Google Music did this back in the day, I lost versions of tracks that I couldn’t find anywhere again, infuriating.

To be fair they do say they “need to be” transparent, not that they were going to be :p

Wholesome to see people help, but the main feeling I get is revulsion that this person can have a wheelchair provided with insurance but can’t even get proper functionality without paying.

They spend the majority of those billions on marketing, higher tier salaries, a very small portion goes to the artists. Without those billions media would still get made because there is always demand for entertainment and art.

No, fuck the middle man, we don’t need billion dollar conglomerates to distribute our media. The people have the tools and connection to create and share without these old business models trying to keep us in the 19th century as wage slaves, happy for the peanuts that their monopolies allow us to have.

I pirate things, and I also pay artists directly for their work when I can. Companies like Netflix manipulate the data and the market to ensure they are making the most profit possible. That is their entire goal as businesses. This exploitation should be separate from art altogether.

“Customers want to own their content”. It’s amazing to me that execs don’t grasp this? Or that they think if they stop allowing it people will stop caring, but maybe they will eventually. But it seems obvious, I’ve know many families that had massive dvd collections they were proud of. Bookshelves with dozens of books they probably never even read. It’s just comforting to have a thing and know it’s yours.

Every development in business consolidates their power and increases anxiety for the people.

Would you really put the blame on piracy for that when there are conglomerates manipulating the entire market? I’m not doubting they exist, but can you name a small business streaming service that would be affected by pirate services? I have never heard of such a company. I’ve seen small streaming services utilized by libraries but they are on government contracts and tax funded as far as I know.

Same, they must not have rolled it out to everyone, I have firefox/ublock origin on PC and android and have yet to see an ad on youtube, and the quality and speed of loading seem to be fine.

I doubt they would ever do this, but I wonder if they have some metric about the user’s likeliness of clicking ads, and prevent more ‘advertisable’ users from blocking the ads but let some keep blocking them because it wouldn’t make as much of a difference, or they would just leave youtube. If my adblock stopped working I would stop using youtube, without a doubt. I am allergic to ads.

Nearly all Google Art Project works can be downloaded at max res from the Wikimedia Commons

To add, the Met Collection and the Google Art Project (linked from Wikimedia Commons but viewable elsewhere)