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Comment by tchaffee | Hacker News Reader

> I just don't uncritically accept them, let alone act as a volunteer copyright-cop for them.

It seems like you are implying I am. When all I'm trying to do is make sure musicians get fairly paid for their work. So yeah, I'm not super concerned about playing music loud in my car as you sarcastically suggested I should be.

I am concerned about joining a music platform where something I purchased can be shared for free to millions of people with the musician getting nothing.

If there is a service that pays musicians directly and cuts out ASCAP and RIAA, then even better.

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> It seems like you are implying I am.

You are here talking down the tool and implying software you have not used is not legal while uncritically repeating their claims, which are more aggressive than many copyright lawyers believe is accurate.

I'm sorry if you find my flip characterization uncharitable. If you need a less off-the-cuff one, you are uncritically lending your voice to the legacy copyright cartel's continuing attempts to monopolize music distribution.

That does do several things. Promoting fairness for musicians is not one of them.

> you are uncritically lending your voice to the legacy copyright cartel's continuing attempts to monopolize music distribution.

Especially when I said this, right? "If there is a service that pays musicians directly and cuts out ASCAP and RIAA, then even better."

OK, that does require an apology; I missed that, and it does change the tenor of your argument. It is unclear to me how to combine supporting musicians' abusers with supporting musicians, but this is not a productive conversation, so I'm dropping it.

> cuts out ASCAP and RIAA

The sad thing for me, is that even if something like that were to function, and no matter how well, people would find another reason the artists don't deserve payment.

So as it stands, organizations like that are how artists get paid at all.

And not as any hard defence of the RIAA in all aspects, but it's not like they don't do anything. They did help set the standards for effective vinyl mastering and playback...

> a music platform where something I purchased can be shared for free to millions of people

That doesn’t seem to be the intent or reality of how Funkwhale is used. All of the public pods I saw had less than 200 members. I imagine you’d run into scaling problems with larger pods.

If you are suggesting people to buy the CD then you are not contributing much to artists.

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