Sony Patents Anti-Piracy Blacklist for Smart TVs and Media Players

[Quackers101]

installs bad and malware like anti-piracy tools

users going to pirate more

surprised pickachu face

[Fasterthannothing]

13 hours ago, jaslion said:

So basically dont use the built in smart tv features and avoid sony players?

 

Sure not hard to do

No from what I understand of this patent any playback detected to be from a pirated content play back system (ie Plex or Kodi running on anything)

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Them thinking about it should be reason enough to boycott.

Not really. The company can't "unthink" the idea like it can cancel a product. I wouldn't want to swear off a company's products based on what I think might happen.

 

And to riff on what wanderingfool2 said: it is funny to think that people will blast Sony for this and run into the arms of... Samsung, which is defined by corruption and nepotism? Microsoft, the one-time poster child for antitrust violations? You get the idea. If Sony's worst offence is a patent for an anti-piracy blacklisting system, it's doing pretty well for itself.

 

[divito]

41 minutes ago, Commodus said:

And to riff on what wanderingfool2 said: it is funny to think that people will blast Sony for this and run into the arms of... Samsung, which is defined by corruption and nepotism? Microsoft, the one-time poster child for antitrust violations? You get the idea. If Sony's worst offence is a patent for an anti-piracy blacklisting system, it's doing pretty well for itself.

Sony has lots of offences though, and this anti-piracy patent is definitely not the worst.

I don't see how your options are only Sony, Samsung, and Microsoft. There are a lot of other technology companies that won't do these kinds of things, so much that you can boycott all of them if you were so inclined.

The problem with all these ancient-thinking companies is that almost every solution they conjure has a way of hurting legitimate consumers. Piracy is a market correction; they're emboldening the very thing they're trying to stop. The music industry (and Sony) went through the same thing before.

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, Commodus said:

it is funny to think that people will blast Sony for this and run into the arms of... Samsung, which is defined by corruption and nepotism? Microsoft, the one-time poster child for antitrust violations? You get the idea. If Sony's worst offence is a patent for an anti-piracy blacklisting system, it's doing pretty well for itself.

When did I ever said run towards other corporations? I'd boycott all of them the same way

[Donut417]

How is this any different from how Apple for example polices its App Store? I mean people are smart and the more they try to squeeze people the more people figure out how to get around the safe guards. I clearly remember Blu-ray's having better encryption than DVD's and it didnt seem like it took long before people found a way around. Pirates are really resourceful people, I have faith. 

[divito]

10 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Pirates are really resourceful people, I have faith. 

That's besides the point. Pirates and their ingenuity would be far less necessary if they were allowed to be normal consumers.

Napster, while "grey" legally, showed the demand for single song purchases, with a novel distribution model in 1999/2000. It took 4 years before Apple/Jobs managed smacked the record labels into moving into the new era instead of fighting their own consumers and what they wanted.

Video, software, etc... all share these issues. When companies fail or refuse to supply a market with a product, delivery method, or realistic prices, etc..., the space is then filled by pirates and those consumers.

As stated above, piracy is a market correction. Sure, there will always be people that can acquire content just because they can, but as shown in record revenues across varying industries, companies (and in this case, Sony) simply need to spend less time fighting the consumers, and more time ascertaining what the consumers are trying to tell them about their offerings.

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, divito said:

That's besides the point. Pirates and their ingenuity would be far less necessary if they were allowed to be normal consumers.

Napster, while "grey" legally, showed the demand for single song purchases, with a novel distribution model in 1999/2000. It took 4 years before Apple/Jobs managed smacked the record labels into moving into the new era instead of fighting their own consumers and what they wanted.

Video, software, etc... all share these issues. When companies fail or refuse to supply a market with a product, delivery method, or realistic prices, etc..., the space is then filled by pirates and those consumers.

As stated above, piracy is a market correction. Sure, there will always be people that can acquire content just because they can, but as shown in record revenues across varying industries, companies (and in this case, Sony) simply need to spend less time fighting the consumers, and more time ascertaining what the consumers are trying to tell them about their offerings.

