6 ms·

> Infra isn’t free. There is a certain irony in people providing copyrighted works for free justifying profiting from these copyrights on the basis that provid

by lurk2 10mo ago

> Infra isn’t free. There is a certain irony in people providing copyrighted works for free justifying profiting from these copyrights on the basis that providing the works to others isn’t free.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago
Cost recovery isn’t profit. Copyright is just a shared delusion, like most laws. They’re just bits on a disk we’re told are special for ~100 years (or whatever the copyright lockup length is in your jurisdiction), after which they’re no longer special (having entered the public domain). I think what is more ironic is we somehow were comfortable being collectively conditioned (manufactured consent?) with the idea that you could lock up culture for 100 years or more just to enable maximum economic extraction from the concept of “intellectual property” and that to evade such insanity is wrong in some way. “You can just do things” after all.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- noduerme 10mo ago
  It's not the bits that are copyrighted, it's the performance and the creative work. Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish.
  - komali2 10mo ago
    > Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish. That's another example of the shared delusion, since yes, we tell eachother it represents labor and resources, and the market engages in allocation somewhat efficiently, and so the money is a pretty accurate representation of the value of labor and the value of resources. In reality, that's not true, because the most highly compensated jobs are some of the least valuable, such as investment bankers, landlords, or being born rich (which isn't even a job, but is compensated anyway). Rent seeking is one of the most highly compensated things you can do under this system, but also one of the most parasitic and least valuable things. Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born.
    - gosub100 10mo ago
      > Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born This could also be true because the number of dollars in circulation is "just bits on a disk" that politicians can manipulate for various reasons. Someone can work very hard and save their earnings, only to have the value diluted in the future. Isn't that also a delusion?
      - komali2 10mo ago
        > Someone can work very hard and save their earnings, only to have the value diluted in the future. Isn't that also a delusion? Yes, it is. It's one of my pet peeves about the cryptocurrency movement vs neoliberal institutional types. "Bitcoin is juts bits on a disk!" is always answered with "well, dollars is too!" To which the institutionalist can only say, "no, that's different." But really, it isn't. What the cryptocurrency people get wrong is that replacing one shared delusion with another isn't a useful path to go down.
        dagss 10mo ago
        Unless you do substinence farming, you would not last a month without "shared delusions" in place to make sure farmers supply you with food, getting nothing in return except a promise that they can go somewhere to pick up something someone else than you made in the future. Money isn't "only bits" it is also an encoding of social contracts You use the word delusion like it also includes a) things everyone fully agree only exists in people's mind as intersubjective reality (no deceit going on really) and b) things you depend on for your survival. You talk like getting rid of "delusions", as you call them, is a goal in itself. Why? It is part of human technology. (Just like math, which also only exist in people's minds.) Humans have had contracts since we were hunter gatherers in groups... I would recommend Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" for you, you would probably like it. It talks about the history of "shared delusions" as you call them, as a critical piece for development of society.
        komali2 10mo ago
- lurk2 10mo ago
  > that to evade such insanity is wrong in some way. There’s a commons problem at play here. Most habitual pirates couldn’t pay for what they are pirating even if they wanted to, so restricting their access just makes the world worse-off; but who is going to finance the creation of new content if everything is just reliant on completely optional donations? The 100 year period is absurd and does nothing to incentivize art, but there are costs involved in production of these works. People are always going to make music and write books regardless of the economic outcome; far fewer are going to write technical manuals or act as qualified reporters without being compensated.
  - 0x3f 10mo ago
    > Most habitual pirates couldn’t pay for what they are pirating Seems questionable. You can cover almost everything with a handful of monthly subscriptions these days. In fact I often pirate things that I otherwise have access to via e.g. Amazon Prime. > but who is going to finance the creation of new content if everything is just reliant on completely optional donations? Well this is an appeal to consequences, right? It's probably true that increased protectable output is a positive of IP law, but that doesn't mean it's an optimal overall state, given the (massive) negatives. It's a local maxima, or so I would argue. Plus it's a bit of a strange argument. It seems to claim that we must protect Disney from e.g. 'knock offs', and somehow if we didn't, nobody would be motivated to create things. But then who would be making the knock-offs and what would be motivating them?
