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Google and Microsoft Sued By Mini Music Label
carre4 writes "Blue Destiny Records has sued both Google and Microsoft for allegedly 'facilitating and enabling' distribution of copyrighted songs illegally. The suit alleges that RapidShare runs 'a distribution center for unlawful copies of copyrighted works.' RapidShare is helped by Google and Microsoft, which benefit from the ad relationships, according to the suit. Blue Destiny has attempted to link to pages with RapidShare links to their music via DMCA takedown notices, and Google has, apparently, not complied, while Microsoft's Bing site has removed the links. RapidShare, for its part, is based outside of the US and does not accept DMCA notices."
Changing the order around a little here...
So, what lesson should we take away from this?
Although it could (potentially, I suppose) be argued that their software (MS Windows) does have significant non-infringing uses, I think it's fairly obvious that 90%+ of all illegal file-sharing takes place on systems that utilize Microsoft software technologies. RIAA meet Bill.
In God we trust,
everyone else we firewall!!
So if someone finds an address in the White Pages and robs their house the homeowner should sue the White Pages?
They know, absolutely, that they're going to lose. So what reason could they have for suing? Well, they're about as unknown on the Internet as possible. No Wikipedia entry, and their website seems to be hidden, unless they call themselves "Blues Destiny Records" when not filing frivolous lawsuits. Maybe they just want some attention? Which raises the question: Is a lawsuit against the two biggest companies in technology cheaper than buying some ads?
I hope lots of companies without billions of dollars sue Google and others like this. It will build up a precendent of this is stupid. So whenever the major labels try it they will have to work extra hard.
"....RapidShare, for its part, is based outside of the US and does not accept DMCA notices."
This is an important concept regarding the internet that most politicians still don't get.
> This is an important concept regarding the internet that most politicians still don't get.
It's not clear that "they don't get it". You are assuming that what a politician says is connected with what he wants done or thinks can be done rather than being connected with what he wants others to think about him (so he gets reelected, perhaps via getting more campaign contributions).
Its not like google runs a message board where people post these rapidshare links and is being sent notices to run the message board better and remove infringing links. If that were the case then google and microsoft both would be advised if not required to remove those links if they want to avoid a suit. Google, on the other hand, simply runs a web site that searches other web sites and finds keywords without discrimination between keywords that are linked to rapidshare links and keywords that aren't. I fail to see how it is google's responsibility to comply with a takedown notice although it would be nice to have the forums with rapidshare links no longer showing up in google.
Bing removed the links and still got sued.
That is what GP mean anyways... Personally, I wouldn't take it to mean much. At least not before we see how will it affect the court case.
If someone kills by stabbing them in the head with a knife it's the same charge as if they used a gun, everything else being equal.
Actually, in most of the US, using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime is a slightly different charge set containing an automatic sentence extension, usually of five or ten years. Killing someone by stabbing them in the head with a knife would carry the same charge as caving in the head with a hammer, though.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The way I read the origional article, (not the Slashdot hackjob!) is that Blue Destiney Records (BDR) is suing Google and Microsoft NOT because if the links, but for the fact that Microsoft and Google profit from the filesharing activities through the ads placed on Rapidshares free pages.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
FTA: "The suits insists that Google and Microsoft benefit financially because they generate ad revenue from search results. And both companies have received DMCA takedown notices requesting removal of the links in question."
Google would generate several times the revenue by placing the allegedly illegal download links lower so that one would perform multiple searches rather than finding them with the first click. If there is a financial incentive for Google to manipulate results, it would be to lower the rankings of those links.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
What could go wrong?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Which is faster, though?
Bottom line is google harvests, formats and makes available this data, which makes them directly liable.
Wow. You read like an RIAA playbook. Google makes no data available, they just link to it. That's what a search engine does. Google doesn't host any copyrighted music, and I'm sure you know that.
You're making excuses for google.
