Could you show me another service 'of its kind' as awesome as Flattr? Probably not.

Speaking of the the services not of its kind, Flattr's 10% is well reasoned. Appstore/Google Play charges 30%. Have you heard about Envato? They charge 50% on all sales until you make $70,000. Thousands of people make a living out of Envato and Appstore/Play.

Also don't forget that Flattr is dealing with micro transactions. With Flattr you can give $1 to 10 different content creators. Could you do that with Paypal? I think not. So, I would say that Flattr's 10% fee is well reasoned and acceptable.

Those services are for giving donations to people? Can you show me where they state this, because I can't find it anywhere..

"I would say that Flattr's 10% fee is well reasoned and acceptable."

Are you a shill for Flattr? Your comments make me think that you work for the site..

Try centuries.

Did independent artists ever subsist off album sales prior to the internet/TPB?

  > TPB isn't fighting for your freedom. They are helping in the demise of independent artists.

I'm tired of people saying "but look how evil the artists/labels/companies are!" I don't care, it's no excuse. You're correct that they're shady, but just because you're correct doesn't make your actions right.

You're correct that there are laws against sharing, but that doesn't make those laws right.

> Indeed, it's disheartening to see people try to defend what is most certainly a crime.

I guess your point is that things are illegal for a reason? There is certainly some truth to that. However, trying to enforce old ideas of copyright when digital distribution has created fundamental changes in how media is consumed seems shortsighted to me.

Perhaps you'd be less disheartened if you recognized how many people, both artists and consumers, are successfully navigating digital distribution without resorting to draconian copyright and drm.

  The great moral question of the twenty-first century is
  this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful
  information can be costlessly given to everyone at the
  same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can
  have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever
  moral to exclude anyone?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/information?s=t

How about your name, address, ssn, CC number, and bank account information. Information wants to be free, right?

There is an indie artist #1 on the charts right now, first time in 20 years, and second time in history.

"...won’t talk about how much money they’ve made, but it’s enough to make a major label’s advance offers seem inconsequential."

Is this an anomaly or is this a trend?

"He made X before, so Y must be Z"

But because he is the darling of the HN community (which seems odd, since many people here are interested in running startups), nobody cares.

I find the same thing happens with Al Gore. He made carbon credit laws that made him a billionaire and his supporters don't see this as filthy, corporate, greed. Yet, complain about the banks.

A much better action would certainly be to regulate, empowering the EPA and international health/safety standards bodies and skip over the middlemen entirely.

If you think you can do better than Flattr and produce a service that charge less, feel free to implement it. Competition is healthy, and there is no software patents in Sweden, thus no state enforced monopoly to stop you.

As for the TPB site itself, there are not a single peer reviewed research that say that independent artists was harmed by the site. Now days with the promo-bay, they have done more good than most labels but without charging a single dime.

Like most things that go against that go against the mainstream opinion of HN, my opinion is silenced by the masses.

"If you think you can do better than Flattr and produce a service that charge less, feel free to implement it. Competition is healthy, and there is no software patents in Sweden, thus no state enforced monopoly to stop you."

I don't need to. I'm also not trying to defend to the world why I'm freely sharing other peoples content and making money on it (through ad revenue).

"As for the TPB site itself, there are not a single peer reviewed research that say that independent artists was harmed by the site"

You are really tying to tell me that If I am selling a product and everyone knows they can get it for free from a website online, that people will buy it from me instead if downloading it for free and I won't get "harmed"?

You can defend this all you want, but when it hits your industry, don't start blaming anyone. It will cause job loss in the future.

"Now days with the promo-bay, they have done more good than most labels but without charging a single dime."

Prove it. There is no peer-reviewed research on the subject.