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This is how the system works. This is a major lesson for all founders. Don't worry about "regulatory." If your product matters, then you will be able to afford

This is how the system works. This is a major lesson for all founders. Don't worry about "regulatory." If your product matters, then you will be able to afford to solve the problem. If your product doesn't matter, then "regulatory" will not be an issue. Just ignore it. I personally find this concept pretty darn offensive, but it is exactly how the world works. It's a really important lesson that I really wish I had learned earlier. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42677087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42677087 (see top reply)

tacker2000 2y ago
In another sense, its the same with Uber and Airbnb, etc…
- consumer451 2y ago
  Exactly. YouTube was one of the OG examples. Same with LLMs and copyright, I suppose.
bofadeez 2y ago
Tell that to Kim Dotcom
- consumer451 2y ago
  Hmm, this is an interesting counterexample. What was the difference? Did not have the correct investors? Did not have a unique enough product? I would assume the latter. However, this is an interesting topic for discussion.
  - KingOfCoders 2y ago
    He knew that and talked about and used alledgedly illegal files. He should just not do the drugs himself and fire everyone who eats from the forbidden fruit and he would be fine.
  - Kwpolska 2y ago
    Spotify did illegal stuff in beta, but they fixed it since then. Megaupload never cared about the law.
  - notnaut 2y ago
    Compliance and capital vs. defiance and disaffiliation.
  - bofadeez 2y ago
    Devil is in the details. Teenagers tend to appreciate things that can seemingly collapse a complex topic into a binary black and white thing. The real world is nuanced.
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    While I have no proof, I feel like the fact that Megaupload wasn't in the US prevented them for using the correct legal loopholes that could have kept them aloft for long enough to grow to a size where they could settle these types issues out of court.
    - Yeul 2y ago
      I don't know seemed to me everyone was using Mega for piracy... The file lockers that pirates use today operate under the radar. The owners don't do interviews and they use crypto.
      - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
        What's file lockers? Do you have examples?
  - msh 2y ago
    Dropbox actually took action on shared files if piracy was reported. Megaupload made systems that faked they took action.
- AlexAltea 2y ago
  He launched Megaupload two years before Dropbox. Kim could have pivoted there, then expanded to docs/collaboration. Yes, hindsight is 20:20, but in theory it would have been possible moving from a piracy-centric business model to regular cloud storage/collaboration for businesses and small teams. Regulatory does not matter if your product does not matter. Megaupload did matter, and did not solve the regulatory problem or change the business model. Maybe it came too early for the solution or alternative business models to become apparent.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  That takes me back to when Kim Kimble, known scammer, was going around boasting of representing some script-kiddie army fighting Al Qaeda. I like to think that early exposure helped immunize me against some other self aggrandizing grifters over the decades. https://www.theregister.com/2002/01/22/kimble_schmitz_deported/ https://www.theregister.com/2002/01/22/kimble_schmitz_deport...
kortilla 2y ago
This strategy worked out well for FTX
- consumer451 2y ago
  That's not along the same line of thinking. Theranos was also a fraud. I am not talking about outright fraud. I am just some shmoe, so I would love someone else to put this more clearly. Is what I originally posted intellectual property/regulatory arbitrage, vs. fraud? Is there a better way to state this difference?
  - qwertytyyuu 2y ago
    I mean Tesla self driving advertising is as much of a fraud as theranos… maybe it’s not as bad because it wasn’t a medical device?
    - exe34 2y ago
      No, it's acceptable because he bought the White House.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Promising a of self driving and delivering a much lower level is not nearly as much fraud as "the entire product does nothing". And it being a promise about future improvements also reduces the level of fraud compared to lying about what the product already does.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      It’s not though because it somewhat works and the limitations are clear when you use it. Theranos was completely fraudulent and there was no way to tell.
  - andy_ppp 2y ago
    As with everything there’s lines you can bend and lines you just don’t cross. Gambling with your clients’ deposits is always going to mean jail time. Timing is also important, for example the US basically has given up on consumer finance protection laws and white collar crime being a thing, so while big companies can still sue you the government will let you get away with anything you like. Go for it!
caseyy 2y ago
I think you’re not accounting for survivorship bias. For example, Grooveshark was a direct competitor for Spotify with similar apps and features around the same time[0]. It got sued out of existence by the music industry, and back then quite a lot of music on both had that bootleg audio quality that sure points to piracy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark
- consumer451 2y ago
  I am not young, and I was around for both. What was the difference? I remember going to Europe from the USA around 2012, and everyone was already using Spotify. Their music experience was vastly superior to ours. IIRC, they were based/avail in countries with really loose music copyright laws. Was that what made the difference? They grew huge where they could, before the hammer came down? Then too big to fail? Again, IIRC, when the US music labels wanted to shut them down, they instead said: "hey, why don't you just buy a big piece of Spotify. We are already your distro. F the artists." I remember thinking that this was a gangster move. (btw, I still refuse to subscribe to Spotify.)
