Don’t know if you guys remember this, but I was affected and it was a bitch to get rid of. I also pirated basically everything back then and was hugely active in music file sharing, having my own mp3 blog and everything, and contributing to one with tens of thousands of downloads per post. Ah, the good old times.
A scandal erupted in 2005 regarding Sony BMG’s implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware). One of the programs would install and phone home with reports on the user’s private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright), and configured the operating system to hide the software’s existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.
Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released, for one of the programs, an uninstaller that only un-hid the program, installed additional software that could not be easily removed, collected an email-address from the user, and introduced further security vulnerabilities.
Researchers found that Sony BMG and the makers of XCP also apparently infringed copyright by failing to adhere to the licensing requirements of various pieces of free open source software whose code was used in the program.
Spotify, closed source DRM peddlers, and the RIAA are all connected to the music industry but why each are harmful to consumers (and creatives!) varies quite a bit, there are overlaps but for the most part they make us miserable through different approaches to profit-drive and unlimited growth.
This is just money doing it’s thing. Wherever lots of money pile up in the same place, or exists ambitions thereof, the sources of said money gets treated badly
Sure. Thread was inspired by all the talk of Spotify being evil recently. Thing is, music industry has always been evil. Spotify is just a disruptor, they came in and swooped a large market share from the old distributors with new technology. Music industry has always been anti-artist, anti-consumer. Spotify is just a new player in a long line of evil corporations.
“Disruptor” tends to be a euphemism for the same Calfornia Ideology/hypercapitalists creating an “it’s different, because internet” subversion of existing regulatory schemes.
I don’t see them as “disruptive” to markets in that regard.
It’s definitely more popular than Tidal, Apple Music, or Pandora but it’s not “disruptive” to its competitors. Moreso one of the early streaming successes over consuming through owning media through iTunes, Bandcamp and the like.
Streaming and SAAS over owning everything is a concern, of course.
Convenience works with say, Steam when you can purchase something and have it in your library. But I don’t “own” anything in Spotify.
Disruptive in the sense that they took over a huge portion of music distribution. You maybe disagree with the terminology but they did come out of nowhere and became the biggest streaming platform in a matter of years.
But you also don’t “own” anything you buy off Steam, either. It’s the same, but due to game streaming still being developed you download files to your computer.
Owning stuff is so last century. We’re consumers, not owners.
Yes, I understand your use there, it did shift from per-song purchases to streaming as a viable model (though I’m unsure how profitable they are?)
Mostly brought up because “disruptive” in the hypercapitalist sense is even more hostile to our existence than I have any concern about iTunes or Pandora
I remember that, personally I don’t see it as very different from SCMS in terms of what it was intended to do - prevent digital copying. I guess you could make the argument that installing code covertly was a bit of a scandal, yet that seems quite quaint compared to nowadays, post privacy.
But my favourite Sony story is a few years earlier, where Sony music was suing Napster, and Sony electronics was releasing a CD player that could also play CDs full of the mp3s you downloaded from Napster.
…just another “nice” proof how broken the whole system is, how high the panic factor in the music industry was, once people started to share instead of paying and what happens once venture capital, shareholders and profit takes over…
i’ve seen the liberisation of production tools…
i’ve seen the rise of independant labels…
the first challenge for the majors…
how majors bought the indies…
the repetition of how underground becomes mainstream…
and i’ve seen napster and the dawn of the information age changing the whole game…
i saw the death of vinyl…the death of cd’s…the comeback of vinyl…
i’ve seen how ipod and apple music tried to do something about it, but failed soon enough for the same old reasons…
and i’ve seen like all of us, how the rise of streaming farms changed the game again and how quick good old majors, which are nothing but banks, started to become big shareholders of those streamingfarms to get back in their saddles again…
it was a long way for the whole music industry, from to make people buy recordings, those famous “good old days” which were also pretty bad, over to pay nothing for recordings to finally rent recordings…all the business models of great public scale…
be ready for a future, where u own nothing but be happy anyways…
the new marching order…
while fact remains, it’s an achievement to get publics opinion from music needs no payment at all back to music has it’s very own worth again…
and hell yeah, there was never that much money beeing made with music as there is today!
most of it is only ending up in the wrong hands again…same old patterns…
not artists and not the streamingfarms profit…it’s the same good old major banks again…
with their endless backcatalog powers and their big shares of those streaming services that guarantees them to dictate the game again…
and captitalism keeps still growing, totally untamed, always learning, always closing in on every last gap to find…that’s the “only” problem…that business as usual, only here to eat itself…way sooner than later…
stay tuned for the endgame, my friends…
ECJ / European Court of Justice: Cloud service provider need to pay copyright fees
Point is …here in Europe we pay fees for every medium already (printers, tapes, CDR, DVDR (of course also on the devices), HDD, SSD, USB, SD, CF etc. pp.) because we are allowed to make private copies of copyrighted material – so now music industry™️ wants to make a lil more money by saying cloud provider need to pay double for all the ‘piracy’ happening on their services.
