Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

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> there's a replicated consensus of all this attributions. Every single company agrees and has a shared database of the rights and the licensing.

Riiight. They can't agree on a standard describing their music and licensing now. But blockchain will magically create that shared database out of thin air.

BTW. Again. That same word, database. Nothing a relational database couldn't handle with much more ease and efficiency.

> there's not necessarily a need to have a middle man managing this informations and agreements

Riiight. Because every single company will provide an up-to-date complete information with no omission and mistakes. Magic of blockchain!

> you have this immutable record of when songs were released, who held their records, who and when licensed them, etc.

Riiight. Because there's not even a consensus on what to define as a song, it will somehow magically be solved by blockchain which will automagically identify and attribute eve ry song/track/music correctly, completely, and without omission.

Just some brain teasers for you:

- is a single in Europe the same song as the same single released in Japan?

- the single in Japan is 12 seconds longer, though.

- The authors and the singer are the same. The publishers are different.

- There's the same song, with the same people + a different drummer released two years later. Is it the same song?

- All three variations appear on fifteen different albums in 7 different countries, spanning 4 major and 5 regional publishers.

- Oh. I forgot to say, it's the same classical Tchaikovsky music which is in the public domain. Yet surprise! You still have to pay money (you may research why as a part of your answers to the brain teaser).

- Also, the global and regional distribution, performance, streaming, and radio rights may or may not be be different for each of those.

> ny interested party can join and get the information it wants without needing APIs

Because blockchain is a magical technology that transmits all this information directly into your brain without the need of APIs.

Also, the article you linked is a bunch of demagoguery with zero practical applications that for some reason equates blockchain with TCP/IP and not, let's say, Tamagotchi.

> But blockchain will magically create that shared database out of thin air.

It won't, and it's a strawman you are setting up. Of course you have to design your business logic and rules and answer all the questions. There's nothing a blockchain, a relational or a nosql database will do for you there. They will give you different options and different tradeoffs. The point here is that this distributed solution has interesting trade-offs and opportunities that makes this a good match for this particular problem, regardless of rules of what defines a song or how licensing rights rules are defined.

> BTW. Again. That same word, database. Nothing a relational database couldn't handle with much more ease and efficiency.

Yes, sure. You can have a third party with a central relational database that does all that, and all companies trust it. The proposed solution is more akin to a relational database replicated between all interested parties. All the parties having the same vision of immutable data allows interesting tradeoffs for this particular problem, that's all. No one is claiming it will identify or classify songs for you.

> Because blockchain is a magical technology that transmits all this information directly into your brain without the need of APIs.

No, because you can design a solution where any interested party can join the network and have a copy of the data. Or not. Trade-offs.

> Also, the article you linked is a bunch of demagoguery

I think it's a very pratical way of understanding the oportunities and capabilities that open up with new technology, particulary if you have a knee-jerk reaction such as shown above. Scepticism is healthy particularly given all the hype and magical promises around it but if you look at it through the framework proposed there I hope you can see how it opens design space that was unpractical before.

> It won't, and it's a strawman you are setting up.

It wasn't set up by me, was it? Let me remind you:

"Of course, all these questions can be addressed in one way or another with conventional database tech. But blockchain has some undeniable appeal in an application like this."

So far no one has shown that "undeniable appeal". Moreover, every person who roots for blockchain in this conversation comes up with easily refutable claims.

> Of course you have to design your business logic and rules and answer all the questions. There's nothing a blockchain, a relational or a nosql database will do for you there.

Let's see what one of the proponents said: "UMG, Warner, Sony and Spotify cannot share bills for running a common database on AWS today without creating yet another corporation and relinquishing power over the data to it... They are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other without intermediaries through novel org structures."

And yet. Suddenly. "Oh, you have to agree and design your business logic and rules and answer all the questions." Why the hell would I need blockchain for this?

> You can have a third party with a central relational database that does all that, and all companies trust it. The proposed solution is more akin to a relational database replicated between all interested parties.

Oh wait. Let me remind you: "Every single company agrees and has a shared database of the rights and the licensing."