The only problem with that line of argument is that it doesn't take into account the overall drop in revenue for artists.  Specifically music, since 2000 the amount of content available (legally) has skyrocketed,  magnitudes more artists with their work out there,  however the average revenue has declined massively.  Streaming now makes up the lions share of artist revenue, unfortunately it is a pittance on the CD sales revenue from the late stages of the CD era. 

The problem is twofold, one the internet has given consumers both the ability to simply pirate (which does actually reduce sales because without that ability a certain percentage of consumers would actually buy the product), and secondly the number of companies able to offering streaming services has meant that competition and ad revenue through streaming (the preferred option of consumers) is to tight and low to actually make it a viable source of income for many artists.

 

Somewhere a few years back I was in a thread pointing to the industry statistics and highlighted the issues the industry faces.   

 

 

 

[Commodus]

14 hours ago, divito said:

Sony has lots of offences though, and this anti-piracy patent is definitely not the worst.

I don't see how your options are only Sony, Samsung, and Microsoft. There are a lot of other technology companies that won't do these kinds of things, so much that you can boycott all of them if you were so inclined.

The problem with all these ancient-thinking companies is that almost every solution they conjure has a way of hurting legitimate consumers. Piracy is a market correction; they're emboldening the very thing they're trying to stop. The music industry (and Sony) went through the same thing before.

I didn't say that they're the only options — just that many people will flock to them without really thinking about whether those companies are any better. Like the folks who swear off Apple over manufacturing conditions, only to use devices made in similar or worse conditions (just without as much transparency).

 

And in this case, people are getting ready to swear off Sony for something it might do... one day, maybe, theoretically. Should we watch out for a potential crackdown? You bet. But if we insist on only doing business with tech companies with immaculate values even in their patent filings, we'll be Amish before the day is over.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

The only problem with that line of argument is that it doesn't take into account the overall drop in revenue for artists.  Specifically music, since 2000 the amount of content available (legally) has skyrocketed,  magnitudes more artists with their work out there,  however the average revenue has declined massively.  Streaming now makes up the lions share of artist revenue, unfortunately it is a pittance on the CD sales revenue from the late stages of the CD era. 

The problem is twofold, one the internet has given consumers both the ability to simply pirate (which does actually reduce sales because without that ability a certain percentage of consumers would actually buy the product), and secondly the number of companies able to offering streaming services has meant that competition and ad revenue through streaming (the preferred option of consumers) is to tight and low to actually make it a viable source of income for many artists.

 

 

 

Nah, boohoo, cry more recording industry. They had a captive audience until 1997 and then decided sueing their customers and fans was a good business model. That only escalated the willingness for people to pirate with impunity. It's like the adblock or no adblock argument. The people who use it are effectively stealing if they are using it on services they actually use (such as youtube and spotify, which is why spotify wants you to use their app, and so does Tiktok and Twitter.) 

 

The Recording industry did, and still does a lot of scummy stuff, and that model had to die.

https://www.billboard.com/pro/taylor-swift-shake-it-off-lyrics-lawsuit-case-dropped/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/05/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-lawsuit-eras/

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/15/20966470/taylor-swift-scooter-braun-scott-borchetta

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/h-e-r-sues-her-record-label-and-asks-out-of-contract-1371222/

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-60492452

https://americansongwriter.com/artists-sue-trax-record-label-over-years-of-bad-business-fraud-unpaid-royalties-copyright-infringement/

 

Musicians are now expected to make the lions share of their revenue from live performances, like they should. The recording industry meanwhile defrauds the people they sign with to make sure they can not sign with anyone else or go back to being independent, and holds their recordings and royalties hostage.

 

The thing that probably annoys me more about the entire music industry is that music rights agencies exist, and thus if the rights agency for your country is completely clueless, good luck buying music from outside the country. I can name a half dozen times where I went looking for the original song, or a specific cover of the song, and could find neither, or could only find a low-quality cover on spotify, or a clearly pirated version on youtube. And this happened recently, some track I wanted to go find, I could only find a low quality edit on youtube, and in the comments was "why hasn't the artist re-recorded this song?", "She doesn't have the rights to it anymore"

 

This entire idea that the recording industry or music rights agencies do anything good for artists is a myth, and the artists themselves would be better off putting their music on iTunes and Spotify themselves if they have no intention of ever performing live.