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    If you cant beat them, join them..
    - consumer451 2y ago
      As a business practice, yes, exactly. Good idea! As a personal philosophy, please, someone help me avoid nihilism.
  - caseyy 2y ago
    The difference could be the attitude towards piracy, especially in the legal system. Between 2006 and 2016, no one in the Nordics and Eastern Europe cared about piracy. By the time Spotify became prominent enough in the West to compete with music sales, it had already mainly been legalized. Grooveshark was in the US, which has a very litigious business climate and is world-leading in copyright enforcement. I can't think of a more plausible explanation. But I will say that breaking laws to later legalize is still only a successful strategy if one doesn't get caught. If anyone thinks this is a good strategy, I'd say there's survivorship bias going on.
RachelF 2y ago
Even established companies use pirated software. The sounds in Windows XP were created in a pirated version of Sony SoundForge, and were only detected because of the metadata in the .wav files. I guess companies can get "too big to sue".
barrenko 2y ago
If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a couple houndred millions, you own the bank.
vasco 2y ago
There's several examples where this is true even in other industries, like Uber. That being said that is the wrong take away. Upon seing some unfair cases of crime not being put to justice, the response shouldn't be "everyone does it, let me do it too". In fact the idea that "everyone does" whatever crime you're considering is the first and foremost rationalization people make before committing crimes like tax evasion and so on.
- consumer451 2y ago
  I agree with your sentiment one hundred percent. However, I am just stating that this is how the world works. Cryptocurrency is another horrific example, where the value-add is avoiding KYC = tax and sanctions evasion! I knew this over a decade ago, and decided to sit it out for moral reasons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ edit: to be honest, not just moral reasons. I just could not imagine that in a just world, this illegality would be allowed to continue. So little did I know.
- bananskalhalk 2y ago
  Uber is really interesting example, since they started as a legit upscale taxi service, got mad Lyft flaunted the rules and regulations. They finally pivoted to the success story they are now after seeing how toothless the check and balances actually were.
  - sehansen 2y ago
    It's really interesting how much Uber was trying to do things the right way, only to then over-correct into being the most devious and underhanded app-taxi company. But the other company that Uber reacted to was Wingz, Inc, not Lyft.
    - infecto 2y ago
      I am being pedantic and never worked for Uber but I always assumed it was sidecar, I vividly remember them all over the city with their side mirror covers--don't ever recall seeing Wingz, though I am sure the existed. I would argue it was not even so much that they were doing "things the right way", they were optimizing black car service and pivoted because it was not as lucrative.
Frieren 2y ago
> Don't worry about "regulatory." Are you recommending to break the law or are you being sarcastic? I sincerely do not know anymore.
- immibis 2y ago
  Every rich person broke the law to get there.
  - Neonlicht 2y ago
    Was it even possible to make a legal Spotify? I don't recall that any of the music labels were actually renting out MP3s.
    - toast0 2y ago
      It depends on exactly what Spotify does for you. Launchcast was a pioneer of personalized internet radio, starting in 1999. Pandora offered a similar service in 2005. Both of those services claimed legality through mechanical licenses for non-interactive play. In the ~ 2005-2008 time frame, many monthly services sprang up to offer play any song from their catalog on demand, along with limited downloading, based on Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM program. Services included Yahoo Music Unlimited, Napster to Go (lol), (Real) Rhapsody, MSN Music and a bunch more. Afaik, this was all legal, but Microsoft shut down the DRM program with, I think, very little discussion as to why (but probably had to do with lack of market share in portable players) I do recall some issues with the catalog on Yahoo Music Unlimited where the non-interactive catalog was bigger than the interactive catalog, because non-interactive has mechanical licensing and interactive play requires an intetactive licensing exercise between the rightsholders and the service provider.
- whynotmaybe 2y ago
  If you're building an electronic device, "the next best gadget AI" , with a brand new Bluetooth chip that can communicate over 5 km by using some radioactive material, but you don't know whether it will be a success or not, you face two situations : 1. You do all government certifications like FCC, recycling, pollution, security, backed with scientific research that your chip is ok. This will cost a lot of money and time and might prevent you from reaching the market quickly. 2. You start selling asap as a Prototype. You make money and you can start the whole certification process. (or not). The concept of Prototype is legal in many countries, there's often an official threshold of product sold at which your product is not a prototype anymore.
mschuster91 2y ago
> Don't worry about "regulatory." If your product matters, then you will be able to afford to solve the problem. If your product doesn't matter, then "regulatory" will not be an issue. Just ignore it. Unless you live in a country where copyright or other regulations can lead to actual jail time. IMHO, companies intentionally breaking the law should be held accountable by going after executives - even if they left the company.
