incentive to feed the AI with new, creative things.

Ukv 3y ago
> torrents didn't kill the movie industry because people still want to see movies on a big screen experience Given you believe the reason torrents didn't kill the movie industry is because people weren't satisfied with smaller screens: would you be satisfied with content that is stuck in "2020-2030 forever" and can never produce anything "entirely new"? Personally I think novelty in art thrives when the entry barrier is low and experimentation is possible without a huge budget - which AI can help achieve.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Given you believe the reason torrents didn't kill the movie industry is because people weren't satisfied with smaller screens: would you be satisfied with content that is stuck in "2020-2030 forever" and can never produce anything "entirely new"? I fear the enshittification of movies - similar to, say, the situation in video games or residential ISPs: when everyone has silently agreed to a common level of base bullshit, customers won't move (because why move from a pile of cow dung to a pile of dog dung? it's all dung in the end), and everyone can keep fleecing the customers. > Personally I think novelty in art thrives when the entry barrier is low and experimentation is possible without a huge budget - which AI can help achieve. Oh even now even utter novices and two-three person teams can produce hours of high quality content, youtube is enough proof of that. Experimentation is not the problem, the problem is all the marketing to get people to sit in the cinema. For a lot of modern movies, music and video games the cost of production is at least on the same order of magnitude as the cost of marketing - even a blockbuster movie like Avengers Endgame [1] reportedly had 356 M$ of production cost vs 200 M$ of marketing cost, and of the production cost at least 100 M$ were compensation for the star actors. [1] https://collider.com/avengers-endgame-box-office-budget/ https://collider.com/avengers-endgame-box-office-budget/

dandellion 3y ago

There was no other outcome possible from the moment we invented a technology that allowed everybody to create infinite copies of digital content at almost zero cost. If tomorrow we discovered a source of infinite free energy, oil and energy companies could try anything they wanted, their current business model would end up obsolete sooner or later.

ricardo81 3y ago
Can't say I disagree it was inevitable but could have been legislated for, which seems to be years behind the times as always. My main concern is just unique content that is adequately rewarded that isn't siphoned off by large platforms that can viralise said content, or along those lines. Maybe even if the big tech could pass on some (most) of the proceeds because of the (content share), it'd be far less a thing. Otherwise, 90% of people being made aware of an idea see it somewhere beyond the original source and those secondary sources capitalise because... simply because it's the norm.
neonsunset 3y ago
Just look at what happened to nuclear energy :)
- k__ 3y ago
  So, nuclear proponents are now going so far to call the catastrophes of the past a big oil psyops?
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  Nuclear power plants have a dramatically higher upfront cost than personal computers. You can't really ignore the capital cost and call the energy free. A better example is solar power, which is slowly but surely whittling away at fossil fuels.

peab 3y ago

That's not true at all - content ID on Youtube works quite well, and the Music Industry has strong ties to Youtube