 

Going back to the idea that Sony actually cares about the IP they own, Sony actually has the necessary leverage to force SmartTV manufacturers to include whatever DRM nonsense, but as mentioned repeatedly, do that, and people will just buy a STB (Set Top Box) that bypasses that. People regularly do that already. That is what the Nvidia Shield is popularly used for.

 

The music and film industry is afraid of Kodi (XMBC) boxes that you can find all over eBay, because there are firmware packages and plugins for it that connect to piracy services. What do you think is going to happen if Sony tells SmartTV vendors that they must blacklist Kodi and Plex? I don't know about you, but that doesn't change the status quo. People who were already hellbent on paying nothing for content, will still pay for VPN's and expensive Kodi boxes just so they pay $0 to Netflix, Disney+ and Crunchyroll, and have a bigger choice of "everything"

 

The film and television industry learned the wrong lesson from the recording industry. People do not want to pay $20/mo for silo'd off content. The television industry is still treating apps as though they are cable packages. So instead of paying $100/mo to a television provider for what amounts to basic service, you're expected to pay for 5 separate $20 services now? No, that's stupid and we should not be encouraging that. The Netflix model was literately "stream it instead of mailing a DVD", and yet if I wanted watch something that is "exclusive to X app" that is only available in the United States, well, guess my options are ... Nothing, or Pirate it. And companies wonder why apps aren't doing well.

 

That goes right back to the entire problem of some company monopolizing the rights in the country and thus, you can't just get the US app. A key example of this is "HBO", in Canada, HBO has never been properly available, because Bell Media uses it as the carrot to sign up for it's Crave service, and yet, is not a complete library, because of course, rights holders or government interference prevents them from doing so.

 

There's also the other beef I have, there is countless hours of content that was produced for TV only, that when it was originally broadcast, had licensed music, or covers in it, but then when it was released on DVD or streaming channels, it was replaced with generic background music, because the IP owner didn't want to pay to license it for DVD or streaming.

 

This all points back to the "music recording industry" being unreasonable again. Bow to your copyright overlords, or never be entertained again.

[Mark Kaine]

They should have promoted mini discs more, than we would have nearly indestructible long time storage now, and a better music format!  but nooooo... biggest own goal ever? at least in the top 10 lol

[ewitte]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

The only problem with that line of argument is that it doesn't take into account the overall drop in revenue for artists.  Specifically music, since 2000 the amount of content available (legally) has skyrocketed,  magnitudes more artists with their work out there,  however the average revenue has declined massively.  Streaming now makes up the lions share of artist revenue, unfortunately it is a pittance on the CD sales revenue from the late stages of the CD era. 

Possibly any artist directly selling or working with services would tend to make way more than going through some kind of label.  They were charging A LOT.  More than the artists were making from each sale.

[suicidalfranco]

10 hours ago, Commodus said:

we'll be Amish before the day is over.

Nothing wrong with tbh

 

[mr moose]

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Nah, boohoo, cry more recording industry. They had a captive audience until 1997 and then decided sueing their customers and fans was a good business model. That only escalated the willingness for people to pirate with impunity. It's like the adblock or no adblock argument. The people who use it are effectively stealing if they are using it on services they actually use (such as youtube and spotify, which is why spotify wants you to use their app, and so does Tiktok and Twitter.) 

 

The Recording industry did, and still does a lot of scummy stuff, and that model had to die.

https://www.billboard.com/pro/taylor-swift-shake-it-off-lyrics-lawsuit-case-dropped/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/05/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-lawsuit-eras/

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/11/15/20966470/taylor-swift-scooter-braun-scott-borchetta

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/h-e-r-sues-her-record-label-and-asks-out-of-contract-1371222/

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-60492452

https://americansongwriter.com/artists-sue-trax-record-label-over-years-of-bad-business-fraud-unpaid-royalties-copyright-infringement/

 

Musicians are now expected to make the lions share of their revenue from live performances, like they should. The recording industry meanwhile defrauds the people they sign with to make sure they can not sign with anyone else or go back to being independent, and holds their recordings and royalties hostage.