Moreover, it means that every single company agrees that anyone can just write whatever they want to this database, sure. And probably fork it at some time, splitting it further.

Remind me again, why blockchain?

> No, because you can design a solution where any interested party can join the network and have a copy of the data.

Oh cool. Data is useless without access to it though. Hence, APIs. You are not a programmer, are you?

> I think it's a very pratical way of understanding the oportunities and capabilities that open up with new technology, particulary if you have a knee-jerk reaction such as shown above.

It's not a knee-jerk reaction. It's a healthy scepticism based on experience and actual understanding of some of the inside workings of music industry.

Your "solutions" are basically "let's add blockchain to it because it's this new cool new thing even though I have no idea how it will aid the problem in question". All it does according to you is letting everyone have a copy of some data. Oh my god. I am so sold on this idea :-\

Just count the number of assumptions you make to make this work:

- everyone has to agree to use this shared database

- everyone agrees on a standard way to define songs, define licensing, define song metadata

- everyone agrees to provide exact truthful complete metadata for every song and track they release at any point in time (hey, remember the brain teaser I gave you? Try answering that first)

- everyone agrees to have this shared database as the one and only source of truth even if everyone can write any data to it

- everyone agrees to never under any circumstances fork the database or create competing copies of it (we know how well that worked for Ethereum etc.)

Oh, golly. I sure am sold on the opportunities and capabilities. Blockchain surely "has some undeniable appeal in an application like this." and will "revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other without intermediaries through novel org structures." "All this without getting into tokens and handling the payments and distribution of royalties on the chain, and other innovations that the capabilities of the blockchain can bring."

BTW. Blockchain cannot handle either payments or royalties. It can hardly handle a few payments without buckling under its own load.

> It wasn't set up by me, was it?

Yeah, you are the one claiming that blockchain has to somehow identify and categorize songs automatically in order for it to be in anyway useful. The undeniable appeal claimed is about how organizations coordinate and share information.

> Moreover, it means that every single company agrees that anyone can just write whatever they want to this database, sure.

No, you can design it with whichever rules you want on who can write, on what's written, and how the consensus is determined if that information is accepted.

> Oh cool. Data is useless without access to it though. Hence, APIs. You are not a programmer, are you?

This makes no sense. If I have a copy of the data, I can access it. Yes, I'm a programmer.

> Just count the number of assumptions you make to make this work:

Aren't those mostly the same assumptions you have to make to have music licensing work at all? Through an intermediary, on a relational database somewhere? Everyone has to agree to use this system, to provide truthful metadata, and use this intermediary's information as the only source of truth?

> BTW. Blockchain cannot handle either payments or royalties. It can hardly handle a few payments without buckling under its own load.

Again, don't take Bitcoin's limitations for Blockchain limitations.

> Yeah, you are the one claiming that blockchain has to somehow identify and categorize songs automatically in order for it to be in anyway useful.

Nope. Not me. I've even quoted the claims.

> The undeniable appeal claimed is about how organizations coordinate and share information.

Once again. I asked several times: the organisations cannot organise and agree now. Why would they agree in the case of blockchain? Just be cause you say "blockchain" it won't magically happen.

> Aren't those mostly the same assumptions you have to make to have music licensing work at all?

Yes. So. Once again. What's the undeniable appeal of the blockchain? You need all of the exact same assumptions that don't work or work very poorly in the first place, and you decide to add a blockchain on top of that because somehow it will magically make everything work.

So, once again. What exactly does blockchain bring into the equation if everything remains the same?

> Again, don't take Bitcoin's limitations for Blockchain limitations.

Riiight. There apparently exists some magical blockchain that doesn't have any of the limitations that every single blockchain on the market has.

> So, once again. What exactly does blockchain bring into the equation if everything remains the same?

I did state it, repeatedly, but it doesn't count because everything else remains the same and it doesn't magicaly makes everything simple and easy. Allright.

You did, and it breaks immediately, because everything else (the things that actually don't work) remain the same, and you for some reason expect them to work in your blockchain.

If something doesn't already work, adding something that's completely orthogonal doesn't help it, or solve it. All other perceived benefits are just not good enough, and blockchain brings enough problems of its own.

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