The only people who can force me to pay is Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Everyone else can persuade me
(And apple music and Amazon - I think I need to rationalise that one)
I think that the Apple / Amazon model is more appealing - pay us first or basically you get nothing.
I guess this is the early signs of the Freemium model falling apart.
Installing an ad blocker is within someone's full legal right.
Why are you making false statements regarding what is or is not a crime?
Personally, I haven't jumped on the streaming music thing (iTunes Match is about as close as it gets for me with buying CDs or MP3s to add to it in time), but I don't think what they're doing is a bad thing.
Now, if you have some means to force the various ad networks to prevent hijacking a device and then telling me congratulations for being an Amazon customer and some random item blinks on my screen, I'm all ears. But ads in and of themselves, I don't have a problem with.
Companies have a habit of trying to squeeze all kinds of stuff into their ToS/AUP, hoping they can get away with it.
Who'd want to bet Spotify's bans would survive both a) the courts, and b) public opinion? Remember they'd need to win in both.
b) absolutely - most people either don't use ad blockers, and of those that do, most people are not militantly committed to them. There will be a set of people who stop using the service out of principle, but almost all of them weren't making any revenue for spotify anyway.
The only risk to spotify I can see is if they use somekind of nefarious method to detect ad-blockers (eg root kits) and I 1) don't think they're that stupid 2) don't think they would be necessary or useful anyway.
I guess another risk is if they force people to turn off ad blockers, then accidentally serve them malware, but afaik, various other sites have done this and nobody seems to care.
Conversely, any (non-critical) service has the right to stop showing us ads or serving us in any other way.
The closer you are to a monopoly, the more required you should be to serve all. We don't allow the electric company to kill your power because you made disparaging emails or bad messages online.
And if you're a monopoly, you should be dealt with heavy handedly. Because power and money only further power and money. Anti-competition laws stem that to an extent.
Music streaming isn’t the kind of good that falls under common carrier so I don’t think the analogy of the electric company fits. People can easily go through life not subscribed to one. I for one only have iTunes Match which isn’t the all-you-can-eat style of Spotify/Apple Music/Play Music/Amazon Music/Tidal/etc.
Creating another copy or playthrough of a song without permission doesn't have zero cost, fine, but the entire conversation is cheapened when people talk like it's the same thing as pocketing a cassette tape from a store.
You switched the topic from receiving for personal use to distributing. Demand promotes supply, I'm not unaware, but that doesn't make them equivalent - unless we'd like to equate drugdealing with possession, and scalping with buying a secondhand concert ticket? You also escalated from 'distribution' like burning a CD for a friend to invading someone's computer and publicizing a nonpublic work. This is the same sort of dodge the RIAA has been using for years, pursuing downloads and uploads indifferently and targeting private, unpaid sharing with laws aimed at systematic, for-profit fraud.
But even ignoring every part of that, yes. It's still a rhetorical trick. Theft is, by legal, dictionary, and common-use definitions, an act that deprives the victim of the stolen property. Stealing King's manuscript off his editor's desk would be theft. Copying the book would be a lot of things, like a real CFAA violation, probably either B&E or wire fraud, and debatably trespass to chattels. Posting it online would prompt another list of crimes and civil suits relating to the potential monetary harm to King.
I'm not excusing all acts described as 'piracy' or 'theft'. I'm saying that the label actually matters, and the discussion is harmed by applying law and rhetoric about deprivation to an act of duplication.
It's just a rhetorical trick that pro-theft people (people who steal the hard earned labor of other people because of entitlement or, perhaps, just devotion to technical pedantry) use to justify their immoral behavior.
The creators of the content intended it to be available for purchase only and distributed it so that only those who pay could listen.
When you violate that intellectual property, you steal from them. You steal their labor, their time, their blood sweat and tears.
I'm always fascinated at the kind of evil it takes to justify this kind of stealing.
Just because they don't want you to have access to their labor doesn't mean you're entitled to it, no matter how many rhetorical tricks like "Personal Use" you use.
The Free Software movement has been fighting against this exact mentality for decades. Digital autonomy should be a basic human right. Anyone should be able to download and execute whatever code they want on their own computer.
Spotify also has this right, of course, and is free to block users if they choose. I am not morally obliged to support their business model. At the same time, I choose to have a paid Spotify account because it's more convenient.
Spotify can refuse me service if they have a problem with this (no free music), but they can't make me feel guilty for blocking ads.
The original comment seems to argue that ad-blockers are morally wrong, which I disagree with. Ad-blockers are a morally neutral technology, even if they hurt some company's bottom line. Companies that dislike this reality can deploy technical countermeasures, like Spotify is doing.
If you don't like it, then go change the law.
please see "end of freemium" comment
If someone opens a shop and invites me to walk around, browse and chat, then that's nice - maybe i will buy.
but saying "now you must pay an entrance fee because you are wearing earphones - we want customers to listen to our trained shop staff" is kind of defeating the point.
yes they can set up weird rules for their shop, but it's dishonest to change the game now, and frankly counter productive
You agree to their terms before entering the shop. Everyone understands and knows this. Pretending you don't know their terms is willful ignorance. The moral issues here have been settled in law for centuries now. The only thing that actually changed is technical capability.
A much better analogy is this: You walk into a music store, and there is a sign that says "Please do not play the instruments". The shop owner walks out of the store, and you start playing the guitars because "they're not here to enforce it, so the rule doesn't apply".