 

The thing that probably annoys me more about the entire music industry is that music rights agencies exist, and thus if the rights agency for your country is completely clueless, good luck buying music from outside the country. I can name a half dozen times where I went looking for the original song, or a specific cover of the song, and could find neither, or could only find a low-quality cover on spotify, or a clearly pirated version on youtube. And this happened recently, some track I wanted to go find, I could only find a low quality edit on youtube, and in the comments was "why hasn't the artist re-recorded this song?", "She doesn't have the rights to it anymore"

 

This entire idea that the recording industry or music rights agencies do anything good for artists is a myth, and the artists themselves would be better off putting their music on iTunes and Spotify themselves if they have no intention of ever performing live.

 

Going back to the idea that Sony actually cares about the IP they own, Sony actually has the necessary leverage to force SmartTV manufacturers to include whatever DRM nonsense, but as mentioned repeatedly, do that, and people will just buy a STB (Set Top Box) that bypasses that. People regularly do that already. That is what the Nvidia Shield is popularly used for.

 

The music and film industry is afraid of Kodi (XMBC) boxes that you can find all over eBay, because there are firmware packages and plugins for it that connect to piracy services. What do you think is going to happen if Sony tells SmartTV vendors that they must blacklist Kodi and Plex? I don't know about you, but that doesn't change the status quo. People who were already hellbent on paying nothing for content, will still pay for VPN's and expensive Kodi boxes just so they pay $0 to Netflix, Disney+ and Crunchyroll, and have a bigger choice of "everything"

 

The film and television industry learned the wrong lesson from the recording industry. People do not want to pay $20/mo for silo'd off content. The television industry is still treating apps as though they are cable packages. So instead of paying $100/mo to a television provider for what amounts to basic service, you're expected to pay for 5 separate $20 services now? No, that's stupid and we should not be encouraging that. The Netflix model was literately "stream it instead of mailing a DVD", and yet if I wanted watch something that is "exclusive to X app" that is only available in the United States, well, guess my options are ... Nothing, or Pirate it. And companies wonder why apps aren't doing well.

 

That goes right back to the entire problem of some company monopolizing the rights in the country and thus, you can't just get the US app. A key example of this is "HBO", in Canada, HBO has never been properly available, because Bell Media uses it as the carrot to sign up for it's Crave service, and yet, is not a complete library, because of course, rights holders or government interference prevents them from doing so.

 

There's also the other beef I have, there is countless hours of content that was produced for TV only, that when it was originally broadcast, had licensed music, or covers in it, but then when it was released on DVD or streaming channels, it was replaced with generic background music, because the IP owner didn't want to pay to license it for DVD or streaming.

 

This all points back to the "music recording industry" being unreasonable again. Bow to your copyright overlords, or never be entertained again.

Spoken like someone with ZERO experience in the industry. The core question was concerning the effect of piracy, not "how scummy is the recording industry".     How bad the music industry is (or any industry for that matter) is not justification for pirating content.   If you really don't like what record labels are doing or did then only buy music direct form the artist.  Because piracy of music produced by a label is in principal support for the quality of their product.  You are literally saying, yes I want to listen to this because you have made something I want to listen to, but I don't like the way you treated artists so I am not paying you or the artists for it.     When you consider the ramification for said action you can see how illogical it is.

 

17 hours ago, ewitte said:

Possibly any artist directly selling or working with services would tend to make way more than going through some kind of label.  They were charging A LOT.  More than the artists were making from each sale.

 

That's what many are doing today, and with services like distrokid, bandcamp etc many can self publish and avoid a lot of the historic costs associated with publishing music I personally know a few bands with music published not only through a label but also through aforementioned services, they just don;t earn the same as they used to.  So  the fact still remains that even those artists are not earning as much as they could had they been able to publish through a label pre internet.

 

 

Unfortunately many people want to defend music piracy, not so much based on facts but on ideals and preconceived notions about freedoms and justice.  

 

 

[jagdtigger]

10 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Nothing wrong with tbh

 

If you are a masochist, nothing wrong with tech. The issue is how some corporations abuse it, some regulation and butchering is long overdue.....

