Companies have the right to operate and have a TOS
I also believe individuals have a right to consume content however they want to.
Large corp. are accelerating their control over tech and the net and freedom is rapidly decreasing.
If we want to keep that freedom, we'll have to fight for it, just like they're fighting to extract more profits from users by trying to make it illegal to do things that would get in the way of that.
I also believe individuals have a right to consume content however they want to.
That's the line that always ends the argument for me. Consume your content however you want, just don't assume you can consume someone else's content however you want.
Why do you deserve to stream to music written by A, composed by B, recorded by C, published by D, marketed by E, uploaded to and served via F without permission from any of them?
Why do you deserve to stream to music written by A,
composed by B, recorded by C, published by D,
marketed by E, uploaded to and served via F without
permission from any of them?
I assume, from your use of "deserve", that you're interested in the moral justification rather than the legal justification.
Back when ripping CDs to MP3s was a controversial idea, a lot of people took the view that when you legally acquire a copy of an artwork you have fulfilled your moral responsibility to pay your share of the fixed costs of production. That when the creators give you permission to access the artwork you have permission to access any transformation of that artwork.
So for example if you buy a CD and rip it to MP3 that's fine. If you buy a DVD and fast-forward over the adverts, that's fine too.
By the same logic, some people would say even if you haven't directly paid for an artwork, so long as you've acquired it legally you gain the same rights. For example, if you record a broadcast TV show onto VHS, fast-forwarding over the adverts is fine. And if a web page is delivered with adverts, not displaying them is fine.
Likewise, if you can legally view a music video on youtube, a version that strips out the video and adverts to leave only the audio track is just a transformation - and therefore fine.
Personally I don't 100% agree with this view - I think ripping CDs to MP3 is fine, but for free ad-supported content I follow an imprecise "is the creator being fairly compensated" maxim where I usually keep the adverts enabled, unless they bother me.
>By the same logic, some people would say even if you haven't directly paid for an artwork, so long as you've acquired it legally you gain the same rights. For example, if you record a broadcast TV show onto VHS, fast-forwarding over the adverts is fine. And if a web page is delivered with adverts, not displaying them is fine.
>Likewise, if you can legally view a music video on youtube, a version that strips out the video and adverts to leave only the audio track is just a transformation - and therefore fine.
That doesn't make sense. The license terms between purchasing a CD and watching a YouTube video are completely different. Just because you watch a Taylor Swift video on YouTube, due to what is laid out in the license terms, you do not get a perpetual license to view that content forever. This is different from a CD. Now how they enforce it is a different manner (aka DRM), but the license terms are explicitly different from a CD.
I don't see this a matter of "agreeing", but something fundamental for licenses to work. By your same logic, I could also argue that I can download the source code to GNU GCC, strip out all the GPL "nonsense", because since I acquired it for free I "gain" the same right to do whatever I want.
You might argue that "well you can strip the GPL if you don't redistribute it", however that is not what is happening in Streamus' case. Streamus is technically redistributing music that was originally licensed to play on YouTube with a given set of conditions under a new set of conditions. And if you are going to subvert a license that makes you no different than what Apple tried to do with Taylor Swift.
The license terms between purchasing a CD and watching
a YouTube video are completely different.
Yes, that's why I included the proviso "moral justification rather than the legal justification"
You might argue that "well you can strip the GPL if
you don't redistribute it",
Yes, in case I wasn't clear in my post I was thinking of someone ripping a CD and keeping the MP3s for personal use. Distributing the artwork to other people would be a different matter altogether :)
however that is not what is happening in Streamus'
case. Streamus is technically redistributing music
A streamus supporter would probably say streamus is analogous to a VCR manufacturer, or a website that provides links to pirated content without hosting the content themselves. That because the big file comes from a youtube server, youtube is doing the distributing.
Personally I've always found such arguments a bit disingenuous, but there's merit to them in some cases.
In general, we don't need to ascertain that we "deserve" to do something to do it. The default in a free society is that we can do anything. What we need to deserve is the reverse: the right to prevent others from doing something. That's what needs to be justified.
This doesn't mean those parties shouldn't have the right to prevent us from streaming, I just dislike how the burden of showing so is distorted to assume one needs to justify each action one does.
In any case, the ToS explicitly says I can stream: you agree not to access Content or any reason other than your personal, non-commercial use solely as intended through and permitted by the normal functionality of the Service, and solely for Streaming.
I don't think you can say anyone "deserves" free videos on youtube. I don't see how that has any connection to the issue.
"without permission" is wrong. D and E with the permission of A B and C explicitly granted permission through F to serve the file. They choose to give me a free copy, and I accepted. Now it's my copy. I can make personal use of it as bound by copyright.
I also believe individuals have a right to consume content however they want to.
Large corp. are accelerating their control over tech and the net and freedom is rapidly decreasing.
If we want to keep that freedom, we'll have to fight for it, just like they're fighting to extract more profits from users by trying to make it illegal to do things that would get in the way of that.