No more than you or anyone else makes for your ISP, when the media conglomerates try to turn them into a private police organization with enforcement powers. Google may "facilitate" infringement (which is the same weak argument that the RIAA has used over and over) but that doesn't mean that what Google does is or should be automatically actionable. Furthermore, copyright is not just about absolute powers granted to rightsholders (although that is their interpretation of copyright's function in society): it's supposed to be about a balance of rights, with We the People intended to be the ultimate beneficiaries.
... don't publish it in the first place.
... nobody has any right to complain that a major search engine is indexing their works without authorization. So, what you're ultimately saying is that Google should be held responsible for other people publishing information on the Web without the rightsholders permission. Let the copyright holders go after those people, since they are the ones who are illegally distributing copyrighted works. What? There's hundreds of thousands of them and we can't afford to go after them all? Well ... that's just too goddamn bad. These people think they see a cheap way out by suing the search engine (in the same way the MPAA has gone after Torrent indexers.) The difference here is that a. major search engines offer a lot more than just links to copyrighted material and b. tend to have billions of dollars in the bank.
... well, that's not really the case. Smaller music businesses (ones that see modern telecommunications technology as a competitive edge and not a liability) are doing quite well. Even musicians who have bypassed the conventional route to getting their music out have found t
Google and similar organizations offer society tremendous benefits: should those be tossed by the wayside in order to preserve a legal fiction that serves to benefit wealthy corporations that only wish one thing: to become even more wealthy? At our expense? I don't think so. Personally, I think Google and all search engines should be completely immunized from any lawsuits resulting from their Web-crawling and indexing activities. Put it like this: if you don't want something to get noticed by a search engine
Google (and all the other big boys) respect the Robot Exclusion Protocol anyway, so nothing will get indexed directly from your site if you don't wish it to be. That's been the case for a long, long time
The world has moved on: the music business is not what it used to be and in fact will never be the same again. If you're a traditional music publisher, take note: attempting to turn back the clock will only hurt lots of people, and won't save you anyway. You need to accept a few facts, and then replace your upper management with people who can think and operate rationally in a radically changed business environment.
Keep in mind that the bloodsuckers who have run our publishing businesses for the past hundred years or so would cheerfully run Google, Yahoo, Bing, Apple and any other major technology corporation out of business if they could, if they perceive even the slightest threat from said companies. That's because they operate criminal organizations who only see their own needs as being of any concern, who wish to continue exploiting their captive creative minds while simultaneously extracting our wallets.
And before you come back and point out that if the big copyright cartels are allowed suffer from infringement, then the little ones will too
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Even if something is copyright infringement, how does the DMCA apply for something like music, which (generally) does not require any sort of decryption to digitize.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Point you finger back far enough and some germ gets blamed for splitting in two." How fitting.
I concur, except I see this as a great way to rid us of this issue. With all the $$ that Google & M$ have, and all the sway they get with their lobbying, it will be interesting to see who wins in this battle. If the record company wins, then the RIAAssholes step in and start fucking shit over. If G & M$ win, then you see more sites linking. Either way we get a clearer definition of what we will be allowed to do.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
From TFA:
And even that is false! The Google results for “Roy Powers Firing Line” are:
Roy Powers Firing Line rapidshare file downloads ... ...
Roy Powers Firing Line megaupload file downloads
Roy Powers - Firing Line (2009) rapidshare
Roy Powers Music Firing Line Out Now!
Roy Powers on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures
Blues Destiny Records
Google and Microsoft sued for links to filesharing sites
Ronny Sessum Funk'n Blues Man Album Out
Vans Triple Crown of Surfing
None of those URLs point to a RapidShare server!
Even the ones that look like they’d have RapidShare links are merely search engines or forums where the RapidShare links are found.
This is so false that it’s laughable. Also, can anyone say Streisand effect?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I actually had the misfortune to have to send google a takedown notice after our neighborhood's property manager put some of our newsletters online at a public place (they were already available on a different website via password). I got the idiot property manager to take them down (but only after threatening him with going to the state board of realtors for violating his fiduciary duty), but google was actually a *lot* harder. In the end, I was never sure whether they responded to my takedown notice, or whether the newsletters just rolled off the cache. (FWIW, Microsoft Live!, at the time, took them down almost immediately.)