[sof006]

No thank you Sony

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, jagdtigger said:

If you are a masochist, nothing wrong with tech. The issue is how some corporations abuse it, some regulation and butchering is long overdue.....

I'd love for the regulations to force companies to not only show consumer how to completely turn of all internet connection and/or outgoing data beyond that need for the user to view streamed content but also to make it law that all products should still work to a reasonably expected standard without internet connection at all.  This world of "requires internet connection" for mundane products like a monitor or fridge in order to work is BS.

 

 

[Kisai]

18 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Spoken like someone with ZERO experience in the industry. The core question was concerning the effect of piracy, not "how scummy is the recording industry".    

Yet, amazing how quickly people here jump to the "I use adblock and refuse to even let creators I enjoy earn money." Pot. Kettle. Black.

 

The problem IS the recording industry. Not the All the artists.

 

Sony pushing this, is the same as the DRM nonsense they pushed before to try and prevent people from ripping the CD's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

 

I'll save trying to explain it and just point you there.

 

It will backfire.

 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Yet, amazing how quickly people here jump to the "I use adblock and refuse to even let creators I enjoy earn money." Pot. Kettle. Black.

Are you calling me a hypocrite or something?

 

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The problem IS the recording industry. Not the All the artists.

Except you are punishing the artists by pirating their music, the recording industry will survive just fine as they are arseholes with money and still have a certain amount of control over what's published in MSM.

 

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Sony pushing this, is the same as the DRM nonsense they pushed before to try and prevent people from ripping the CD's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

I know about that, don't confuse me explaining to you the problem with defending piracy by using it as a revenge tool with me supporting the recording industry.  They are two very different things. I do not support the actions of most record labels, I support the artists,  and if that means explaining to people the problem with piracy and how it effected artists revenue then that is what I'll do.

 

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I'll save trying to explain it and just point you there.

 

It will backfire.

 

What will backfire?  You should know that I've been working with artists in live sound and recording as a hobby/supplimental income for the better part of 30 years now.  I am fully aware of how the industry works, the effects it has and much of the nuances that surround it.

 

 

 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Are you calling me a hypocrite or something?

There is this fun trend of "I hate on the thing that does not benefit me, when it competes with me"

People who defend adblockers, also have no bones about pirating anything to spite the content creator. People who hate AI things, seem to have no problem with tracing and making commercial fanart.

 

I do not personally like the recording industry because it's a worthless "landlord" on culture. Companies that believe that nobody should enjoy their content unless they are paid, deserve to go bankrupt because nobody who wants to, can buy their content in the first place. There are many people who would like to license content, but good luck if you're not another corpo with deep pockets.

 

If the trajectory was not corrected from 1997 with napster, you would right now need to have 30 apps on your smart phone, one for each record label, in order to rent each music track you wanted to listen to, and would be paying every single time, even if you only listened to it for 1 second.

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Except you are punishing the artists by pirating their music, the recording industry will survive just fine as they are arseholes with money and still have a certain amount of control over what's published in MSM.

And in the US there is one company that controls most of the radio stations that could play music. The internet broke that hold, and now people can listen to music ad-hoc. However discover of music? Still a pain in the behind, that is not helped by DRM-lockin schemes.

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

I know about that, don't confuse me explaining to you the problem with defending piracy by using it as a revenge tool with me supporting the recording industry.  They are two very different things. I do not support the actions of most record labels, I support the artists,  and if that means explaining to people the problem with piracy and how it effected artists revenue then that is what I'll do.

That's fine. I'd rather buy the music direct from the artist, if I could only find it.

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

What will backfire?  You should know that I've been working with artists in live sound and recording as a hobby/supplimental income for the better part of 30 years now.  I am fully aware of how the industry works, the effects it has and much of the nuances that surround it.

 

DRM always backfires. It protects the media for maybe a year or two, and then either a workaround is found and it's neutered, or trying to read old media with the old DRM becomes difficult that nobody buys any media in that format. DRM is one of the reasons why Blueray's pretty much stalled in adoption in favor of streaming. Computers no longer come with ODD's, and game consoles are making them optional. So what are you to do when you want to listen or watch your optical discs you bought? Well the same thing you do when you want to listen to a vinyl LP or an 8-track. You have to hold onto that ancient hardware, or hope there are enough obsessive nerds willing to to keep the tech alive so that new players are still made. The tech to play a record is over 150 years old. VHS, CD's DVD and Bluerays all had market lifespans of around 10-20 years before something supplanted them.

