[lrvick]

The music industry has an army of lawyers too, and it did not make a damn bit of difference once bittorrent was popularized.

IP law means nothing once tens of millions of people are openly violating it.

The software industry is about to learn this lesson too.

[dwedge]

So is music free now? The record industry doesn't exist anymore, isn't ridiculously profitable? Artists are finally earning a fair share?

[lrvick]

Music is free, because music piracy is unenforceable so the law is irrelevant. Now, I personally buy most of my music on vinyl because I want to support artists, but absolutely nothing forces me to do that as all the music is available for free.

[Sharlin]

As far as I can see, the vast majority of people don’t pirate music these days (unlike 20 years ago). Most people wouldn’t even know where and how to pirate music. They just have Spotify or another streaming service.

[lrvick]

> They just have Spotify or another streaming service.

That could have never existed without piracy causing a shift in market forces.

[Applejinx]

In the sense of artists cannot expect to get any money for their work, yeah music's free. Becoming a meme or a celebrity on the grounds of personality is still fair game, to the extent that AI is not impersonating people effectively at scale yet.

Yet.

A whole bunch of people I watch on youtube (politics, analysts, a weatherman) are already seeing AI impersonation videos, sometimes misrepresenting their positions and identities. This will grow.

So, you can't create art because that's extruded at scale in such a way that it's just turning on the tap to fill a specified need, and you can't be a person because that can also be extruded at scale pretty soon, either to co-opt whatever you do that's distinct, or to contradict whatever you're trying to say, as you.

As far as being a person able to exist and function through exchanging anything you are or anything you do for recompense, to survive, I'm not sure that's in the cards. Which seems weird for a technology in the guise of aiding people.

[Marha01]

> So is music free now?

Uhm... yes? The cost of downloading pirated music is essentially zero. The only reason why people use services like Spotify is because it's extremely cheap while being a bit more convenient. But jack up the price and the masses will move to sail the sea again.

[dwedge]

The cost of stealing has always been essentially zero. Same argument can be made for streaming, and yet Netflix is neither cheap nor struggling for subscribers.

[Marha01]

> The cost of stealing has always been essentially zero.

That is not necessarily true, depending on the level of enforcement and the availability of opportunities to steal.

> Same argument can be made for streaming, and yet Netflix is neither cheap nor struggling for subscribers.

Netflix is still pretty cheap for the convenience it provides. Again, jack up the price and see the masses move to torrent movies/shows again.