The Men Who Stole the World | Hacker News Reader

The Men Who Stole the World

time.com

139 pointsph0rque23 comments

See pictures of the movies' most evil computer villans.

I remember when I used to think time was a serious news magazine. And when the sub-editors could spell correctly.

however, credit is due for the mention of Justin (gnutella) Franklin's current project, cockos reaper. It's music production software and they seem to push out maintenance releases every week, if not more often. Over the last few years I've watched it grow from a 'proof of concept' alpha to a sophisticated and versatile suite, while remaining very fast, well-documented, and extensible. It's also shareware, but without being crippled, just a polite reminder on load. I don't use it for audio production, but I keep an eye on the project and am impressed by the continual release pattern instead of the sprint/collapse model.

Take a look at their release notes, and the dates thereon (page is text): http://www.cockos.com/reaper/download-old.php

* Frankel, not Franklin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Frankel

D'oh! Sorry Mr Frankel. This would have to happen when I'm griping about spelling in the same post, too.

It's just nice to see the "mainstream" media recognising that, unlike what the RIAA is saying, the sky didn't fall in as a result of the internet. As a musician myself I wholeheartedly embrace the new distribution methods because they are better for the consumer. The biggest challenge for me is defining what my product is (generally not an easily copied mp3 download) and then making this super effective and properly targeted. This is a good thing, however, as now that the IFPI and the RIAA have been all but taken out of the equation, the freedom we have to make innovative packages is pretty damn awesome.

Yes. When I was in New York one day, I happened to attend a meeting by some socialist musicians about how the internet has changed their livelihoods. The theorists and old guys talked about how we need state support and forming a union.

The younger pragmatists where content with giving away their mp3s and selling T-shirts.

That's interesting, however the position of the older guys is quite understandable in some ways. The entertainment industry over in the 'States is pretty unionised in the professional part of it, so I guess those guys were just advocating what they know.

Obviously this young musician is a pragmatist, though.

My favorite quote:

It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.

All the RIAA would've had to do to come out champions rather than villains in the digital world was listen to a broadcast of NPR's Science Friday in 1993, in which Internet users expressed their hopes and dreams for the Net. One of the requests was a way to listen to and buy music online.

The segment was rebroadcast last Friday: http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201011263

This stands as an important lesson: no matter how loudly anyone screams that the sky is falling, things rarely turn out as anyone expected. Who would have thought that iTunes would come along? Certainly not the RIAA...

And of course, no one expects the Spanish inquisition.

No, the sky is still falling for the music industry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_in_the_music_industry

"Total revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads in the U.S. dropped from a high of $14.6 billion in 1999 to $9 billion in 2008."

I imagine iTunes barely converted anyone who used napster, limewire, etc. back in the day. And now with streaming services like Grooveshark that are far easier than iTunes, the industry has another worry..

My money says it's not from piracy but from falling quality of music sold by the major record labels.

I spend more money on music purchased online now than I ever did on CDs but it's going to independent and foreign artists who produce a much better product.

The numbers should be including all sales.

For everyone of you, there's multiple people who haven't bought recorded music since 2000.

Good to see the mainstream finally getting it. A few choice quotes:

"What's striking about the pirate kings is that they've been much less successful in the straight world than they were as pirates. An anarchic worldview coupled with brilliant code doesn't travel as well as you'd think in the bean-counting world of legitimate commerce. Good code empowers users by giving them choices and options, but empowered users aren't necessarily good for business. What you need to hit it really big in legitimate commerce is an authoritarian sensibility that limits users to doing what you want them to."

...

"Johansen rejects any attempt to associate him with piracy. "As far as I'm concerned, it has nothing to do with me," he says. "I support fair use, which means that when you actually legally acquire content, you should have the right to use that content on any of your devices, using any application." For Johansen as for all of the pirate kings, it was always about writing good code, and what good code does is give power to the people who use it. That's the real reason the pirate apocalypse never happened. The pirates never wanted music and movies and all the rest of it to be free — at least, not in the financial sense. They wanted it to be free as in freedom."

Quite a well balanced article I thought. More so than I've come to expect from mainstream media.

we need a new word for mainstream media, it's been appropriated by the mainstream media.

I think "popular media" or "general interest news" work in this context.

'Corporate media' perhaps?

I think their corporate nature is incidental. Wired is a corporate media. Perez Hilton is not. This has more to do with getting technical details correct then being a corporation. So maybe "non-technical media" is the term we want?

Popular media, in analogy to popular science, is a pretty good term.

I don't know. As an example for a bad fit: The Economist is as corporate as you can get, but not really mainstream.

  consumers were high on the rush of swapping music hard drive to hard drive for nothing.

Oof.

Only in te music industry could somebody do enough coke to simultaneously attempt to sue your company out of existence while investing $100m into it. If there's one thing I agree with PG on it's don't do a music start-up.

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