In any case, forcing google to take the takedown process more seriously and deal with it more expeditiously can only be a good thing, IMHO.
Google wrote software that makes posting of information faster and more efficient - doesn't mean new rules of law suddenly apply. If someone kills by stabbing them in the head with a knife it's the same charge as if they used a gun, everything else being equal. Obviously the gun is the more efficient way to get the job done.
I’m desperately searching for some logical sense in that metaphor.
What I’m seeing is that you think Google created a more efficient tool to infringe copyright.
I.e. they built the gun.
CHARGE THE GUN MANUFACTURERS WITH MURDER! YEE-AHHH!
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
No, you missed the point entirely.
My analogy provided 2 similar methods to come to the same result: knife vs. gun. The knife represents the slow, non-mechanical way to do something while the gun is the evolved, machine-based method. It has ZERO to do with gun manufactures, and if that insolent position is all you could come up with I truly feel for your cognitive abilities; it had to do with the person wielding the weapon. No, before you get lost, google is not the weapon, they are the person. The weapon is the information.
In this story there are [at least] 2 ways to get this media(for the sake of this discussion): 1. google/bing/yahoo/etc. linking to RS links and 2. doing some manual way of tracking the data down.(emails, usenet, wtf ever, etc..) My point was that search engines make it easier by using their software, they don't just regurgitate what they find. They provide value-add of some-kind or we wouldn't use them. SEs format, process, ranks and do a host of other things before we get a SERP after a query is submitted. All of that work their software does is surface area for liable.
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Take a look here, this will land you most albums
http://www.searchshared.com/
and it's using google.
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
Lets sue this Universe for the possible existence of anything harmful!
Right, it's a vicarious infringement case. One of the earliest vicarious infringement cases was about a flea market operator who sold space to vendors who sold infringing material; the operator was found liable despite being unaware of the infringement, because he profited from the infringement and had the ability to prevent it (by kicking out the offending vendors).
This case is even weaker, because Google does not have the ability to prevent the infringement, but in general the courts will accept any old secondary infringement theory; they love widening the scope of copyright.
This is the defense line of every bittorrent indexing site too, since .torrent files (and more recently magnet links) contain no copyrighted data at all. Still, "making available", even if only indirectly, has been criminalized in most jurisdictions, mostly due to US pressure via the WTO.
Even Sweden, home of The Pirate Bay, has been hard pressed to change their Copyright Law by adding "making available" to the list of taboos, which they did, thereby outlawing TPB, but also potentially every site like Google and Bing that fail to comply with DMCA takedown notices (even if DMCA is a US-only law... for now).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Kommies uber alles !!
This is the defense line of every bittorrent indexing site too, since .torrent files (and more recently magnet links) contain no copyrighted data at all.
The last time I checked google provided a few sentences from the SERP which is content from the linked page. As the content is automatically copyrighted once posted, google is in fact displaying copyrighted material.
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This page seems to spell things out pretty clearly. Email them with your contact info, the links in question, and what the problem is (in this case, copyrighted content), and they will work with you to resolve the matter. Took all of 2 seconds to find.
But no, rather than have their content removed, they would rather make a huge stink about it to try and get attention and press coverage. As a previous poster pointed out, a nice civil email about the matter could have had this whole thing resolved in a day or two. Sure, the lawyers don't get to rack up billable hours, but the unethical prick who would recommend this course of action needs to walk off of a cliff anyway...
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
Still, "making available", even if only indirectly, has been criminalized in most jurisdictions, mostly due to US pressure via the WTO.
Which returns to the point I was trying to make: should the major governments of the world permit the corrupting influence of a few large corporations to limit or destroy one of the major technological advances of our time? I mean, Jesus H. Christ, the content cartels and their front organizations (RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, BREIN, etc.) make an incredible amount of high-decibel public noise about"theft" and "stealing" and "public responsibility", and then turn right around and buy Congressmen and have hideous laws like the DMCA passed. You can smell the hypocrisy a mile away, and given the way these people have operated over the past century or more, and the way they treat both artists and customers alike, I really don't think they deserve any more special treatment. They've already had more than their due.
