"Once..." is an odd and exciting word. It sets up expectations for what is to come next. Three possibilities come to mind.
Once... Twice, as in "Once bitten, twice shy," the proverb, and the Great White hit.
Once... upon a time.
Once... Always... in the sense of irredeemability of a thief, a scoundrel, a kleptomaniac, a cheat, or the ingrained and noble nature of a king or queen, a marine, a warrior.
Once is an adverb, a conjunction, and very rarely and idiosyncratically, a noun (just the once).
His most interesting point, IMHO, is about the piratical nature of Start-ups.
"Unlike startups, large companies have to follow the rules. As Steve Blank notes:
Startups can do anything. Companies can only do what’s legal.
Having no business model and no market reputation to defend makes startups quite dangerous as competitors."
Corsairs could be pirates or privateers. Buccaneers were the original pirates of the Caribbean, but many were under license to attack Spanish shipping. Paying taxes does not mean that one has Letters of Marque. What are we to call Big Tech?
"[Steve Jobs] offered a maxim meant to motivate the developers: “It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.”
and
"The pirate metaphor also involved a certain willingness to plunder. “Steve also never minded occasionally stealing good ideas from others, like the Picasso quote—’good artists copy, great artists steal,’” Hertzfeld adds."
Picasso's might be a philosophy not only shared by tech geniuses, but also by great musicians, as Paul Resnikoff discusses for digital Music news.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/04/19/robert-plant-and-jimmy-page-blatantly-admit-to-stealing-their-music-led-zeppelin/
Despite admissions, if one is good enough, one gets away with whatever alleged copyright infringement one might be accused of, presumably because the "borrowing" is transformative or otherwise is de minimus.
What if Amazon were to decide not to pay self-published authors? Not that they don't. Oh, wait...
The authors who were allegedly punished, were the innocent victims of e-book piracy. The musicians who are being stiffed are the innocent victims of streaming fraud.
As Chris writes: "it’s good to remember that this whole episode is somehow excused by overcoming streaming fraud. I think there are a lot more direct ways to stop fraud than stiffing an entire category of artists."
Please follow the Music Tech Policy link for potential solutions.
