The lost joy of music piracy

Its not lost here, still going strong. Lol

I can vouch for OiNK and What.cd being magical places, unlikely to ever come back. There was also Waffles which was a little more like OiNK in spirit, but What had a much bigger selection and discovery was second to none.

The owner of OiNK did nothing wrong and was cleared in court, but the music industry was still able to hire thugs (the police) to raid his home in the early morning and ruin years of his life. He understandable went under the radar but I hope everything is ok now.

I still think about the users of those sites to this day. The internet just isn't what it was any more.

Now music pirates itself.

(Thinking of AI generated music which doesn't get more than a few % of total listening time, but give it some time..)

Isnt REDacted the continuationnof What.cd

I've tried all the streaming services, I've regularly bought physical copies of music even in recent years, but nothing has exposed me to such a wide range of music and such a range of artists as a well curated blogspot. Whether that be a wide range of excellent bootlegs or music that has not been moved from cassette to digital, it just provides me with so much more joy. Especially easy to do now iPods are back in vogue

I'm so incredibly happy police resources are being used to "protect" the rest of us from... harm...?

Nowadays the only thing thats truly being pirated, is peoples' attention.

Everythings been commoditized, nothing serious can be compiled onboard any more, everything needs permission.

Bring back the compiler, you fuckers!

Its a supercomputer, in my pocket, and I need permission to do things to it.

Any amount of joy you lost is a fraction of joy lost from people blatantly stealing the fruits of other people's's labor. Communities do not have to be parasites to exist. Similar amounts of joy could be created over a different interest that didn't require stealing and hurting others.

Did everyone forget about soulseek? It's still very much alive, been using it for years.

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I can't believe the operators of what.cd would choose to delete everything without at least a warning, or letting people back it up. So much music and metadata just lost!

Not to mention the crime of law enforcement prioritising private profit over a cultural milestone. It really is like they burned the library of Alexandria because it hadn't paid the copyright fee.

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