 

SmartTV's with DRM are just going to end up ignored, or returned to the store when they won't play their existing media, legal or not.

[divito]

On 1/13/2023 at 6:07 AM, mr moose said:

The only problem with that line of argument is that it doesn't take into account the overall drop in revenue for artists.  Specifically music, since 2000 the amount of content available (legally) has skyrocketed,  magnitudes more artists with their work out there,  however the average revenue has declined massively.  Streaming now makes up the lions share of artist revenue, unfortunately it is a pittance on the CD sales revenue from the late stages of the CD era. 

This is not a piracy problem though. 

The internet, advances in computer performance, and the creation of cheap/free music apps and programs have drastically removed the high barrier to entry for someone to create and disseminate music, while simultaneously lowering the skill necessary to do it. You haven't needed to learn an instrument, or music theory, or book studio time and make demos and try and circulate them in a very long time.

Breaking the gatekeeper hold of the record labels and the radio stations has allowed more people to produce music and make money from it. Having way more music creators will naturally drop the average revenue for artists since there are so many more.

The same can be said for any industry that the internet touched. Web/graphic design used to be the domain of talented artists and programmers, and web design "firms" were the norm. Slowly, the internet and software whittled that down to where having a site is one of the most basic things you can do online. There are so many examples, and very little of it has to do with piracy.
 

14 hours ago, mr moose said:

Except you are punishing the artists by pirating their music, the recording industry will survive just fine as they are arseholes with money and still have a certain amount of control over what's published in MSM.

I don't like this logic. Your choices are, keep giving revenue to a system you don't support, or vote with your wallet, and the record label cuts bait and tries a new artist to push instead.

Piracy actually has a purpose, in that you show the record label the demand, while simultaneously not funding them. Yes, artists end up exposed in this scenario, but there are so many income streams available now, that several artists turn it into more of a loss leader for merchandise, touring, and other endeavors. That doesn't completely absolve the scenario, but I'd rather they continue to gain popularity and have those fans support them in alternate ways than be forced into obscurity by people not spending money at all. But some of that comes at the behest of their contract; it would simply be nice if they were independent.

[mr moose]

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

There is this fun trend of "I hate on the thing that does not benefit me, when it competes with me"

People who defend adblockers, also have no bones about pirating anything to spite the content creator. People who hate AI things, seem to have no problem with tracing and making commercial fanart.

 

I do not personally like the recording industry because it's a worthless "landlord" on culture. Companies that believe that nobody should enjoy their content unless they are paid, deserve to go bankrupt because nobody who wants to, can buy their content in the first place. There are many people who would like to license content, but good luck if you're not another corpo with deep pockets.

Who can't buy their content? It's availiable just about everywhere.  there is a difference between not being able to buy something and not wanting to buy it.

 

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

If the trajectory was not corrected from 1997 with napster, you would right now need to have 30 apps on your smart phone, one for each record label, in order to rent each music track you wanted to listen to, and would be paying every single time, even if you only listened to it for 1 second.

Citation?   You have a crystal ball perhaps.   I can only look at the reality of history to tell you that the only good thing napster did was reduce the cost of a CD.    The statistic speak for themselves as to everything else that happened.

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

And in the US there is one company that controls most of the radio stations that could play music. The internet broke that hold, and now people can listen to music ad-hoc. However discover of music? Still a pain in the behind, that is not helped by DRM-lockin schemes.

You are ignoring how history happened.  Napster in 97,  music revenue declined by half up until 2007 while the content tripled.  It wasn't until 2011 that legitimate streaming services and online music shops started.  Prior to streaming piracy did all the damage.  It was NOT the internet providing alternatives that killed the industry it was piracy.

 

It's all in the link I provided.

 

 

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

That's fine. I'd rather buy the music direct from the artist, if I could only find it.

If the artists chooses to sign up to a label then you have to accept that that is their choice.  You can't take a moral high ground defending artists and at the same time deny their choice of business and publication. 