Hell, it's been demonstrated the the media outfits actually draft most of those laws (probably because they don't trust Congress to get it right any more than we do.)
Fact is, Google and the other search engines have done more for the individual, and more for the economies of many, many nations than all the music and motion picture conglomerates combined. As a software engineer, I use search constantly, and in fact I could not do my job anywhere near as well if I didn't have such ready access to volumes of useful information. Sure, the entertainment industry (and let's face it, those are the people that have been subverting governments and legal systems worldwide in order to protect their ill-gotten gains) employ some people, but you know what? There are far more people employed in other industries, who shouldn't have their futures diminished in order to make a few few companies that much wealthier.
It's my country that's behind a lot of this (although the leaders of other nations most assuredly are letting their own people down as well), and as an American I can say this: the state of copyright today is a crock of shit, and the corruption has become so obvious that it makes me want to throw up.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
As the content is automatically copyrighted once posted, google is in fact displaying copyrighted material.
Which is not, at least under U.S. law, illegal.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm not saying it is or isn't - but a case can be made. Remember this boils down to google not willing to remove links, at the owner's request, to illegal copies of copyrighted work. I admit it's a gray area in the US, but google is more then passively facilitating the propagation of theft - their software is providing a value-add by making it easier for someone to get access to that illegal copy.
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More importantly... Which is more satisfying?
I could be good: Google and MS will win this stupid lawsuit and set a precedent in the court.
The knife represents the slow, non-mechanical way to do something while the gun is the evolved, machine-based method.
Correct. Without the gun, murder would be less efficient. So who made the gun?
My point was that search engines make it easier by using their software, they don't just regurgitate what they find. They provide value-add of some-kind or we wouldn't use them. SEs format, process, ranks and do a host of other things before we get a SERP after a query is submitted. All of that work their software does is surface area for liable.
And by the exact same logic a gunsmith makes it easier to commit homicide by using his product.
You are the one who missed the point entirely.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Not much of a case. Like I said before, if you don't want something on the Internet don't put it there in the first place. Google does honor the Robot Exclusion Protocol, so legitimate content owners do have control over what specific parts of their sites Google will spider. I don't understand why you feel that Google (or any other search engine for that matter) should be responsible for third parties posting unauthorized content. Let the copyright holders go after those individuals or companies that are truly infringing their distribution rights. Again, that's both expensive as well as futile (as the RIAA's failure of a litigation campaign has clearly demonstrated), so rightsholders have decided that it's more efficient to tear down the search engine business than it is to police their own rights under the law. And, if they can't destroy that business (thereby screwing us all over) they'll try to buy legislation that will force Internet service providers and service organizations like Google copyright police. That's the way these people operate. I'm sure you know that, and if you think that's a good idea ... well.
So, when it comes to search engines facilitating copyright infringement, I say: tough. And I say that as a software developer who has suffered infringement over the years: I'm willing to look at the bigger picture. That is, modern Internet-based technologies offer tremendous benefits to society, and if that means that rightsholders have to deal with some infringement, well, that's just too bad. This isn't only about their rights, you know. Besides, when you get right down to it, copyright is a perverted, twisted vision of its true self, and no longer deserves the respect that it once had. Fact is, copyright owners already have far too much power and under no circumstances should be granted even more. Heck, if anything, high-powered search engines are evening the score a little, considering how much of the public domain has been stolen by corporations and their purchased law.
You see, copyright was meant to benefit everyone, every last one of us. Today, the power of copyright has been conscripted by a few who have, by unethical if not outright criminal means, acquired rights to creative works that they could never have produced themselves, not in a million years. Furthermore, in the United States and a number of other countries, these same forces have succeeded in extending the lifetime of copyrights well beyond the point where they offer any benefit to society. In the U.S., at least, the intent of copyright was to enrich the public domain, not to forever lock creative works into a private domain whose only purpose is to enrich a small number of megalomaniacs.
Consequently, if Google and other companies help us to take back a little of what was stolen from us, I say "more power to 'em."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.