First and foremost, I feel like Spotify is scummy. I don't like what they did when they were founded, I don't like what they do to artists.

I hate the hyperscalers being in this business (Google, Apple, Amazon) as that's another thing they do that devalues an otherwise healthy market. Bringing in outside business division revenues to dump on another market's prices is ecologically unhealthy for optimal capitalism and healthy competition.

On the one hand, while I want cheap media, I also want artists to make money. While Spotify puts real price pressure on artists, piracy brings artists absolutely nothing at all.

I get Gabe's value prop with Valve. Make the service easy, cheap, convenient, good, and piracy begins to diminish.

But if there are cheap services and cheap avenues (that still underpay artists), why then switch to a mode that pays artists nothing at all?

Do Bandcamp. Buy merch. Do something to support the artists. I feel like paying piracy services is the opposite of that.

But ethical quandary - doesn't Anna's Archive also support spreading research papers, etc.?

Complicated feelings.

I wish we had better ways to pay originators of things. Art, music, authors, researchers, ICs, ...

I feel like studios and middlemen and companies themselves are entities that exist because rewarding work or value or happiness at the site of exchange is hard/intangible.

They escalated to either my hosting or my domain name provider, who then threatened to cut me off for not complying. No discussion with them would work in my favor. I had to comply with this BS. I got cut off several times for completely wrong reasons.

They don't care. It's not worth the legal risk for them. I'm not big enough.

So in the end, the US CAN indeed do that.

Youtube started out 'allegedly' by members of their team uploading pirated hollywood movies (because they had no content), posing as users to fall under the "user-content" policy to make the company not liable.

They are all breaking the rules all the way down, but when they make it, they know exactly what to do to fill the loopholes to prevent others to do to them what they did on others. That's big tech's ethics for you: Move fast and break things, then wall yourself in.

And I think that was his point. They may ruin some people's life's... but aside from that, they achieve nothing.

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

Spotify pays 70% of their music revenue to publishers based on the total number of listens. All revenue is put together and split based on the global numbers. Which means that niche band I like will get next to nothing. Instead if they account for 50% of my listening time in one month, they should get 35% of what I paid to Spotify that month. Unfortunately big labels will never agree to that.

Not sure if you're aware, but it's the labels, not Spotify:

> It pays roughly two-thirds of every dollar it generates from music, with nearly 80% allocated to recording royalties and about 20% to publishing, though how much artists and songwriters ultimately receive depends on their agreements with rights holders, which Spotify does not control. [0]

Spotify is frantically trying to escape the record label's death grip (hence podcasts), because they know they can squeeze it for just about anything with licensing deals. It's a terrible business model! Spotify keeps a third for their costs (& finally some profit in the past year or two), ie. about the same that Apple takes from App Store for basically nothing[1].

How the record labels convinced the world that Spotify is the bad guy here is beyond belief.

--

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofiachierchio/2026/01/28/spoti...

[1] Certainly app store costs are nothing when compared to the infrastructure that Spotify needs.

I just brought Light Years on cassette by Nas.

I’m an hobbyist musician and I’m going to sell actual cassettes and donate the profits. I’m never going to get the 500 million streams you need to make money off Spotify

This has historically been unclear. Lots of artists make more money from touring and merchandise than from record sales, and piracy is likely to boost those.

The other such case establishing global financial jurisdiction, often cited by cryptocurrency adopters, is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg - "Pokerstars".

It's wild to read "the U.S. Congress passed UIGEA to extend existing gambling laws into cyberspace. The law made processing payments for online gambling a crime" in the light of how prevalent online gambling is now in the US mainstream, with sports betting, Kalshi, Polymarket and so on.

The UK and US aren't unique in this regard. The concept of piracy has been commonly treated as a topic with universal jurisdiction that expands beyond borders, going back to the time when piracy meant people on boats in international waters. I'll be honest that I don't know if or how those laws correspond to digital piracy, but countries have long considered international piracy to be something their domestic courts can go after.