zaptheimpaler 2y ago
Worked for all the AI labs as well. Turns out you can steal the entirety of copyrighted works in existence on the internet without consequence if the resulting company is big enough.
- svantana 2y ago
  This sounds backwards. All the big players in AI are getting sued while most of the minor players are flying under the radar.
  - zaptheimpaler 2y ago
    The very top of the US government is partnering with and supporting OpenAI, Meta etc. None of these lawsuits are going to amount to anything more than a slap on the wrist. Their logic seems to be that AI is going to be a matter of national importance, and other countries will infringe the copyright anyways, so it must be allowed for the US AI industry to stay competitive. There's a list of cases here [1]. The case against Github Copilot was already mostly dismissed despite it producing identical samples to license-restricted code. The cat is so far out of the bag now anyways with many open models and datasets containing the stolen data - there is nothing anyone can do about it now. [1]https://www.bakerlaw.com/services/artificial-intelligence-ai/case-tracker-artificial-intelligence-copyrights-and-class-actions/ https://www.bakerlaw.com/services/artificial-intelligence-ai...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
immibis 2y ago
If an individual did this, or what Facebook did, they'd get a prison sentence. Should startup founders give themselves prison sentences? Spotify only got away with it after the fact because they pivoted to a model that gives money to the people who wanted to put them in prison before. And Facebook got away with it becau it's big.
- consumer451 2y ago
  > Should startup founders give themselves prison sentences? Well this is the interesting thing. Have there been any, aside from the Mega example?
erellsworth 2y ago
Move fast and break the law.
CrossVR 2y ago
If Spotify was properly paying its share of royalty fees to the artists I don't think it violates any regulations that they used pirated versions of the music. It's simply more convenient for Spotify because they don't have to rip the music from a CD themselves. When rights holders use a pirated version of their work it may be embarrassing, but it certainly doesn't violate copyright law. (Assuming the pirates didn't transform the work in a substantive way)
rglullis 2y ago
> I personally find this concept pretty darn offensive I'm more offended by the idea that we should sit quiet and not do anything just because the status quo set up the rules in their favor. The immoral part here is not using pirated content to build the initial catalog. The immoral part is that their success came by aligning with the exploiters (the labels) and not the exploited artists.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  > I'm more offended by the idea that we should sit quiet and not do anything just because the status quo set up the rules in their favor. Let's do something then. You lead the way and I'll follow.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    My personal Spotify alternative is KEXP, KCRW human DJs -> Bandcamp purchases. If anyone else could share any other radio stations who still have living human disc jockeys, I would love to check them out. DJs are an amazing resource which should be cherished. https://kexp.org https://kexp.org https://www.kcrw.com/music https://www.kcrw.com/music I mean come on, this is all amazing. Forget the music recommendation machine algos: https://www.kcrw.com/music/articles/pachyman-samia-steel-wool-grrl-made-of-oak-tim-hecker https://www.kcrw.com/music/articles/pachyman-samia-steel-woo... The next logical step is for one of us to make a Spotify clone which leverages these human DJs, and gives credit with links to station and artist Bandcamp. https://claude.ai/share/7c277bf6-eb65-4148-979d-f76ee6027fb0 https://claude.ai/share/7c277bf6-eb65-4148-979d-f76ee6027fb0
    - icameron 2y ago
      Sure my share for knowledge live human DJs (about 75% of the time- they also have a few talk shows) is https://www.xray.fm/ https://www.xray.fm/
  - GlacierFox 2y ago
    No see that's where their ideals fall apart. They want YOU to lead the way. Go on lead the way, I'll follow.
Workaccount2 2y ago
People always think big mega corps are the most egregious offenders of skirting the law and doing nefarious things to avoid prosecution. bruh... Having been in industry for over a decade now, the opposite is true. Big mega corp has a huge legal team and is always looking to stop any law breaking. They don't need to break the law and doing so will only incur huge fines and huge negative public outcray. They pay compliance people to walk around and breath down managers necks. Small corps on the other hand...it's basically a free for all of "do whatever it takes to get this over the line and keep it alive, and if it fails just walk away and let the public deal with it".
sailfast 2y ago
This was a BETA test, not the product... YouTube on the other hand...
dylan604 2y ago
Except for people making individual choices. I don't do business with companies that were founded by asshats. I will not use Uber even if they changed leadership. The shenanigans they pulled were inexcusable, and I will not whitewash them with my patronage. There are other companies for various similar reasons led me to make the same decision. Unfortunately, there are many many more people that don't care and/or don't know about the decisions made by company leadership, so voting with my wallet makes no difference to the company. I just keep adding to my soapbox collection. Starry eyed world would have more people making similar decisions so that asshat companies do not succeed so that regulations would not be necessary. To bad that world doesn't exist
jppope 2y ago
There maybe an inkling of truth for mass consumer markets where incumbents set up regulatory capture but it couldn't be more untrue for hard-tech companies or companies that work in dangerous domains where human safety is a concern.

