Metallica's BlizzCon Performance Ruined by Twitch
gamespot.com
gamespot.com
I understand the legality of it, but this is absurd!
Anyone, anywhere, could watch the original livestream and hear the music.
Or, you could watch it on Twitch, and get commentary on the whole thing by your chosen favourite twitcher, in addition to watching it yourself. But then, for legal reasons, the music was replaced.
You could imagine a technical solution where Twitch just streams the twitcher against a transparent background, and you have to stitch it together yourself with the official stream, resulting in exactly the same experience as if Twitch did that stream stitching directly. That would be ok for legal reasons, even though it's completely identical to the not ok for legal reasons version above. How does that make sense?
Why does it matter, to Metallica, where the streams are stitched together? Why does it matter, to them, that everyone watches the completely free stream of their music from a specific source, and not any other source?
The value to Metallica is that they're getting paid by Blizzard. The value to Blizzard is that it drives attention to Blizzcon. Why does either of those entities care how exactly people are viewing Blizzcon? What matters is that people are watching it, and the how is secondary. But because of copyright laws, the how matters, and we get this absurd state.
They’ve always been like public enemy number 1 of music pirates...
I think it might be at the heart of the significance of this conversation.
(and I’m only talking about _audio_ recording, I’m not even touching the copyright issues from audio + video)
A likely explanation is that they charge Blizzard based on the amount of viewers that was there.
There could also be some kind of agreement that they had control over the redistribution afterward, in case they would prefer to take it down. Once redistributed by someone external, that's no longer possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Rock_Hard
Not a big deal?!?!
You realize how self-centered this is, right? How it isn't indicative of the general public? This is like saying "I love drunk driving. I live in Alaska where there's no one around so there's no one I can hurt."
Emule and bittorent helped me get access to a culture i didn't even know existed, brought me awy from TV shows and helped me learn english and to books i now own. I'm sorry for Butcher, Feist and Sanderson early years, but i think i have the whole collection now, and i couldn't afford to buy those books anyway (i don't think i could even find them in my country)
Drunk driving just made me gain 40 minutes while probably endangering a dozen people (and i immediately stopped after the first time).
Also every time i buy storage i pay a tax to Universal and other CP owner while not having any licenced music (unless they own Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Pachelbel, and a lot of pre-63 music in general) on those storage. Also they should give 40% of that tax to the Linux foundation since packer and weird images are taking almost half my disk space?
Anyway, i know how prod works, more than half of them are parasites and don't add any value (well, not exactly, they add their daddy political connections, that's something). It does not surprise me, what is surprising to me is that this many people defend them.
If your buisness model requires large scale censorship of the internet to remain profitable, then your buisness model is broken. This was true in the 90s where downloading a few thousand mp3s was the most you could get out of your modem and it's true today for complete 4k blueray rips.
Spotify and co have obliterated music piracy on the internet. It's hard to find torrents for music these days and even the best private trackers can't compete with Spotifys ever growing catalog. Add to that the availability of Spotify on linux, android and basically every other device that has a DAC in my household and i wouldn't even bother trying to pirate music anymore. There was a time, when this was true for netflix, or at least it felt true to a degree. But the movie and tv industry chose to split their catalog between an ever growing number of competing offers, thus movie piracy is alive and well. The same is true for most games these days. Why bother pirating a game, requiring complicated installation, slow download speeds and a lack of updates when i can buy it on steam and get the convenience of fast downloads, automatic updates, reliable only gameplay etc.?
The reality is that copying bits of data has become so trivial, it's impossible to monetize it. That's why everything's a SaaS in the cloud these days. Trying to restrict that is a fools errand at best. For piracy to die, it has to become inconvenient and the legal alternatives have to be priced reasonable.
I don’t know if I’d really notice quality[0] degradation too much, my use case would be the local storage in my vehicle for long trips with dodgy cell coverage. I’ve been burned a couple times by Spotify auto-clearing previously downloaded playlists, only to find out after I’m without data coverage / in the air.
