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Comment by bediger4000 | Hacker News Reader

Why the narrow, legalistic view? If this band "MGMT" is a business, then they should compete in the marketplace, just like buggy whip manufacturers did in 1915, or radio tube manufacturers did in 1960, or ...

If technology renders something unnecessary, we should let the firms making the unnecessary product(s) disappear, rather than totally distorting markets, changing existing laws and reducing civil liberties to keep the markets-as-they-currently-exist around.

The only answer to that is to claim something more than "just a business" about making music or movies (or whatever "Intellectual Property" notion you want to push). At that point, you've departed from treating things legalistically. You have to start allowing for philosophical considerations.

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I always see people comparing pirate downloads as akin to motor vehicles while the copyright industry is the buggy whip manufacturer but has anyone parroting that actually stopped to think about how patently ridiculous the comparison is?

Technology has not rendered copyright unnecessary. Yes, it is easier to mass-infringe these days than in the past but you must remember that, not only has it been possible (and generally easy) to infringe upon copyright, but that that is the very reason why copyright exists in the first place.

Intellectual property is more than a business and it's silly to claim otherwise. To quote the US Constitution on the matter:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

This is the clause that essentially says "People can copy the work of others so in order to encourage creation we will allow creators an exclusive monopoly for some time after which it will belong to the public."

The problem with copyright is not that the industry is trying to pretend that it's not easy to copy because that is really nothing new; the problem with copyright is that the idea of "limited Times" has gotten ridiculous but that is an entirely different conversation.

Newer technology made buggy whips and radio tubes unnecessary in the marketplace so the businesses behind them died. Are you making this analogy because you think newer technology has rendered music unnecessary and you think musicians and recording/distribution companies should no longer be making their unnecessary product?

Or is your viewpoint more along the lines that you still want them to make this so-called unnecessary product, but due to your "philosophical considerations", you feel that it's okay to take a copy of the product without paying the asking price?

Perhaps the product he speaks isn't music, but the recording agencies. What do they need to exist for when social media has knocked big media off it's throne? In an age when the internet and torrenting have made the costs of distribution megs a minute (in a river of petabytes a second) instead of the legitimate costs of making an actual record (the big vinyls) or radio towers (actual radio, versus internet radio).

The recording companies are what come to my mind anyways... shrugs

Music distribution is an unnecessary service these days; people can and will distribute music freely when left alone.

Music creation is still an unsolved problem. Previously, financing of music creation was tied to distribution. Now that distribution is unnecessary, we need to rethink how society should promote not only creation of music, but of all intellectual capital.

I'm not entirely sure what point you're making so if you could clarify that would be helpful, but if I assume that by "we should let the firms making the unnecessary product(s) disappear" you mean: record labels provide no value... then my response is as follows:

Record labels provide a lot of value, they provide the funding to produce albums, to go on tours, they provide the marketing experience and reach to take a band from small to big. Labels don't just take a chunk and provide no value, otherwise why would anyone sign? Labels provide a lot of value: value that (apparently) nobody on the internet understands.

Justin Bieber is a great example, he was a dumb kid on Youtube singing songs and had a small fanbase, he could have continued alone to make songs and maybe sell them on Bandcamp and maybe make a few thousand $, instead he chose to sign with a label and today is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. He is a global brand. Would Justin Bieber be worth $xxx,xxx,xxx today if he stuck it alone? Has any independent musician ever done that before? The value of labels is clear.

People don't need labels now to build a following, that much is true, but that doesn't mean labels should not expect the same protections that other business types get. If a label has a product they should have reasonable expectations of control over that product, this includes making it illegal to steal that product.

All right, I'll restate my point, which is: if technology renders some product(s) unnecessary, we should let the firms making the unnecessary product(s) disappear, rather than distorting markets, changing laws and reducing civil liberties to keep the markets-as-they-currently-exist.

I really don't follow music much, I have a tin ear, as they say. I merely see Music-production-as-big-business doing a lot of things (lobbying, propagandizing, maybe even comment trolling) that seem, well, authoritarian, totalitarian and not for the general good. Specific laws that promulgate what I see as a false-to-fact concept, "Intellectual Property" mostly have the backing of music and movie production companies, and pharmaceutical companies. Those companies appear to me, an outside observer, to be less than helpful to the general populace. If they need to drastically curtail civil liberties for success in the market, let the companies fail.

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