    - klez 10mo ago
      > You can cover almost everything with a handful of monthly subscriptions these days. Maybe for you that's something you can afford. I can't. I just consume less music. Or sail the high seas if I really want something.
      - 0x3f 10mo ago
        If we're purely talking about music then almost everything is on YouTube, which has a subscription cost of $0/mo.
- verisimi 10mo ago
  I agree completely. Parasites with money like to keep open the legal loopholes for their clever wheeze.
- dagss 10mo ago
  Sure. But in addition to copyright you might add the concept of money, or the concept of any property rights and ownership of physical things, and... Calling such things "shared delusions" is missing the point...it's not that it's wrong, but it is not a very useful way to look at it. There is such a thing as intersubjective (as opposed to objective) reality. Physically it exists as a shared pattern in the brains of humans, but that is seldom useful to reflect on. Language wise much more convenient and useful to talk about copyright as something, you know, existing. Everyone knows these are just human agreements... it is not exactly deep thinking to point it out. You may not agree to some laws. You can then seek to have the laws overturned (I agree patents and copyright are... counterproductive, at this point). Luckily many parts of the world have democracy to decide what laws to force on people, as opposed to a dictator.
- bekindtoartists 10mo ago
  Are you an artist? Have you ever created a piece of work that has a copyright attached? You might be anti-establishment but ultimately you are anti-creation. Artists are finding it harder and harder to live and create, artists are vital proponents and voices in changing culture - for you to take away their ability to live in a financially viable way says more about you and how you have conflated big business and an artist who is trying to make art and live.
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    I pay artists directly, and know they receive almost nothing from Spotify and other Big Tech platforms, ymmv. Artists good, big business bad.
  - themusicgod1 10mo ago
    I am. Copyright is fucking cancer and is one of the worst things if not the worst things that exists to make creating new things harder. Making bits available isn't "taking artists ability to live in a financially viable way" any more than radio, LPs and player pianos was. If you are an artist who is trying to make art and live do more of that and don't waste peoples time arguing for copyright restricting other people's activity on websites like this one.
jasonvorhe 10mo ago
Everyone is doing it, who Cates anymore. Genie's out of the bottle, we could've tried to solve this for decades and yet we didn't so now we reap what we sowed. Happens, move on.
xmcp123 10mo ago
I'd have a lot more sympathy if the music industry didn't try all of the worst available options to handle piracy for years and years. They had many opportunities to get out ahead of it, and they squandered it trying to cling to album sales where 11/13 tracks were trash. They are in a bed of their own making.
- raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
  You have been able to buy DRM free digital music from all of the record labels since 2009 from Apple and other stores.
  - jMyles 10mo ago
    > DRM free digital music from all of the record labels Is this true? Can you show me where I can get DRM-free releases from Mountain Fever? Better yet, can you add that information here? https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free
    - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
      Your link doesn’t work. But I assume you are talking about this label? I looked at the first artist and I found the artist’s music on iTunes. Everything that Apple sells on the iTunes Music Store has been DRM free AAC or ALAC (Apple lossless) since 2009. https://mountainfever.com/colin-kathleen-ray/ https://mountainfever.com/colin-kathleen-ray/ While ALAC is an Apple proprietary format, it is DRM free and can be converted to FLAC using ffmeg. AAC is not an Apple format
      - jdabney 10mo ago
        ALAC is open source and royalty free since 2011. https://macosforge.github.io/alac/ https://macosforge.github.io/alac/
        raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
hamdingers 10mo ago
Do you have evidence they are profiting? I'm genuinely curious how these kinds of archives sustain themselves.
- djeastm 10mo ago
  They take donations.
  - cwnyth 10mo ago
    Just to nitpick, that doesn't imply profit. They could be breaking even (and probably are working at a loss).
- lurk2 10mo ago
  I don’t think any of them are breaking even when you consider the maintenance costs, I just thought it was kind of funny considering the nature of the line of work they are in. This was a different group of people but when some of the old LibGen domains got seized the FBI uploaded photos of the owners and the things they had spent their money on; a crappy old boat, what looked like a trailer in rural Siberia, and a vacation somewhere in the Mediterranean. It honestly read like sketch comedy, because the purchases didn’t appear remotely ostentatious. Z-library also supposedly caps downloads at 5 per day and offers more and faster downloads to paying subscribers.
emaro 10mo ago
I admit the irony, but also funny reminder that Spotify started with a pirated catalogue back on the day.
woctordho 10mo ago
Data are basically free. Infra to store and transfer data is not.

