You really think if Spotify came along in 1998 that all the major record labels would agree to give them their entire catalog for $10 a month? Back then they were selling a single CD for around $20.
Piracy existed a LONG time before Napster hit the scene.
If you do that you'll get a very misleading answer. That low payment he got was for writing credit on a song with 17 writers.
But the main reason streaming gives less revenue than CD sales isn't a "devaluation of music" thing, it's because streaming is closer to radio.
> It's really a grand piece of irony for software engineers that depend on enforceable copyright law to put food on their table to call this arrest tyranny. If nobody can go to jail or be fined for copyright infringement then I hate to say it but you are going to need to quit your job writing software and start driving a city bus or something.
For many (if not most?) software businesses nowadays, the code itself holds little intrinsic value. If someone were to steal my SaaS code, it's unlikely they could deploy it and sell a similar product. The value of my business lies in its domain expertise, not in the code being a trade secret. Many internal projects aren't open-source simply because opening them to the public would require significant maintenance. Otherwise, there would be no issue in sharing the code, as much of what's built today is based on open-source projects.
Similarly, if I'm selling an application and its code is leaked, people would still prefer to install it from the app store. Few would go through the trouble of compiling the code and deploying a "hacked" version.
This contrasts with the 80s and 90s, when illegal copies of floppy disks and CDs posed a significant issue for some software businesses. However, times have changed. Nowadays, people prefer to pay for the support of a SaaS or the convenience of installing an app from a store, complete with updates.
There are exceptions, but I believe most software engineers don't work on projects where the code itself has significant value that needs to be protected by copyright laws.
The situation with music is somewhat similar. People have stopped buying physical media because it's no longer practical. Even those who collect CDs, vinyl, or tapes typically use streaming platforms for most of their music consumption.
https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...
It is an industry that employs real people from artists to studio engineers to musical instrument and equipment companies to the bartenders at the venues. Those people are sharing a smaller pie than they used to before Internet piracy devalued their music.
In your opinion it's tyrannical. Sure, most certainly a non-violent crime against a wealthy corporation isn't on the same level as murder or assault. At the same time, copyright infringement is conceptually not that different from property crime.
You would want the police to arrest someone who broke into your home and stole your movie collection.
You wouldn't want to spend a year writing code for your micro-SaaS product and then have a hacker breach your infrastructure, steal your work and sell it on their own website.
It's really a grand piece of irony for software engineers that depend on enforceable copyright law to put food on their table to call this arrest tyranny. If nobody can go to jail or be fined for copyright infringement then I hate to say it but you are going to need to quit your job writing software and start driving a city bus or something.
Don't forget that Megaupload was specifically designed to enable piracy and discourage other uses of the technology. It wasn't a file storage service that could be used for legitimate personal use because unpopular downloads would be deleted. The company actually paid people via an incentive program to upload popular files that were copyright infringing. This wasn't just "YouTube is bad at playing whack-a-mole with DMCA claims," this was a company that was responsible for something like 4% of all Internet piracy all by itself and actively encouraged it.
It's not like they were a company that didn't have access to lawyers who could warn them not to do what they did. Kim deserves his fate because his own hubris invited it.