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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Current regulations allow digital music providers to pay a lower music royalty rate if their paid music subscription offering is bundled with other legitimate product offerings. Seeing an opportunity, Spotify has exploited this regulation by converting all Premium Plan music subscribers into a new, bundled subscription offering without consumers’ consent or any notice. Spotify’s intent seems clear—to slash the statutory royalties it pays to songwriters and music publishers.

    Spotify has priced its Audiobook Access plan with 15 hours of listening time per month from a limited catalog of 200,000 audiobooks at $9.99/month. In contrast, Spotify’s music-only Basic Plan—which includes unlimited hours of listening from a catalog of over 100 million songs—is priced only a dollar more. Under the regulations, the higher the Audiobooks Access plan is priced, the lower the music royalty Spotify must pay.




  • The second problematic provision — found within Section 43201© of the House reconciliation bill — would impose a 10-year ban on the enforcement of all state and local laws that regulate artificial intelligence (AI), including rules for AI’s use in political campaigns and elections.

    From what I’ve read about reconciliation bills, provisons need to be mainly about the budget rather than policy. What does banning AI regulation at lower levels of government have to do with the federal budget?


  • rypertopolitics @lemmy.worldTrump says protesters will not be allowed to wear masks
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    17 days ago

    If you attack them the law is on their side even if they don’t identify themselves:

    [18 U.S. Code] Section 111 makes it a crime to “forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with” federal officials engaged in their duties. But here’s the problem: You don’t even need to know they’re federal officials. You can be convicted for shoving someone you think is just someone yelling in your face, even just placing them in “reasonable fear of harm” without physical contact—if they turn out to be a plainclothes agent. That’s not hypothetical. That’s precedent, courtesy of the Supreme Court over 50 years ago.

    Which means this: An undercover agent embedded in a protest, a public meeting, even a constituent town hall could claim to have been “impeded,” and the federal government can treat that moment as a federal crime. Under the current administration’s appetite for authoritarianism, that’s not a loophole, it’s a feature.



  • rypertoPC GamingAMD Says You Don't Need More VRAM
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    23 days ago

    He said most people are playing at 1080p, and last month’s Steam survey had 55% of users with that as their primary display resolution, so he’s right about that. Ignore what’s needed for the 4K monitor only 4.5% of users have as their primary display; is 8GB VRAM really a problem at 1080p?


  • rypertoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldInfinite glitch
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    26 days ago

    The music labels have responded by trying to make artists wait much longer before they can try something similar:

    It’s significant, Greenstein said, that the first Taylor’s Version wasn’t released until she’d been off Big Machine for three years. Until then, she was legally bound not to re-record any of the material, and this time frame was typical of record deals in the past. But this is the part of the equation that Swift likely changed for good.

    “For decades, major labels were somewhat rational when it came to the prohibition of re-recordings,” Greenstein said. “But now they’re going to be asking, ‘What’s the risk of a Taylor’s Version?’”

    In response, record companies are now trying to prohibit re-recordings for 20 or 30 years, not just two or three. And this has become a key part of contract negotiations. “Will they get 30 years? Probably not, if the lawyer is competent. But they want to make sure that the artist’s vocal cords are not in good shape by the time they get around to re-recording.”









  • When President Donald Trump and Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred met at the White House last month, they discussed one of the president’s passion projects — reinstating baseball star Pete Rose to make him eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

    This week, that’s exactly what Manfred did.

    When I heard Pete Rose was going to be eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame my immediate reaction was to joke that “Somehow this is Donald Trump’s fault”. I didn’t think I’d be right.