Will the music industry sue the 1978 me, with the tape recorder right next to the radio, and me holding the "record" button to catch my favorite songs (along with the banter leading right up to the first lyrics)?
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/21/arts/issue-and-debate-roy...
Of course everybody knows that it's practically covering missed royalties from illegally copied content, but according to the letter of the law it isn't.
Maybe they do charge the Microsoft fee anyway, but I'd be a bit surprised if they didn't fix that issue.
Its difficult to describe all the behaviors they were engaged in.
"...The Complaint alleges that Microsoft has used its monopoly power to induce PC manufacturers to enter into anticompetitive, long-term licenses under which they must pay Microsoft not only when they sell PCs containing Microsoft's operating systems, but also when they sell PCs containing non-Microsoft operating systems..." https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-impact-statement-us-...
As a reminder...They lost their case "United States v. Microsoft Corp." and June 7, 2000, the court ordered a breakup of Microsoft. They would have to be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components. This was overturned on appeal on what can be only described as technicalities...
The Judge said: "...Microsoft proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing."
Politics changes in the US and the power of lobbying made everything to end up in a settlement that for most Microsoft has been ignoring or forgetting about.That is how much it took to make them open "some" API's
This one from the EU is one of the best overviews:
"Microsoft: A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm" http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepape...
I heard their ex-CEO is into vaccines now ;-)
How much more absurd can this become?
The article makes a critical point: We already PAID for the right to download this material, and have been paying for decades.
Also, I've known several friends in bands. So far I've never heard of any of them receiving a check for blank-media taxes collected "on their behalf."
If their claims were valid they should have all collapsed in ruin 20 years ago.
Anyway, if they didn't want people to be able to copy their stuff, then they shouldn't have put it on YouTube. The music industry is being as dumb as they ever where, it's fascinating that they've learned NOTHING in the past twenty years. How much money can they possibly lose on youtube-dl vs. how much money they continue the scam out of artists.
At this point who doesn't have a subscription to a streaming service? Those who don't where never going to pay anyway. They aren't losing money.
The obvious and dominant form of music copying was with double-cassette boom boxes in dorm rooms and bedrooms around the world.
And in the end, the media publishers' lies about "perfect digital copies" were proven to be just that, as profoundly IMperfect MP3s became the real threat.
/s