tacker2000 2y ago

In another sense, its the same with Uber and Airbnb, etc…

consumer451 2y ago
Exactly. YouTube was one of the OG examples. Same with LLMs and copyright, I suppose.

bofadeez 2y ago

Tell that to Kim Dotcom

consumer451 2y ago
Hmm, this is an interesting counterexample. What was the difference? Did not have the correct investors? Did not have a unique enough product? I would assume the latter. However, this is an interesting topic for discussion.
- KingOfCoders 2y ago
  He knew that and talked about and used alledgedly illegal files. He should just not do the drugs himself and fire everyone who eats from the forbidden fruit and he would be fine.
- Kwpolska 2y ago
  Spotify did illegal stuff in beta, but they fixed it since then. Megaupload never cared about the law.
- notnaut 2y ago
  Compliance and capital vs. defiance and disaffiliation.
- bofadeez 2y ago
  Devil is in the details. Teenagers tend to appreciate things that can seemingly collapse a complex topic into a binary black and white thing. The real world is nuanced.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  While I have no proof, I feel like the fact that Megaupload wasn't in the US prevented them for using the correct legal loopholes that could have kept them aloft for long enough to grow to a size where they could settle these types issues out of court.
  - Yeul 2y ago
    I don't know seemed to me everyone was using Mega for piracy... The file lockers that pirates use today operate under the radar. The owners don't do interviews and they use crypto.
    - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
      What's file lockers? Do you have examples?
- msh 2y ago
  Dropbox actually took action on shared files if piracy was reported. Megaupload made systems that faked they took action.
AlexAltea 2y ago
He launched Megaupload two years before Dropbox. Kim could have pivoted there, then expanded to docs/collaboration. Yes, hindsight is 20:20, but in theory it would have been possible moving from a piracy-centric business model to regular cloud storage/collaboration for businesses and small teams. Regulatory does not matter if your product does not matter. Megaupload did matter, and did not solve the regulatory problem or change the business model. Maybe it came too early for the solution or alternative business models to become apparent.
Terr_ 2y ago
That takes me back to when Kim Kimble, known scammer, was going around boasting of representing some script-kiddie army fighting Al Qaeda. I like to think that early exposure helped immunize me against some other self aggrandizing grifters over the decades. https://www.theregister.com/2002/01/22/kimble_schmitz_deported/ https://www.theregister.com/2002/01/22/kimble_schmitz_deport...