Practically speaking you can always choose to ignore it if you don't have offices or assets in that country and you're okay with never traveling there for the rest of your life. You also have to avoid countries with mutual extradition agreements because many countries will offer to extradite for certain crimes with the expectation that the other country will return the favor.

The UK age verification enforcement isn't a good comparison because the UK's overreach extends even to instances where UK citizens are geoblocked. Trying to enforce your country's laws on an operation in a different country which does not even serve your country is something else. For a recent example look at the online depression forum that is being threatened by the UK even though they've geoblocked UK users - Immediately makes me think of the vitriol here on HN for the UK trying to enforce their age verification law outside their borders

GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said. GabeN is in fact an industry plant and owns one of the strictest IP protection platforms on the market. Why people buy on steam when they can ban you for almost anything and take everything you've ever rented (you dont own anything on steam). Thousands of dollars of games gone with a ban. In any normal world this would be tantamount to grand theft and a small business owner would actually face real prison time for it.

You can't "steal" something that isn't gone when it's stolen. If I walked into a house, took a necklace, and left an exact unaltered copy I'd at best be charged with a lesser crime that didn't include theft. But if you copy movies/music/software you're liable to have your entire life absolutely financially and possibly criminally ruined.

The government of the US is hardly a government for the people, by the people. It's strictly designed to enrich the few and consume "human resources".

35% of 1 is the same as 0.000000035 of 10.000.000

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

*not only Spotify

They had plenty of problems from people abusing their system to steal listens from actual artists.

Their system is basically "one big bucket of listens" - if your song gets listens, you get money. So if you pay your sub, and listen to say 5 niche musicians only, it still all goes mostly to the most popular songs.

Now you might already notice the flaw here - if you say, make a bunch of bots that just listen to songs to boost their revenue, not only your sub doesn't pay artists you listen, but also to fraudulent ones.

Then there was problems with using fake collaboration tags, AI music to hijack artist profiles, and few others.

These big platform payouts matter a lot.

though the determination of damages is usually completely all over the map (and usually skews high to serve a punitive purpose, though I doubt it has any real deterrent effect).

I guess you could fund it with taxes?

Reminder of the recent "The truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'":

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47473673

Relatedly, see Stallman's essay, Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html While courts understand "piracy" is euphemistic, the phrase "IPR" has been quite successful in shaping legal theories and jurisprudence.

EDIT: The correct word here isn't euphemism, but dysphemism. TIL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism

Practically speaking it doesn't matter much when small countries do this because it doesn't mean much, other than maybe the owners of the country can't travel there any more. It hits headlines when the USA does it because being barred from traveling to the USA or working with US companies causes a lot of problems.

Like Open AI?[1] Or the United States government?[2] While this may not be what you intend, it seems you're suggesting that "upstanding" and "known" parties (i.e. participants with wealth and influence) ought to be above the law.

1. https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/study-claim...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_copyrighted_works_by_th...

Without weighing in on the merits or morals of copying intellectual property, the term 'piratical booksellers' was used in a British House of Commons speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1841. (The speech itself is superb and well worth reading. I included one passage below.)

"At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot… Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create."

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyr...

If you copy a book in a bookstore, or leave a perfect synthetic copy of a natural diamond you take, you'll likely be charged with something. Digitally, that's much a clearer legal charge because copying is easier. So, neither is theft, but that doesn't make it lawful either.

There are valid reasons for enforcing IP rights digitally, because "all content should always be free" doesn't pay the bills when all you (can or want to) do is produce content. No existing society agrees that content producers should be subsidized, so in a society dependent on "earn for yourself", content producers shouldn't be punished.

But the punishment does exceed the severity of the "crime" by a lot, I agree.

Idk what law books you've been reading but this isn't true.

It is a supply problem. Steam regional pricing and game passes have demolished piracy in countries where people wouldn't have dreamed of paying for a game 15 years ago. And so did Netflix for a while with video, but then everyone had to jump on the bandwagon and now piracy is flourishing again.

Otherwise, I agree with the spirit of your comment.

