<story><title>Schroedinger&apos;s streaming service just died</title><url>https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/early-adopters/#heads-i-win</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>googlryas</author><text>Is this just wordplay? When you click &amp;quot;Buy now&amp;quot;, are you just buying a license?&lt;p&gt;Is &amp;quot;ownership&amp;quot; just a byproduct of physical goods? If I say I own a record, the proof is basically in the pudding. But how do I prove I own an MP3 file? I&amp;#x27;d probably need to do something like show a receipt for it. But then again, what if I have shown that receipt to 100 people I&amp;#x27;ve sold &amp;quot;my&amp;quot; copy of the MP3 file to? With physical reality, exact duplication is difficult, and is already covered under those existing laws.&lt;p&gt;It seems like computing was big on licensing, even when tech was nascent and there wasn&amp;#x27;t clearly reams of money to be made in it, there must be a reason for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kbenson</author><text>The issue, as outlined in the article, is that artists get different rates for whether a song was &amp;quot;sold&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;licensed&amp;quot; (with licensing giving a &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; higher percentage to the artist), and while services presented their sales as license agreements to the end customer, they presented them as sales to the artists, allowing the streaming service to restrict user rights while also not paying artists the much higher percentage.&lt;p&gt;There are of course different ways to interpret what a sale of a digital good is (as you note), but legally speaking with regard to the status quo, it seems like something large might be changing.  Either end users might find they have a lot more rights (the ones they&amp;#x27;ve traditionally had for purchased items), or artists will get a lot more money because they&amp;#x27;ve been getting screwed for decades for licensed works, or possibly we&amp;#x27;ll see new legislation codifying the current status quo to protect the large media companies (because for some reason legislators often seem to think past ability to make money is a reason in itself to protect the method in which it was done, regardless of legality).</text></comment>
<story><title>Schroedinger&apos;s streaming service just died</title><url>https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/early-adopters/#heads-i-win</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>googlryas</author><text>Is this just wordplay? When you click &amp;quot;Buy now&amp;quot;, are you just buying a license?&lt;p&gt;Is &amp;quot;ownership&amp;quot; just a byproduct of physical goods? If I say I own a record, the proof is basically in the pudding. But how do I prove I own an MP3 file? I&amp;#x27;d probably need to do something like show a receipt for it. But then again, what if I have shown that receipt to 100 people I&amp;#x27;ve sold &amp;quot;my&amp;quot; copy of the MP3 file to? With physical reality, exact duplication is difficult, and is already covered under those existing laws.&lt;p&gt;It seems like computing was big on licensing, even when tech was nascent and there wasn&amp;#x27;t clearly reams of money to be made in it, there must be a reason for it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>clownbaby</author><text>And then, along came the blockchain and NFTs...  one receipt per purchase??&lt;p&gt;This obviously doesn&amp;#x27;t help the streaming services, but, this - or something similar would help solve the quantum entanglement of digital music.</text></comment>