> Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses.

Which is a perfectly sensible reason for a business decision.

> "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.

So laws should just be ignored? Issues created by human social constructs are very real.

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aidenn0 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We can change the laws. Radio stations don't have "licensing issues" with playing songs.

From another angle, if copyright were more like it was originally in the US, every single show I watched as a kid would be in the public domain, since I haven't been a kid for 28 years.

	▲	mystraline an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Radio is a lot simpler. Used to work in that realm back in the Napster and Kazaa days. You have a broadcast station. You know that estimated 30k people are listening. You sell those numbers to advertisers. Now you play a song 1x, you record that fact. At the end of the month, you tally up 30k users for that artist and you cut a check to ASCAP or BMI. Thats it. You just keep track of how many plays and your audience size, and send checks monthly itemized. They were downloading pirate Britney Spears over Napster and playing it on air. And since 100% royalties are paid for, was actually legal. Not a lawyer, but they evidently checked and was fine. I'd like something similar for video. Grab shows however, and put together the biggest streaming library of EVERYTHING, and cut royalty checks for rights holders. But nope, can't do that. Companies are too greedy.