I have a couple ideas about making the process more efficient, as in process running in the background. You are essentially restricted to a 1x rip speed, but I shouldn’t think I’d need to babysit it much and the post processing can be largely automated, perhaps less time than I remember it taking to find equivalent torrents, dl and clean those up. I mean, duration would be longer but level of effort on par or less.
Will report back.
[0] https://support.spotify.com/us/article/high-quality-streamin...
1) Configure Environment
* In Spotify set quality to Very High (nominally 320kbps)
* Using some virtual patch cabling (I use Voice Meeter Banana), set Windows to use it's VAIO input as the Spotify output device.
* Make sure B1 channel (the virtual output) is enabled in VMB
* Set A1 channel (hardware out) in VMB to your speakers if you want to monitor music, otherwise set to nothing if you want it to do all this in the background
* Set Audacity to to use the VAIO Output as the recording source
2) Record
* hit play in spotify, hit record in audacity
* Audacity should stop recording after prolonged silence when playlist ends - you can tweak the sensitivity of this.
3) Process * Select all in Audacity, then Analyze/Detect Sounds, set silence threshold to whatever (e.g. -60). Spot check your results for accuracy.
* Export this track list from Audacity (txt file)
* Use a tool like https://watsonbox.github.io/exportify to export your playlist details from Spotify (csv file)
* Use Excel or Python (or whatever your hammer of choice is) to merge your spotify playlist data with the audacity label export file, basically creating a new label file for audacity. For example, your audacity label name could be "artist-trackname".
* Import your new label file to update the track names;
* "Export Multiple" from Audacity using track name as file name.
* Use some media management tool to clean up and download all the metadata for the file. I used MediaMonkey for this. Basically imported detecting artist and track name from filename, then let it do its thing to look up additional metadata and album covers.
I'd suggest downloading it now before it inevitably gets nuked again
Eh? Maybe it depends on a musical genre, but from my experience musical piracy is about as popular as it ever was, with a lot of new releases every day (although I admit that it didn't really grow). I can still find anything I'm interested in less than a minute.
I also think, that having your own musical library is more convenient than spotify. As an example - https://ibb.co/VLTh5fD and https://ibb.co/fnxnMmG
Of course, that's also available today, but that's not really relevant to the problem being discussed, which is: it's possible to want to pay artists, while also finding overzealous enforcement of the DMCA problematic.
Amazon actually will delete music from your hard drive.
5. Reservation of Rights
Except for the rights explicitly granted to you in the Terms of Use, all right, title and interest in the Service, the Software and the Digital Content are reserved and retained by us, our Digital Content providers, and our licensors. You do not acquire any ownership rights in the Software or Digital Content as a result of downloading Software or Digital Content.
And yeah I do disagree with the license of hard copy distribution. I don’t think just because I buy a book I can do whatever I want, even burning it.
I really think the supposed harm to consumers is vastly exaggerated in HN; on the other hand, the harm to artists and creators is serious, especially to those without the privilege of patronage.
You may copy, store, and burn iTunes Plus Products as reasonably necessary for personal, noncommercial use.
All of the agreements cited are pretty clear that you can copy and store the bytes for your own use.
I agree with the thrust that "purchasing" music is certainly weirder with these overreaching legal agreements (and I think it's more fraught when it comes to video or video games), but I disagree with the perspective that:
A) That this is a lease of the music
B) That that condition is justified because you didn't create an exclusive commission.
It seemed to me that, legality aside (and forgive me if I'm misunderstanding), you were asserting that customers have no business expecting indefinite access to an MP3 they paid for, and I... disagree, but if the recording industry wants that to be the case, they're welcome to yet another scenario where pirates have a better customer experience than paying customers.
Blech, an edit: What I have seen that applied to is subscription-based music, where the license agreement around whether that song is available for subscription changes. Is there an example of this happening to a "purchased "song or album? I've never seen an effort by a publisher to reclaim hard-drive-bound songs that have been paid for (and I imagine spicy legal cases about expecting refunds).
Edit again: I realize I'm sort of meandering. My point is only that it's not unreasonable to expect that, I agree that licensing agreements for digital purchases of all kinds have surprising details about what you actually "own".
Jk, I don’t care. Thanks for arguing in good faith, that’s not something that ever happens in this forum, I do appreciate that.
E: Like i said, I do think that unless you explicitly buy the rights to a song, you don’t own it, you’re leasing it. Probably the only reason (judging by music lawyers behavior) to have the ability to a sort of ownership to physical media is because they had no way of stopping you from doing anything you want with your copy. Of course, that’s a different story today, I’m sure given a time machine, that would not have been a precedent.
So that’s why I don’t like the argument from prior precedents, since it would not repeat given current tech.
I am also sympathetic to the "creators'" perspective. How can you make a profit if people take whatever you made without compensation? I think part of my cynicism here is that the recording industry has long exaggerated and argued in poor faith about what the harm of a download is - conflating downloads with lost sales at a 1:1 rate, which... isn't quite right. And their approach for securing things can be problematic, I remember having a hell of a time with iTunes back with their DRM solution, hating that I couldn't just play the song I had paid for. If only I'd pirated from the start...
I think there's some axes along which things could be improved - the convenience axis - can I even buy (access to) the song without jumping through hoops? Can I pay to skip ads on whatever platform I'm using? How many different accounts do I need to get access to the music I'd like?
Edit: Agreed, I think if they can get away with having control at all times with the music you have available, they will... and it's hard for me to decide whether there will be backlash or just general acceptance in the same vein as the rest of the walled garden trends we've seen over the years.
If I purchase a Gucci handbag, I can do whatever I want with it even though it contains Gucci's trademark IP. It would be surreal for Gucci to be allowed to control what I wear it with, for example, or later take it off me. Nonetheless, owning the handbag does not give me ownership of their IP and it wouldn't make it legal for me to sell counterfeit copies of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compact_discs_sold_wit...
This is the same community that really hates ebook lending, and it's very much the same set of consumer-limiting control over intellectual property that curtails piracy but also makes things really inconvenient for the legitimate customer. I'm surprised but also not that people aren't able to think about this as more than a (false) dichotomy.
Properly implemented DRM is fine! Spotify has been a huge success, for example. Watching Netflix fully brings the convenience of streaming to legal content consumption. The only inconvenience here is that you can no longer pirate anything.
And, to use a facile and touchy example, Donald Trump didn't revolt at the capital.
But fine:
> what is a very real dichotomy
Help me out here - why are the only two choices: 1. rampant piracy 2. automated systems that allow corporations to trivially take down content, legitimate or not, with generally no recourse unless you get e.g. Google's attention on twitter?
Why are people so convinced there's no middle ground here, and that everybody with an opinion that #2 is perhaps a little problematic must be totally pro-piracy?
> Properly implemented DRM is fine!
Perhaps the argument is that we don't yet live in the land of properly implemented IP controls. I didn't realize we'd reached utopia; I'll go back to buying ebooks and reusing them across whatever devices I please.
Spotify and Netflix are great examples of exactly proof that a convenient form of consumption will get paying customers, and I was certainly more willing to buy MP3s when they stopped coming with DRM attached to them. The fact these work does not somehow render the point that, well, the original article, occurs, as a result of these things, and that it's ironic that it happens to Metallica, who would probably prior to this have been pleased that an automated system takes down anything approximating Enter Sandman.
That's a ridiculous wholly non-analogous example. Trump clearly incited the riot, there were recordings as proof, and resultant court cases. I assume (and hope) that this is also your understanding of what actually happened with Trump.
In this case, it doesn't even come close. For example, Metallica wasn't even signed on the record label that did the rootkit. Metallica had literally no involvement any hacking of their fans' operating systems.
You're stating a different dichotomy now. The original one you proposed was whether it is possible to be against online piracy without attacking consumers' data.
I'm happy to entertain your other more reasonable arguments that you have later written as follow-ups, but your original post directly accusing Metallica of rootkits is just flat-out untrue.
I'm just making the point that Metallica not rootkitting anybody is in no way an argument that they are neither in favor of that drastic a measure nor that they did not encourage or provide justification for the recording industry to do the same.
> You originally stated that Metallica rootkitted people.
No, I made a leap from "lobbying for and publicly whining about piracy" to "efforts to curb that include rootkits and other less horrible inconveniences". I'm sorry if that leap felt too extreme, next time I'll make the pit stops along the lines of "things don't work offline" and "things disappear without you knowing" and "things using otherwise standard formats aren't readable on your non-blessed device".
Whether Metallica directly rootkitted anything (which was never stated, it was just juxtaposed as an example of how this POV can hurt consumers in the end) doesn't really matter. Let's pretend that nobody ever rootkitted anybody.
How is this dichotomy different? My original, according to you:
> The original one you proposed was whether it is possible to be against online piracy without attacking consumers' data.
My recent restating:
> Help me out here - why are the only two choices: 1. rampant piracy 2. automated systems that allow corporations to trivially take down content, legitimate or not, with generally no recourse unless you get e.g. Google's attention on twitter?
Hm. Option 1 is online piracy, 2 is attacking consumers' data. Sounds pretty similar? Or do I need to be really literal and exact and use the same words?
What if the situation were different, and there where billions of people searching for infinite wells when all of the water became polluted and you were the lucky one to find it. Do you deserve everything now? How else were you supposed to have been incentivized to search for infinite wells if not for the possibility that everything would be yours upon finding it.
Alright, what if it weren't water? What if it were something that, instead of keeping you alive, just made life worth living? I reckon you probably couldn't get everything for it, but surely you could get a lot.
Does that seem like a bad system to you? I tell you what. I have a lot of money, I'll pay you to go searching for the infinite well of happiness (you can't survive on credit forever), and in exchange, it becomes mine when you find it, and then I can sell it for everything.
The premise that monopoly rights on distribution are necessary to incentivize the searching is pretty severely undermined by the fact that those monopoly rights are aggregated by companies which incentivize the searching via other means.
You’re misusing the word monopoly. Everyone has a monopoly on their own labor. But they don’t have a monopoly on music, and neither does Metallica. You’re not entitled to a man’s song and dance under any circumstances that don’t involve him entering into a mutually agreeable transaction with you. If this makes life not worth living, hopefully you can find someone else willing to accept your offer of giving them nothing in exchange for it. If you can’t, well, tough shit I guess. You still don’t deserve it for free. It’s not Lars’ problem if you will die without his music.
The question of copyright has ALWAYS been one of incentive, and I think my argument to that point is pretty clear.
Further, I am not misusing the word monopoly. Copyright is precisely monopoly distribution rights.
The presentation suggests that Metallica goes unpaid for their product. I suspect there are many fat bank deposits that indicate otherwise.
What I feel is more important is that the assertion obfuscates the primary motivation in play. Wealthy and powerful copyright interests want to control what customers get to do with the product they purchase. This government-granted privilege isn't one that's enjoyed by the vast bulk of producers.
Worse, copyright gatekeepers have twisted the constitutional purpose of copyright - from encouraging the progress of science and the useful arts - into a pampered entitlement of never-ending profit.
No, this is not a story of the evil capitalist overlord oppressing the little guy. Save the hero narrative. Even the broke bands (which is most of them) want people to pay them for their work. The good news is there are actually a lot of them who don’t, and that’s their personal decision. You’re allowed to take it for free if they set their price at zero, but you’re not allowed to set their price at zero for them.
Broke bands aren't who are paying legislators for ever-racheting copyright laws - each of which comes at the public's expense and further betrays the bargain between copyright holders and the public.
and - Corruption fueled copyright laws tend to favor powerful, wealthy gatekeepers (by design). For everyone else there are far better methodologies to making a living. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120210/02273417726/how-b...
Also, if it weren't Metallica, it would have been someone else; virtually every big artist at the time felt the same way but didn't speak up.
I can't believe the audacity of people thinking they should just be able to steal others' (by virtue of copying) music.
The people I know in the music industry are some of the hardest working that I know...
And to be clear, Metallica was never against online streaming / downloading, only illegal piracy.
"Steal" has been used as "copy" long enough that it's part of the standard usage now (and has been for a long time), just like "literally" being used as an intensifier, or "cool" meaning "good" as opposed to referring strictly to temperature.
And it's likely not even a misconception (like "a napron" => "an apron" was) but rather a conceptual metaphor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor), which is what helps you understand that you shouldn't be afraid of cutting yourself on someone's "sharp wit", and that you don't need to bring a ladder shopping even though "prices are rising".
Hell, even "conception" (as in "misconception") was originally only used for talking about literal pregnancies, the metaphorical extension didn't come about until the 14th century (source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/conception). Or is that okay? If so, how old does a semantic extensions have to be to be accepted into the lexicon?
It sure does, did I say otherwise or was that just the easiest straw-man you could attack? I contend the word in its current form is evolved to not include piracy. Not surprisingly, evolution of language can go many ways, not just the way which supports your argument. Cheers!
And are you really saying that "steal" has evolved away from also including "stealing ideas" and similar (including "piracy")? Because that's demonstrably false simply by pointing to the original argument you made complaining that people are using "steal" in the "wrong" way. I'm curious, though, do you have some data to back up that claim? (I'm assuming no—or something anecdotal at best—but on the off chance you have something, please, share!)
You are aware that general use defines language and what's considered correct, right? How you feel about it as an individual doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things unless you manage to affect general usage of the term "steal" to no longer include "piracy".
You're obviously not arguing in good faith—e.g. by cherry-picking what you respond to (out of context even ... while missing the point) while completely ignoring other arguments. I'll refrain from taking further part in the discussion if that pattern continues because it's frankly a waste of time and effort.
Tell that to the media industries lobbying to extend copyright terms to virtually infinite duration. The "something" they can't let go of from 21 years ago is the copyright on the material, of course.
I feel like there's some irony buried in there somewhere...
Is that not the opposite of ironic?
Also, isn't Blizzard or Twitch breaking their ToS by simultaneously streaming on Twitch and YouTube?
For most streamers, they want a community and costreaming does the opposite of that
For super large events having a split works. Large events aren't usually partners in the typical sense
-- problem solved!
- youtube
Google/YouTube does demonetization, but keeps the video streaming as is. That makes sense for their platform, but it creates a host of other problems.
No, we don't. It's unlikely they care.
1) Allow you to link your Amazon Music/Spotify/whatever account to your Twitch account to prove that you are licensed to stream songs from a given platform. 2) Allow a streamer to provide a 2nd audio channel in their bitstream, from their choice of service. You then only deliver this 2nd audio channel to people that have a link in place to said service
Simples.
Probably needs rights geolocation checking adding
The article mentions "sync" rights, which is the right to have music accompanying a video system. So in your system the user having the right to listen to the music is not enough. In this hell-hole shit-world the RIAA & MPAA & others have created, there are endless infinite licenses & they all require brutally disgusting carefully negotiated licenses, each & every time. What terrible people. The legalese continually gums of the creative & cultural works of our society, causes endless nightmares & prohibitions. The systems seem to only grow in complexity & become ever more inhumane.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/12/21562372/twitch-soundtra...
It's almost as if they don't want people to use & enjoy music.
amazon has enough money to pay for rights to play the music
and twitch streamers are also full of sh:t, they are the one who refuses their clips to be reused by people on youtube, and when it comes to people's music, they want to be able to freely use them
I never liked this twitch community, they are very toxic and they take everything for granted!
It should have been a string quartet of very very tiny violins playing a sad song.
> The upcoming musical performance is subject to copyright protection by the applicable copyright holder
(emphasis mine), this was configured manually by a human before the performance even started.