by lurk2 10mo ago

> Infra isn’t free. There is a certain irony in people providing copyrighted works for free justifying profiting from these copyrights on the basis that providing the works to others isn’t free.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago

Cost recovery isn’t profit. Copyright is just a shared delusion, like most laws. They’re just bits on a disk we’re told are special for ~100 years (or whatever the copyright lockup length is in your jurisdiction), after which they’re no longer special (having entered the public domain). I think what is more ironic is we somehow were comfortable being collectively conditioned (manufactured consent?) with the idea that you could lock up culture for 100 years or more just to enable maximum economic extraction from the concept of “intellectual property” and that to evade such insanity is wrong in some way. “You can just do things” after all.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
noduerme 10mo ago
It's not the bits that are copyrighted, it's the performance and the creative work. Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish.
- komali2 10mo ago
  > Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish. That's another example of the shared delusion, since yes, we tell eachother it represents labor and resources, and the market engages in allocation somewhat efficiently, and so the money is a pretty accurate representation of the value of labor and the value of resources. In reality, that's not true, because the most highly compensated jobs are some of the least valuable, such as investment bankers, landlords, or being born rich (which isn't even a job, but is compensated anyway). Rent seeking is one of the most highly compensated things you can do under this system, but also one of the most parasitic and least valuable things. Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born.
  - gosub100 10mo ago
    > Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born This could also be true because the number of dollars in circulation is "just bits on a disk" that politicians can manipulate for various reasons. Someone can work very hard and save their earnings, only to have the value diluted in the future. Isn't that also a delusion?
    - komali2 10mo ago
      > Someone can work very hard and save their earnings, only to have the value diluted in the future. Isn't that also a delusion? Yes, it is. It's one of my pet peeves about the cryptocurrency movement vs neoliberal institutional types. "Bitcoin is juts bits on a disk!" is always answered with "well, dollars is too!" To which the institutionalist can only say, "no, that's different." But really, it isn't. What the cryptocurrency people get wrong is that replacing one shared delusion with another isn't a useful path to go down.
      - dagss 10mo ago
        Unless you do substinence farming, you would not last a month without "shared delusions" in place to make sure farmers supply you with food, getting nothing in return except a promise that they can go somewhere to pick up something someone else than you made in the future. Money isn't "only bits" it is also an encoding of social contracts You use the word delusion like it also includes a) things everyone fully agree only exists in people's mind as intersubjective reality (no deceit going on really) and b) things you depend on for your survival. You talk like getting rid of "delusions", as you call them, is a goal in itself. Why? It is part of human technology. (Just like math, which also only exist in people's minds.) Humans have had contracts since we were hunter gatherers in groups... I would recommend Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" for you, you would probably like it. It talks about the history of "shared delusions" as you call them, as a critical piece for development of society.
        komali2 10mo ago
lurk2 10mo ago
> that to evade such insanity is wrong in some way. There’s a commons problem at play here. Most habitual pirates couldn’t pay for what they are pirating even if they wanted to, so restricting their access just makes the world worse-off; but who is going to finance the creation of new content if everything is just reliant on completely optional donations? The 100 year period is absurd and does nothing to incentivize art, but there are costs involved in production of these works. People are always going to make music and write books regardless of the economic outcome; far fewer are going to write technical manuals or act as qualified reporters without being compensated.
- 0x3f 10mo ago
  > Most habitual pirates couldn’t pay for what they are pirating Seems questionable. You can cover almost everything with a handful of monthly subscriptions these days. In fact I often pirate things that I otherwise have access to via e.g. Amazon Prime. > but who is going to finance the creation of new content if everything is just reliant on completely optional donations? Well this is an appeal to consequences, right? It's probably true that increased protectable output is a positive of IP law, but that doesn't mean it's an optimal overall state, given the (massive) negatives. It's a local maxima, or so I would argue. Plus it's a bit of a strange argument. It seems to claim that we must protect Disney from e.g. 'knock offs', and somehow if we didn't, nobody would be motivated to create things. But then who would be making the knock-offs and what would be motivating them?
  - klez 10mo ago
    > You can cover almost everything with a handful of monthly subscriptions these days. Maybe for you that's something you can afford. I can't. I just consume less music. Or sail the high seas if I really want something.
    - 0x3f 10mo ago
      If we're purely talking about music then almost everything is on YouTube, which has a subscription cost of $0/mo.
verisimi 10mo ago
I agree completely. Parasites with money like to keep open the legal loopholes for their clever wheeze.
dagss 10mo ago
Sure. But in addition to copyright you might add the concept of money, or the concept of any property rights and ownership of physical things, and... Calling such things "shared delusions" is missing the point...it's not that it's wrong, but it is not a very useful way to look at it. There is such a thing as intersubjective (as opposed to objective) reality. Physically it exists as a shared pattern in the brains of humans, but that is seldom useful to reflect on. Language wise much more convenient and useful to talk about copyright as something, you know, existing. Everyone knows these are just human agreements... it is not exactly deep thinking to point it out. You may not agree to some laws. You can then seek to have the laws overturned (I agree patents and copyright are... counterproductive, at this point). Luckily many parts of the world have democracy to decide what laws to force on people, as opposed to a dictator.
bekindtoartists 10mo ago
Are you an artist? Have you ever created a piece of work that has a copyright attached? You might be anti-establishment but ultimately you are anti-creation. Artists are finding it harder and harder to live and create, artists are vital proponents and voices in changing culture - for you to take away their ability to live in a financially viable way says more about you and how you have conflated big business and an artist who is trying to make art and live.
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  I pay artists directly, and know they receive almost nothing from Spotify and other Big Tech platforms, ymmv. Artists good, big business bad.
- themusicgod1 10mo ago
  I am. Copyright is fucking cancer and is one of the worst things if not the worst things that exists to make creating new things harder. Making bits available isn't "taking artists ability to live in a financially viable way" any more than radio, LPs and player pianos was. If you are an artist who is trying to make art and live do more of that and don't waste peoples time arguing for copyright restricting other people's activity on websites like this one.

