The effects are complicated and hard to measure, but in the Napster era some bands did find that piracy helped their sales. For small bands it definitely can help with promotion. Then there were megabands like Radiohead that put out free albums and cashed in on the publicity via ticket and merch sales.
The back catalog stuff (Rolling Stones etc) probably suffers although IMHO the copyright on this stuff should be much shorter anyway.
This is (or something like it) is the most likely scenario based on what we know. I'm amazed at the number of people who fail to apply Occam's Razor in this case, especially when UFO sightings have been used as disinformation in the past.
What's fascinating (and scary) to me is the number of people who selectively look at some of the evidence, come up with an explanation, ignore the rest of the evidence, and then call it "case closed". All while mocking anyone else who picked a different subset of the evidence.
I would like to see more details on this. Bandwidth-limited sharing would still be economically feasible up to a point.
If they have run the numbers and are careful to leave a generous safety margin, I can see this working out. Eventually it will fail, as everything does, but it could last a very long time before that happens.
One more thought: if they are successful, they may accumulate a substantial endowment, at which point the primary risk is capture of that endowment by unethical board members. They have a good board right now, but will that always be the case? Time will tell.
We're making a lot of assumptions about a service that should probably be making things a lot more clear before they start taking money. My assumption is that "sharing" means sharing with family, etc. as opposed to publishing.
In my opinion we need fun more than ever, but resurrecting fun will require someone who is willing to stand up to the people who believe that everything must be serious.
Unfortunately I don't think it's possible for a corporation to be funny, unless they're willing to hand over a large amount of power to a single funny person (or a small team of funny people).
A product team of mostly unfunny employees brainstorming "funny" ideas and then filtering those ideas through their managers (who themselves are unlikely to be funny) will result in a funny idea exactly zero percent of the time.
Fair enough. Additionally, most large companies are probably too risk-averse to greenlight true comedy. Comedy necessarily involves risk; risk of not having your joke land, risk of offending, and so on. There's a good reason that most comedians try out new material in small venues.
It may be the status quo, but since these powers were intended to be temporary, it is arguably relevant that they may finally be expiring. Many users here care about issues around surveillance and privacy.
Re: Common Dreams, HN guidelines don't limit sources by their political slant, as long as the article in question is interesting or relevant. Frankly I find this to be refreshing, since many places are dominated by articles from sources with a center-right slant.
> Likewise an internet without hierarchies, without controls and without enforcement of social taboos, be that by law, by gatekeepers or through exclusion incentivizes the very worst actors to run amok. Social approval should be incorporated into law, (either literal or culturally) because places that don't do it become uninhabitable. (as the current public internet increasingly is).
"Uninhabitable?" To me it seems like the web is plenty full of people, especially in the gated communities of the social networks. Small community forums are still running as they always have. I would even say that things have improved noticeably since 2016, which was a low point.
When you say "uninhabitable", I suspect that is actually code for "uninhabitable to me." I also find certain parts of the web distateful, and I avoid them. There are other places where I spend quite a bit of time, and I don't find them uninhabitable at all, nor do I find them becoming generally worse off.
The problem with your statement about taboo enforcement is the question of which taboos do you select? There is no such thing as an impartial viewpoint here. Creating a moral arbiter with actual power is just creating another cultural battlefield that will oscillate between left-wing and right-wing control. In that, it will further entrench the current two-party duopoly and prevent meaningful change. It will also force businesses to be dragged further into the conflict, and may eventually lead to explicitly partisan companies--something I hope to never see.
Frankly I find the mores of contemporary society to be awful. I wouldn't want their taboos enforced on me. In fact, I would actively resist it using whatever measures I could muster. But since I have the option of moving to spaces where dissent and nonconformism is allowed, I choose to do so.
>especially in the gated communities of the social networks. Small community forums are still running as they always have
exactly my point, focus on "gated" and "small". What do you think is it that distinguishes gated communities from the generic facebook newsfeed? The right to censor, judge who gets in or not, be able to exclude bad actors, and to have stake and identity when commenting, and to set common rules for conduct. the internet is transforming from a public space to an internet of private gated communities.
In this the internet perfectly mirrors declining cities that do not maintain their commons. A lot of fractured, tribal communities emerge who are not in contact with each other, the marketplaces and houses degrade, and a huge amount of resources is spent on simply insulating oneself from everyone else. It is not a pretty picture.
On who gets to decide what taboos exist? There is no need for a moral arbiter. In communities that function well taboos and rules reflect the consensus of its constituent members. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg gets to make institutional decisions for 2 billion people is another sign of dysfunction.
This sounds like more of an argument for smaller, niche communities. I agree with this. How can you contain all of humanity's diversity of opinion and experience into a single "platform" with coherent norms? You can't. It's a fool's errand. Small communities do manage their own norms in a way that is consistent with the values of their members, and they develop their own methods for doing so; there is no need to create a legal enforcement mechanism.
Internet™ by Amazon.
I really hope it doesn't come to this. I assume such a move would create a vacuum for a competitor. Not everyone wants to be completely owned by AWS.