
The dawn of online piracy (2015) - bckygldstn
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business
======
phsource
I love how this story weaves the changes of an industry around a single life
who anticipated, benefited, and eventually fell behind the trends of how we
get music, movies, and media. I still remember buying bootleg "VCDs" in Hong
Kong back in 2001.

When it comes to how the music industry's changed as a whole, I think two
charts tell the story:

1\. RIAA-tracked (North American) music sales have fallen from a high of $14
billion in 1999 to only about $6 billion today, even with downloads included.
[1]

2\. At the same time, concert ticket sales have gone up from $1.5 to $7.5
billion, offsetting three-quarters of the drop in music sales. [2]

It's an incredible shift in how the industry works, and explains the rise of
Live Nation/Ticketmaster, Spotify (why are music publishers and others are
more willing to give away music?). The winners and losers have changed, but
the music keeps playing.

[1] [https://blog.thecurrent.org/2014/02/40-years-of-album-
sales-...](https://blog.thecurrent.org/2014/02/40-years-of-album-sales-data-
in-one-handy-chart/)

[2] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/306065/concert-ticket-
sa...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/306065/concert-ticket-sales-
revenue-in-north-america/)

~~~
Meekro
I remember how people on Slashdot loved to argue about this around 2003, when
the RIAA started suing everyone. The nerds claimed that music would eventually
become free, but artists would still make a living from concert tickets and
merchandise. That viewpoint was often mocked, but turned out to be right!

~~~
roel_v
No, the nerds argued that music "should" be free and that musicians "should
just" switch to a concert/merch business model. Which they ended up having to
do. I think thats a very different view of it. I'm not a musician or otherwise
profit from strong copyrights, but I still think creators were/are being
robbed.

~~~
mmjaa
Creators were being robbed long before the Internet came along and made piracy
easy, yo. The music industry is literally filled with some of the most
heinous, double-crossing hustlers you will ever find.

~~~
52-6F-62
This subject might go underappreciated, but it's so very true. A very shallow
search will lead you to the ugliest, and most scathing accounts by some of the
most beloved musicians. (see Michael Jackson)

Others have simply long left the sole clutches of major labels and only
associate with them on their own terms, like Wilco and Radiohead (in the
rock/ish world).

That said I feel like adding to the general discussion here—with radio music
became more accessible to the masses than it ever had been, and in that era
musicians largely made their money on royalties (if they were so fortunate) or
putting on a roadshow.

Shortly thereafter was it only that people were able to take portable
recordings home to enjoy at their own timing.

Prior to any of this, (decently) paid musicians were far fewer. If anyone
wanted to enjoy music, they had to afford concerts or recitals, visit or
encounter travelling musicians, or acquire the music itself and learn to play
it.

I digress a little... but it seems we're coming sort of full-circle from the
radio-era model back to it via the streaming-era model. The major difference
being the need to not only buy a device to tune in, but to pay an additional
and regular fee to access more content/programming than the radio provides.

------
computator
> _From 2001 on, Glover was the world’s leading leaker of pre-release music._

I love reading a long-after-the-fact story when a key person is willing to
talk. Had this story been written in 2001, it would have been speculation and
hype. We wouldn't have learned about the real people and how and why they did
it.

I'm looking forward to reading the following around a decade from now:

(1) The real story behind Satoshi Nakamoto, his true name and motives, and why
he went silent.

(2) The Truecrypt author's story, who was he really, and what caused him to
disavow his creation 3 years ago even though it appears totally secure even
today.

------
qwerty456127
One of the sad things is that people willing to just get a no-nonsense DRM-
free MP3 of a years-old song they like for personal use (and sharing with a
friend perhaps) are considered the same with those willing to get and even
sell original stuff before it's even released.

~~~
digi_owl
This in large part because the MAFIAA got so damned used to selling the same
thing over and over and over, as new ways to package came to be.

This anything that comes around that shortcircuit that business model gets
lawyer bombed.

~~~
qwerty456127
Any ideas on what can probably change the situation at some point?

------
Norther
Anyone else think this would make a great movie? Or perhaps a Silicon Valley-
esque tv-series centered around the Scene would be fantastic.

------
hungerstrike
The "dawn" of online piracy was in the 70s and 80s with BBSs and Usenet, way
before Napster. Even right before we had Napster, we had IRC as mentioned in
the article.

Napster was more like the beginning of peak online piracy. Then we had all the
Napster knock-offs for 10 years. Piracy pretty much lost mainstream appeal
after that with the emergence of legal media streaming services.

~~~
wmeredith
Agreed. A better title for this may have been "the normalization of online
piracy" or "the mainstreaming (ha) of online piracy".

------
metafrag
Data sharing technologies disrupted the media market in the same way that ride
sharing technologies disrupted the taxi market. Its piratical uses are
secondary to the fact that analog information had been largely outmoded by
digital information as early as the first BBS.

The piracy, "concert/merch" model, as well as the success of Bandcamp and
Spotify, are adaptations to changes in the infrastructure for information
exchange.

However, anyone arguing that music, movies, or code "should be free" probably
hasn't played a guitar, acted in a play, or written a block. Doing these
things well is not easy and takes a lifetime of almost-daily practice and
expertise...consider resuming that argument when the world is post-currency.

------
grawprog
That was pretty cool to read. I always like hearing about the ways a few
people can influence something so widespread. I remember reading a few RNS
.NFO files back in the day. I've still got an old hard drive kicking around
somewhere that probably has a few of those old .mp3 scene releases in its
belly. Back from the days when it used to take longer to download an album of
shitty quality .mp3 files than it does to download a 4k movie today.

------
amelius
With torrent being blocked in so many countries, it seems more like the end of
piracy.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
I am not disagreeing with your point, but can you most some relevant links to
articles about countries blocking the bittorrent protocol?

~~~
amelius
I meant blocking in a legal sense. See e.g. [1].

And of course you can use a VPN, but what will happen if fewer people seed? Or
if everybody moves to a VPN, and anti-piracy contractors start targeting VPN
providers?

[1] [https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/illegal-file-sharing-
german...](https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/illegal-file-sharing-germany-
letter-cease-desist-warning/)

~~~
petre
Ah, Germany, or how to use public resources to protect private IP. The French
decided it's not worth their time. There are more important issues for the
police to pursue, like organized crime.

------
featherverse
This article is garbage. It's a typical case of a complete outsider trying to
analyze a scene he doesn't understand or know anything about based on
"research", and trying to write for an audience that also doesn't understand
the tech or scene or know anything about it.

There's not some "guy" responsible for online piracy, and there wasn't a
"dawn". If Napster hadn't existed something else would have. Piracy existed
outside of Napster. Napster did not give birth to piracy. Piracy has been huge
since removable storage was invented, whether it was data cassettes or floppy
disks. Piracy was in demand and Napster was the answer, not the inspiration.

Considering the source, The New Yorker, none of this comes as a surprise.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Which article did you read? Napster is a footnote in this one.

~~~
pavement
That Napster is depicted as a footnote is pretty inaccurate, considering the
title. Paint his story as the story of a kingpin, but this is not "the dawn
of" anything beyond his personal tale.