kortilla 2y ago

This strategy worked out well for FTX

consumer451 2y ago
That's not along the same line of thinking. Theranos was also a fraud. I am not talking about outright fraud. I am just some shmoe, so I would love someone else to put this more clearly. Is what I originally posted intellectual property/regulatory arbitrage, vs. fraud? Is there a better way to state this difference?
- qwertytyyuu 2y ago
  I mean Tesla self driving advertising is as much of a fraud as theranos… maybe it’s not as bad because it wasn’t a medical device?
  - exe34 2y ago
    No, it's acceptable because he bought the White House.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Promising a of self driving and delivering a much lower level is not nearly as much fraud as "the entire product does nothing". And it being a promise about future improvements also reduces the level of fraud compared to lying about what the product already does.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    It’s not though because it somewhat works and the limitations are clear when you use it. Theranos was completely fraudulent and there was no way to tell.
- andy_ppp 2y ago
  As with everything there’s lines you can bend and lines you just don’t cross. Gambling with your clients’ deposits is always going to mean jail time. Timing is also important, for example the US basically has given up on consumer finance protection laws and white collar crime being a thing, so while big companies can still sue you the government will let you get away with anything you like. Go for it!

caseyy 2y ago

I think you’re not accounting for survivorship bias. For example, Grooveshark was a direct competitor for Spotify with similar apps and features around the same time[0]. It got sued out of existence by the music industry, and back then quite a lot of music on both had that bootleg audio quality that sure points to piracy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark

consumer451 2y ago
I am not young, and I was around for both. What was the difference? I remember going to Europe from the USA around 2012, and everyone was already using Spotify. Their music experience was vastly superior to ours. IIRC, they were based/avail in countries with really loose music copyright laws. Was that what made the difference? They grew huge where they could, before the hammer came down? Then too big to fail? Again, IIRC, when the US music labels wanted to shut them down, they instead said: "hey, why don't you just buy a big piece of Spotify. We are already your distro. F the artists." I remember thinking that this was a gangster move. (btw, I still refuse to subscribe to Spotify.)
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  If you cant beat them, join them..
  - consumer451 2y ago
    As a business practice, yes, exactly. Good idea! As a personal philosophy, please, someone help me avoid nihilism.
- caseyy 2y ago
  The difference could be the attitude towards piracy, especially in the legal system. Between 2006 and 2016, no one in the Nordics and Eastern Europe cared about piracy. By the time Spotify became prominent enough in the West to compete with music sales, it had already mainly been legalized. Grooveshark was in the US, which has a very litigious business climate and is world-leading in copyright enforcement. I can't think of a more plausible explanation. But I will say that breaking laws to later legalize is still only a successful strategy if one doesn't get caught. If anyone thinks this is a good strategy, I'd say there's survivorship bias going on.

RachelF 2y ago

Even established companies use pirated software. The sounds in Windows XP were created in a pirated version of Sony SoundForge, and were only detected because of the metadata in the .wav files. I guess companies can get "too big to sue".

barrenko 2y ago

If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a couple houndred millions, you own the bank.

vasco 2y ago

There's several examples where this is true even in other industries, like Uber. That being said that is the wrong take away. Upon seing some unfair cases of crime not being put to justice, the response shouldn't be "everyone does it, let me do it too". In fact the idea that "everyone does" whatever crime you're considering is the first and foremost rationalization people make before committing crimes like tax evasion and so on.