 

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

DRM always backfires. It protects the media for maybe a year or two, and then either a workaround is found and it's neutered, or trying to read old media with the old DRM becomes difficult that nobody buys any media in that format. DRM is one of the reasons why Blueray's pretty much stalled in adoption in favor of streaming. Computers no longer come with ODD's, and game consoles are making them optional. So what are you to do when you want to listen or watch your optical discs you bought? Well the same thing you do when you want to listen to a vinyl LP or an 8-track. You have to hold onto that ancient hardware, or hope there are enough obsessive nerds willing to to keep the tech alive so that new players are still made. The tech to play a record is over 150 years old. VHS, CD's DVD and Bluerays all had market lifespans of around 10-20 years before something supplanted them.

 

SmartTV's with DRM are just going to end up ignored, or returned to the store when they won't play their existing media, legal or not.

DRM always backfires,  only if you ignore reality.  More people are playing DRM games, watching DRM movies and buying DRM music now than ever before, why? because piracy has pushed those companies to it.  Like it or not this is not a chicken egg problem, piracy came first and DRM was the solution, every time the pirates get smarter the DRM gets worse.  Honest consumers are the collateral damage.

 

8 hours ago, divito said:

This is not a piracy problem though. 

The internet, advances in computer performance, and the creation of cheap/free music apps and programs have drastically removed the high barrier to entry for someone to create and disseminate music, while simultaneously lowering the skill necessary to do it. You haven't needed to learn an instrument, or music theory, or book studio time and make demos and try and circulate them in a very long time.

 

Please read the links in my link.  Piracy was a thing on the internet for the entire time that artist revenue fell and legitimate music sales services did not have much of an effect until some 4 years later.   As I said in my first post in this thread, the ability to self publish came so late after revenue had fallen/content had increased that it could not have be the cause and when it did take off it had little impact on revenue in up nor down.  In fact the success of spotify and apple had much larger observable effects on that.  With the ARIA income reports from 2017 and on showing that streaming (not sales) was the biggest income source for artists. 

 

https://www.aria.com.au/industry/news/australian-recorded-music-industry-figures-for-2020

 

Streaming is 82% of the market,  digital sales is only 6%.  

 

8 hours ago, divito said:

Breaking the gatekeeper hold of the record labels and the radio stations has allowed more people to produce music and make money from it. Having way more music creators will naturally drop the average revenue for artists since there are so many more.

That wasn't what cause the revenue drop.  Having way more options for more artists to provide legitimate content did not come for a long time after the revenue fell.   bandcamp started in 2007, Music revenue had already fallen by half at this stage.  Distrokid started in 2013, music revenue had already dived even further by then.  Apple music started in 2015, not only argued to be the first mainstream service to have any real effect on sales in the industry, but it came a full 8 years after artists revenue had taken a shit dive.  People really need to stop and look at the timeline before making absolute statements of causality when they are just not possible.

 

 

8 hours ago, divito said:

 

The same can be said for any industry that the internet touched. Web/graphic design used to be the domain of talented artists and programmers, and web design "firms" were the norm. Slowly, the internet and software whittled that down to where having a site is one of the most basic things you can do online. There are so many examples, and very little of it has to do with piracy.
 

The internet changes things sure,  but attributing the cause of a change to an internet service that occurred after the fact cannot be said.  Especially when we have timelines for all these things.

 

8 hours ago, divito said:

I don't like this logic. Your choices are, keep giving revenue to a system you don't support, or vote with your wallet, and the record label cuts bait and tries a new artist to push instead.

 

I don't like labels either (genuinely I don't),  but I would rather buy a CD knowing the artists is getting money for making a product I am using than taking that product and the artist getting nothing. 

 

If you want to take a moral high ground and have a legitimate argument then don't listen to that artist at all.     I could easily respect your opinion if you said, I do not listen to band X unless it is through a legitimate channel (i.e on the radio or at the shops) but I will not buy the CD because I cannot justify supporting the record labels practices as I understand them.

