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)?
They should also get a royalty on cameras, because someone might take a photo of copyrighted cover art. Oh, and also a royalty on pens and paper, because someone might use them to write down copyrighted lyrics
I believe than in Portugal one pays a tax with every hdd or any device that might be used to ilegally store copyrighted content.
So I pay a tax for the eventuality of doing the thing I cannot legally do but at the same time if I already paid for it how can it still be ilegal?
Pretty much all over Europe but it's not for illegal copies: it's for legal copies as in "copy an LP you own to a cassette for use in a car" (that's the original use case).
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.
This is correct. Source: Portuguese man with a deep hatred for copyright protection institutions, motivated in large part by the introduction of that law.
Maybe impose a tax on our brains as well since it stores copyrighted data in our memories. Complete with mandatory brain chips that detect when you remember their data and charge your bank account automatically.
Isn't it the case that you can order from some of the more popular OEMs with Linux pre-installed, and they won't charge you the Microsoft licensing fee? I think Dell and Lenovo do this?
Maybe they do charge the Microsoft fee anyway, but I'd be a bit surprised if they didn't fix that issue.
Its still the case that if you are an OEM vendor, you need to make sure your hardware plays nice with the new versions of Windows. You better "cooperate".
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:
Short answer: yes, the music industry (and similar media industries) has historically fought tooth and nail against any technology that allows anyone to consume content in any way not directly controlled and monetized by the music industry. There's a well-documented history of media industries fighting against "time shifting."
No because that is not a loss-less copy. The quality is severely affect and that amount of damage you can potentially do to sales is minimal. EDIT: Completely forgot about the "tax" on blank media and tape records.
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 funny thing is they did this to themselves. Consumers were perfectly happy with their regular HiFi stuff and records. But the recording companies and the big hardware manufacturers (notably: Philips, Sony, both owners of enormous music catalogs) would love to sell everybody an upgraded HiFi system and get them to buy all their music again. In a format so dense that no computer would ever be able to store that much information on a writable medium so pushing large numbers of lossless copies of music into the world was a no brainer. We all know how that ended.
Everything available on Youtube is not a lossless copy. Especially music is lossy-compressed and loudness-optimized, so lossless vs lossy isn't a valid argument here.
YouTube is just another streaming service, they make money by delivering their copyrighted material on it just like every other delivery method and people pirate via it just like every other delivery method. Choosing to put their content on YouTube isn't a dumb choice at all, it's one of the few sane things about the situation.
The music industry (in collusion with Congress) killed DAT with this same specious argument, when everyone knew that "perfect digital copies" were the LEAST-likely vector of attack on their industry.
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.
I love how "trusted" in this context basically means "against the will of the end user, enforced by the technological supremacy of hardware manufacturers".