jasonvorhe 10mo ago

Everyone is doing it, who Cates anymore. Genie's out of the bottle, we could've tried to solve this for decades and yet we didn't so now we reap what we sowed. Happens, move on.

xmcp123 10mo ago

I'd have a lot more sympathy if the music industry didn't try all of the worst available options to handle piracy for years and years. They had many opportunities to get out ahead of it, and they squandered it trying to cling to album sales where 11/13 tracks were trash. They are in a bed of their own making.

raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
You have been able to buy DRM free digital music from all of the record labels since 2009 from Apple and other stores.
- jMyles 10mo ago
  > DRM free digital music from all of the record labels Is this true? Can you show me where I can get DRM-free releases from Mountain Fever? Better yet, can you add that information here? https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    Your link doesn’t work. But I assume you are talking about this label? I looked at the first artist and I found the artist’s music on iTunes. Everything that Apple sells on the iTunes Music Store has been DRM free AAC or ALAC (Apple lossless) since 2009. https://mountainfever.com/colin-kathleen-ray/ https://mountainfever.com/colin-kathleen-ray/ While ALAC is an Apple proprietary format, it is DRM free and can be converted to FLAC using ffmeg. AAC is not an Apple format
    - jdabney 10mo ago
      ALAC is open source and royalty free since 2011. https://macosforge.github.io/alac/ https://macosforge.github.io/alac/
      - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago

hamdingers 10mo ago

Do you have evidence they are profiting? I'm genuinely curious how these kinds of archives sustain themselves.

djeastm 10mo ago
They take donations.
- cwnyth 10mo ago
  Just to nitpick, that doesn't imply profit. They could be breaking even (and probably are working at a loss).
lurk2 10mo ago
I don’t think any of them are breaking even when you consider the maintenance costs, I just thought it was kind of funny considering the nature of the line of work they are in. This was a different group of people but when some of the old LibGen domains got seized the FBI uploaded photos of the owners and the things they had spent their money on; a crappy old boat, what looked like a trailer in rural Siberia, and a vacation somewhere in the Mediterranean. It honestly read like sketch comedy, because the purchases didn’t appear remotely ostentatious. Z-library also supposedly caps downloads at 5 per day and offers more and faster downloads to paying subscribers.

emaro 10mo ago

I admit the irony, but also funny reminder that Spotify started with a pirated catalogue back on the day.

woctordho 10mo ago

Data are basically free. Infra to store and transfer data is not.