alt Hacker News> Stealing software and music put all the independent software conpanies and musicians out of business.
What are you talking about? Itch.io still exists, indie game studios still exist, FOSS software still exists, Bandcamp still exists, indie musicians still exist, etc.
The only thing I can think of that went out of business are platforms like Grooveshark (which was supported by “piracy”) which was litigated out business by the music industry. Spotify, the music industry main stay, is the one not paying artists.
Many small software companies have gone out of business due to piracy. I've seen this countless times in my career.
Before rampant piracy, independent musicians could tour small clubs and sell music. I knew many artists that basically lost their entire business due to piracy within a year.
Nobody was willing to pay for music online, but sharing it for free was fine.
I have the same reaction now that many here and in the tech industry have had over the last decade or two:
Times change and you aren't owed a living. If you can't make money with the new AI landscape, I guess you should be going into a different industry.
FOSS licensing won't matter much anymore when you can use LLMs that make changes to a code base and it looks nothing like the original.
We needed protections 25 years ago, but too many in the industry didn't want to give up the free games, movies, music, and software.
Now that it's hitting their bottom line, there's talks of unions and protections from the government.
I'm pretty tired of the hypocrisy.
Why should I care now?