With OP proposal, they would get USD 7.

It doesn't calculate your amount of listening and determine the payout based on that. All listens are pooled together and all subscription money is pooled together. And the payout is determined based on that.

It also promotes botting, as spotify only counts listens, bot listening a ton to a fraudulent artist will siphon money away from essentially everyone.

"Money only goes to artists you listen" would be very good change

My $7/mo should be going to the artists I actually chose to listen to, not the stuff that droned passively for hours in background environments. Particularly when I'm actually a high margin customer for Spotify; the cost to them of my subscription is low since I spend so little time on the service. That makes it all the more galling that my subscription cost is mostly going to Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.

That's basically how radio is accounted for in royalties, as well.

With Spotify knowing exactly who listened to what, it could be more precise (and arguably more susceptible to the fraud), but tbh what they do is standard (compulsory licensing) industry practice.

A quick search suggests a very steep drop off from the top earners.

‘At 100 million streams, artists can earn approximately $300,000-$500,000 in gross royalties. However, the actual amount reaching the artist varies dramatically based on their contracts. Major label artists receive $90,000-$150,000 after the label’s cut, while independent artists could keep $255,000-$425,000 after distributor fees.’ https://rebelmusicz.com/how-much-do-artists-make-on-spotify/

When you read artists' blog posts you can see they get peanuts. Not due to Spotify - due to the recording deals.

If you want an exhaustive but eye-opening account of all of the details, I recommend "All you need to know about the music business" by Don Passman.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765604

If the site doesn't comply with the laws of Country A, or if the website operator hides so nobody can figure out which country is Country A, then it's an entirely different story.

And even policing protects local monied interests.

One case was someone who used their bike as their vehicle put a tracker on it. Was stolen. Tracker dutifully said where it was. Went to police station, they did absolutely shit. They were handed the bike receipt, token receipt, and realtime log. They DGAF.

Years ago, worked at Walmart. They illegally edited my hours and thieved $100 and change. Put in police report, was told "CIVIL MATTER".

But if you stole $100 from a register, off to jail you go.

The laws protect monied interests and the elite, not the masses.

However, all those other ways are more difficult to set up, and can be risky for the funders, so IP enforcement is the least-worst solution.

There's a per game toggle for their UI overlay basically and you just need to uncheck a box

Too late now, but for future reference for others: Wage theft reports should go to your state's department of labor. Every state is different but from what I've seen these offices have people who are hungry to catch real wage claims. Companies listen up when the state department of labor comes knocking.

Proving someone intentionally changed your hours as opposed to a mistake or software bug is not the police's job. It quite literally is a civil crime and belongs in civil court, not criminal. I don't even think most police are trained in civil laws. (Atleast, not in my state?)

Catching someone who takes money out of a cash register is their job. That's textbook theft, a criminal activity.

I hate cops as much as the next guy, possibly more, but that just doesn't seem like their area

FWIW, the government is still (supposedly) working to resolve your issue...your tax dollars are still at work. Judge, Public Defender, blah blah blah....It's just not the job of a first responder

Putting a bullet in your skull for accessing a blocked internet resource vs just blocking the resource or paying a fine.

Honestly I can name many things that can be different.

We've got army block, FSB block, technocrats, bureaucrats and oligarchs. The usual (more or less) story.

The real problem is - we don't have system that scales horizontally. So when Putin goes people will have to deal with the vertical system he created for himself.

The problem here is this "for himself" part.

For this system to work you will have to be a new Putin (at least for some time) and for this you will have to enforce your decisions and shape your new system. Top to bottom.

Best thing that can happen to Russian (realistically) is that the power will be given to technocrats.

They are not neccesarily more liberal, but they have real education, they do understand a thing or to about economics, open borders, sharing of knowledge etc.

They won't be able to quickly change Russia, but given some time they can reshape it step by step.

Alas - we have FSB and Army blocks, high level of corruption and millions of people who see people like Putin as the best choice. They don't need progress and responsibility. They need their empire back even if they are just peasants with serfdom included.