 

8 hours ago, divito said:

Piracy actually has a purpose, in that you show the record label the demand, while simultaneously not funding them. Yes, artists end up exposed in this scenario, but there are so many income streams available now, that several artists turn it into more of a loss leader for merchandise, touring, and other endeavors. That doesn't completely absolve the scenario, but I'd rather they continue to gain popularity and have those fans support them in alternate ways than be forced into obscurity by people not spending money at all.

 

Piracy just gives you the content without the cost. And it hurts the the one person the most (the artist),  the pone person everyone says they want to support. As has been establish ad nauseum, records labels only care about money, therefore they are not going to see piracy as writing on the wall so to speak, they see it as a threat to be dealt with as best they can. If piracy has told them anything then they haven't been listening.  Why do you think sony put malware onto their audio CDs? why do you think they try so hard to encrypt dvd, bluray, streaming and locking out resolutions, etc?   It has nothing to do with trying to improve their product and everything to do with stopping you from using content you aren't paying for.

 

8 hours ago, divito said:

But some of that comes at the behest of their contract; it would simply be nice if they were independent.

Don't forget that sometimes artists chose to sign up with a label as labels offer more than just evil controlling gatekeeper service we see.

 

 

Once more, Internet piracy started in the late 90's.  By 2007 artist revenue had fallen to half while available content had tripled. Spotify and pandora started in 2005/6 but it wasn't until 2010 that they were taking market share form radio and they weren't selling music per se, just streaming it.    Many argue apple was the first to really change the industry with internet music stores but they didn't start until 2015.  

 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Who can't buy their content? It's availiable just about everywhere.  there is a difference between not being able to buy something and not wanting to buy it.

 

 

Tell me where I can legitimately buy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_(A_Girl_Like_Me) , they are not on iTunes, or Spotify, and the artist has rebranded.

Can't find anything from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Red_(Russian_band) either.

 

Also just about anything from Japan doesn't exist either. The Japanese rights holders block uploads to youtube as well. So you'll have to settle for low quality youtube uploads by some rando, and no ability to buy it.

 

I have a whole list of foreign music, that simply does not exist on iTunes or Spotify, and the closest options are crappy uploads to youtube. So don't pull that "It's available everywhere", it's not, unless you limit your music tastes to just top 100 tracks in your own country.

 

As far as US and Canada goes, all music not in English may as well not exist. Listen to your local artists and pretend those foreign artists do not exist. Foreign record labels don't bother trying to sell to foreign markets under this mistaken notion that foreigners don't listen to music not in English.

 

The recording industry's refusal to adapt, is it's own damn fault.

[mr moose]

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

Tell me where I can legitimately buy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_(A_Girl_Like_Me) , they are not on iTunes, or Spotify, and the artist has rebranded.

Can't find anything from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Red_(Russian_band) either.

 

Also just about anything from Japan doesn't exist either. The Japanese rights holders block uploads to youtube as well. So you'll have to settle for low quality youtube uploads by some rando, and no ability to buy it.

 

I have a whole list of foreign music, that simply does not exist on iTunes or Spotify, and the closest options are crappy uploads to youtube. So don't pull that "It's available everywhere", it's not, unless you limit your music tastes to just top 100 tracks in your own country.

 

How does any of this support your earlier claims?   or more to the point how does any of that make what I said untrue?

 

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

As far as US and Canada goes, all music not in English may as well not exist. Listen to your local artists and pretend those foreign artists do not exist. Foreign record labels don't bother trying to sell to foreign markets under this mistaken notion that foreigners don't listen to music not in English.

 

 

The recording industry's refusal to adapt, is it's own damn fault.

 

You have failed to address the issues and chosen instead to move the argument.     Your inability to get music does not change the reality of how piracy has effected the music industry.  In fact people have been unable to purchase lots of music legitimately for decades before the internet came a long, If you were lucky and had an import shop or crazy music music shop that specialises in foreign content then you were only ever able to access whatever the labels decided to release. 

 

Your desire to blame the record industry for these things is preventing you from looking at the facts.  Which is pretty sad because the music industry has more than enough legitimate shit on it's plate that you don't have to make stuff up to be angry about.

 

 

[Spindel]

Sony rootkit 2.0  

 

Here's a link for you that are to young: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal