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Comment by lallysingh | Hacker News Reader

Then perhaps they're not really trying to defeat piracy? If they're trying to justify the position of middle-men (say, recording studios in music), then the lawsuits show them adding value. Even when distribution is no longer difficult, thanks to the internet.

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Recording studios are not middlemen. That's where records get made. You can only go so far in your bedroom before you need a room with a million dollars of equipment in it.

That's the problem with these modern ideas about people producing content off their own back, it's not actually possible. You can't make star trek on a macbook pro with final cut, and you can't make a highly produced album with 10 musicians in your bedroom.

You can make truly amazing music without the million dollars of equipment though! It's an optional extra, and I would argue that we would not be culturally less rich if those studios went out of existence. Worst case is that we would just have equally good music with a few slightly rough edges. As an example, I still choose Seth Lakeman's early recordings over his more recent even though they were made on a budget of a quarter of a macbook pro.

Unfortunatelly, so few people, even on this board, understand this. And the whole "artists should be poor and art should be free" idea expressed here many times is all that taken to extreme.

I don't think "middle man" is an accurate way to describe record labels. Record labels are mostly about financing recording (just like a bank finances your mortgage), driving the A&R process (this is crucial for pop music) and managing distribution. Publishers are, however, the real middle men with very real profits…

I'd say lawsuits show them "doing something". And pirates are there to hang all their failures on to when they need.

That's brilliant.

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