consumer451 2y ago
I agree with your sentiment one hundred percent. However, I am just stating that this is how the world works. Cryptocurrency is another horrific example, where the value-add is avoiding KYC = tax and sanctions evasion! I knew this over a decade ago, and decided to sit it out for moral reasons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ edit: to be honest, not just moral reasons. I just could not imagine that in a just world, this illegality would be allowed to continue. So little did I know.
bananskalhalk 2y ago
Uber is really interesting example, since they started as a legit upscale taxi service, got mad Lyft flaunted the rules and regulations. They finally pivoted to the success story they are now after seeing how toothless the check and balances actually were.
- sehansen 2y ago
  It's really interesting how much Uber was trying to do things the right way, only to then over-correct into being the most devious and underhanded app-taxi company. But the other company that Uber reacted to was Wingz, Inc, not Lyft.
  - infecto 2y ago
    I am being pedantic and never worked for Uber but I always assumed it was sidecar, I vividly remember them all over the city with their side mirror covers--don't ever recall seeing Wingz, though I am sure the existed. I would argue it was not even so much that they were doing "things the right way", they were optimizing black car service and pivoted because it was not as lucrative.

Frieren 2y ago

> Don't worry about "regulatory." Are you recommending to break the law or are you being sarcastic? I sincerely do not know anymore.

immibis 2y ago
Every rich person broke the law to get there.
- Neonlicht 2y ago
  Was it even possible to make a legal Spotify? I don't recall that any of the music labels were actually renting out MP3s.
  - toast0 2y ago
    It depends on exactly what Spotify does for you. Launchcast was a pioneer of personalized internet radio, starting in 1999. Pandora offered a similar service in 2005. Both of those services claimed legality through mechanical licenses for non-interactive play. In the ~ 2005-2008 time frame, many monthly services sprang up to offer play any song from their catalog on demand, along with limited downloading, based on Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM program. Services included Yahoo Music Unlimited, Napster to Go (lol), (Real) Rhapsody, MSN Music and a bunch more. Afaik, this was all legal, but Microsoft shut down the DRM program with, I think, very little discussion as to why (but probably had to do with lack of market share in portable players) I do recall some issues with the catalog on Yahoo Music Unlimited where the non-interactive catalog was bigger than the interactive catalog, because non-interactive has mechanical licensing and interactive play requires an intetactive licensing exercise between the rightsholders and the service provider.
whynotmaybe 2y ago
If you're building an electronic device, "the next best gadget AI" , with a brand new Bluetooth chip that can communicate over 5 km by using some radioactive material, but you don't know whether it will be a success or not, you face two situations : 1. You do all government certifications like FCC, recycling, pollution, security, backed with scientific research that your chip is ok. This will cost a lot of money and time and might prevent you from reaching the market quickly. 2. You start selling asap as a Prototype. You make money and you can start the whole certification process. (or not). The concept of Prototype is legal in many countries, there's often an official threshold of product sold at which your product is not a prototype anymore.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Don't worry about "regulatory." If your product matters, then you will be able to afford to solve the problem. If your product doesn't matter, then "regulatory" will not be an issue. Just ignore it. Unless you live in a country where copyright or other regulations can lead to actual jail time. IMHO, companies intentionally breaking the law should be held accountable by going after executives - even if they left the company.

zaptheimpaler 2y ago

Worked for all the AI labs as well. Turns out you can steal the entirety of copyrighted works in existence on the internet without consequence if the resulting company is big enough.

svantana 2y ago
This sounds backwards. All the big players in AI are getting sued while most of the minor players are flying under the radar.
- zaptheimpaler 2y ago
  The very top of the US government is partnering with and supporting OpenAI, Meta etc. None of these lawsuits are going to amount to anything more than a slap on the wrist. Their logic seems to be that AI is going to be a matter of national importance, and other countries will infringe the copyright anyways, so it must be allowed for the US AI industry to stay competitive. There's a list of cases here [1]. The case against Github Copilot was already mostly dismissed despite it producing identical samples to license-restricted code. The cat is so far out of the bag now anyways with many open models and datasets containing the stolen data - there is nothing anyone can do about it now. [1]https://www.bakerlaw.com/services/artificial-intelligence-ai/case-tracker-artificial-intelligence-copyrights-and-class-actions/ https://www.bakerlaw.com/services/artificial-intelligence-ai...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

immibis 2y ago

If an individual did this, or what Facebook did, they'd get a prison sentence. Should startup founders give themselves prison sentences? Spotify only got away with it after the fact because they pivoted to a model that gives money to the people who wanted to put them in prison before. And Facebook got away with it becau it's big.

