mkhoury

This is more a question of tolerance. We know Facebook is NOT tolerant of competitors, of the open web, of free software, etc. They cannot survive as a megacorp without a level of assurance and control that they can't have if they're "just another fediserver". They WILL try to wrangle control. They WILL try to eat us all up. Why let the fox in the henhouse when you already know it's a fox?

That doesn't actually fix the issue. If Facebook is trying to set itself up like Chrome with the webplatform, or GTalk with XMPP, then they will drive the feature set of ActivityPub, whether you're federated with them or not.

Hypothetical example:

Want to see this picture/video from someone on Threads? You need Facebook's proprietary picture format, which has DRM baked in it. Even if you don't federate, Mastodon, Lemmy, etc now have to take energy away from their work to adopt the proprietary picture format. It depends on the proportion Threads takes on the network and how they can leverage that position to put pressure.

Threads currently has voice notes. Should all ActivityPub services support that? If so, do we adhere to Threads' standard or not?

I get ya. I think there's also a petulant sentiment of "you don't want to play fair? Then fuck you, I won't either"

No no, that is not what the headline says.

The headline says "you're told that what you're doing is buying by the people selling you the media, but that's not what you're actually doing. So, if they're lying to you about what you're buying, then pirating a different thing isn't stealing the thing they are trying to sell you."

It's definitely tongue in cheek and has some hyperbole in it, but that is the gist of the statement.

Agreed, and to me the solution is not "let's hope the companies play nice", but rather to bring in anti-monopoly regulations, like Canada's Bill C-56.

We need to force companies to add interoperability, transparency and fairness imho. Like the ongoing fight to force Apple to allow competing browsers in iOS. Or alternate app stores for Android and iOS.

Ah, that's not my understanding of civil disobedience. I prefer this definition: "civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/)

I suppose the piracy aspect might not be public enough to count as civil disobedience though, unless you count as public the noticeable cumulative effects of all piracy.

There's lots they can do...

• cheaper prices (by lowering the % of rent-seeking),
• better pay distribution for creators (Especially so that I pay to support the shows I watch rather than a global pool),
• interoperability (to allow new businesses which provide frontends to multiple streaming services),
• social (clipping and sharing, group watching, etc)
• more equal promotion of shows/movies (instead of based on royalty rates)

I was under the impression that there were resources in that area that the US currently has privileged access to because of their alliances there. So they have a stake in making their allies come out on top.

How much should they be paid for it? In a situation where the streaming services have a stranglehold on the market and are extracting a big amount in rent-seeking price vs actually paying the people who labored to create it, should we continue to pay and give in to their morally dubious tactics? In this lens, can piracy be considered a form of civil disobedience?

I'm not so sure that's true. What if normalizing and removing friction from piracy gets to the point where the streaming services have to react by providing better services and better payouts?

Yeah, agreed and every person can only do so much. I like to think that it's all the same fight, it's the fight against the stranglehold that the rich have on the rest of us.

That's the point, though. Spotify is rigged specifically so that they don't have to pay small artists. Spotify splits the pot with the Big Three and everyone else can go fuck themselves. I would much rather my monthly payment go toward the artists I actually listen to. Instead, most of a monthly payment goes to the most played artists-- which Spotify rigs to be whoever nets them the most money (low royalty artists, high dividends for Spotify and the Big Three who are highly invested in it)