consumer451 2y ago
> Should startup founders give themselves prison sentences? Well this is the interesting thing. Have there been any, aside from the Mega example?

erellsworth 2y ago

Move fast and break the law.

CrossVR 2y ago

If Spotify was properly paying its share of royalty fees to the artists I don't think it violates any regulations that they used pirated versions of the music. It's simply more convenient for Spotify because they don't have to rip the music from a CD themselves. When rights holders use a pirated version of their work it may be embarrassing, but it certainly doesn't violate copyright law. (Assuming the pirates didn't transform the work in a substantive way)

rglullis 2y ago

> I personally find this concept pretty darn offensive I'm more offended by the idea that we should sit quiet and not do anything just because the status quo set up the rules in their favor. The immoral part here is not using pirated content to build the initial catalog. The immoral part is that their success came by aligning with the exploiters (the labels) and not the exploited artists.

doublerabbit 2y ago
> I'm more offended by the idea that we should sit quiet and not do anything just because the status quo set up the rules in their favor. Let's do something then. You lead the way and I'll follow.
- consumer451 2y ago
  My personal Spotify alternative is KEXP, KCRW human DJs -> Bandcamp purchases. If anyone else could share any other radio stations who still have living human disc jockeys, I would love to check them out. DJs are an amazing resource which should be cherished. https://kexp.org https://kexp.org https://www.kcrw.com/music https://www.kcrw.com/music I mean come on, this is all amazing. Forget the music recommendation machine algos: https://www.kcrw.com/music/articles/pachyman-samia-steel-wool-grrl-made-of-oak-tim-hecker https://www.kcrw.com/music/articles/pachyman-samia-steel-woo... The next logical step is for one of us to make a Spotify clone which leverages these human DJs, and gives credit with links to station and artist Bandcamp. https://claude.ai/share/7c277bf6-eb65-4148-979d-f76ee6027fb0 https://claude.ai/share/7c277bf6-eb65-4148-979d-f76ee6027fb0
  - icameron 2y ago
    Sure my share for knowledge live human DJs (about 75% of the time- they also have a few talk shows) is https://www.xray.fm/ https://www.xray.fm/
- GlacierFox 2y ago
  No see that's where their ideals fall apart. They want YOU to lead the way. Go on lead the way, I'll follow.

Workaccount2 2y ago

People always think big mega corps are the most egregious offenders of skirting the law and doing nefarious things to avoid prosecution. bruh... Having been in industry for over a decade now, the opposite is true. Big mega corp has a huge legal team and is always looking to stop any law breaking. They don't need to break the law and doing so will only incur huge fines and huge negative public outcray. They pay compliance people to walk around and breath down managers necks. Small corps on the other hand...it's basically a free for all of "do whatever it takes to get this over the line and keep it alive, and if it fails just walk away and let the public deal with it".

sailfast 2y ago

This was a BETA test, not the product... YouTube on the other hand...

dylan604 2y ago

Except for people making individual choices. I don't do business with companies that were founded by asshats. I will not use Uber even if they changed leadership. The shenanigans they pulled were inexcusable, and I will not whitewash them with my patronage. There are other companies for various similar reasons led me to make the same decision. Unfortunately, there are many many more people that don't care and/or don't know about the decisions made by company leadership, so voting with my wallet makes no difference to the company. I just keep adding to my soapbox collection. Starry eyed world would have more people making similar decisions so that asshat companies do not succeed so that regulations would not be necessary. To bad that world doesn't exist

jppope 2y ago

There maybe an inkling of truth for mass consumer markets where incumbents set up regulatory capture but it couldn't be more untrue for hard-tech companies or companies that work in dangerous domains where human safety is a concern.