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Grooveshark Found Guilty of Massive Copyright Infringement
An anonymous reader writes: If you're a Grooveshark user, you should probably start backing up your collection. In a decision (PDF) released Monday, the United States District Court in Manhattan has found Grooveshark guilty of massive copyright infringement based on a preponderance of internal emails, statements from former top executives, direct evidence from internal logs, and willfully deleted files and source code. An email from Grooveshark's CTO in 2007 read, "Please share as much music as possible from outside the office, and leave your computers on whenever you can. This initial content is what will help to get our network started—it’s very important that we all help out! ... Download as many MP3’s as possible, and add them to the folders you’re sharing on Grooveshark. Some of us are setting up special 'seed points' to house tens or even hundreds of thousands of files, but we can’t do this alone." He also threatened employees who didn't contribute.
Clearly the management of Grooveshark didn't have the forethought of those at the IRS did to ensure that hard drives containing potentially incriminating emails disappear.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Funny how YouTube just keeps getting away with doing exactly the same thing. Google is apparently to big to be sued into submission. Class justice much?
That wasn't a smart thing to say in an email, but I guess you never expect the (Judicial) Inquisition.
"Please share as much music as possible...."
Now sharing ANY music is illegal?
Why did I have to google the name to figure out WTF Grooveshark was?
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... you can't afford to do anything that will give them a knockout blow.
How would things have turned out differently if the founders of Grooveshark had started off the way they started off - with some illegal uploading and other things - but instead of "carrying on" they closed down their operation then started a whole new "legally clean" one and make 100% certain that neither they nor their officers or employees ever did anything that would give the opposition any ammunition other than, of course, providing a neutral platform for end users to use their services.
Yes, the opposition could claim "willful blindness" regarding what their customers were doing but their lawyers could reasonably counter-claim that the DMCA specifically allows or even requires hosting providers to be "willfully blind" to infringement unless they receive a specific notification of a specific violation. Thanks to the "dirty hands" of the officers and management, the company will probably never get a judge to rule on that part of the case.
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Oh wait, intellectual property laws are completely incompatible with the free market. I suppose our system is to reward the wealthy and powerful and punish anyone who gets between the rich and their money.
In any case, our system has been working really great. Oh wait, real wages are falling and we are destroying the environment.
At least we've stopped people from listening to sinful music or at least making them watch crap ads on Youtube.
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They get their music by having their customers upload it.
When I worked at a video game company prior to the dot com bust, one of the QA supervisors kept pestering me to contribute to the internal MP3 server. So I did. I brought in my collection of Patsy Cline CDs, ripped on my workstation, and transferred to the MP3 server. My contribution to the communal music collection was deleted within five minutes and the supervisor stopped pestering me.
I'm getting the impression that instead of streaming out music they paid to re-distribute as a streaming service they instead streamed out music uploaded by the user base and according to the article, obtained by the employees without getting said permission/paying for it. Too bad, I liked the rest of the model. Being able to broadcast what was thought to be streamed legal music but add in your own recorded sound clips in-between songs.
First a disclaimer, I don't feel like reading everything TFA links. Perhaps there is something incriminating in the details, but at least what the summary states is hardly illegal.
"Please share as much music as possible from outside the office, and leave your computers on whenever you can. This initial content is what will help to get our network started—it’s very important that we all help out! ... Download as many MP3’s as possible, and add them to the folders you’re sharing on Grooveshark. Some of us are setting up special 'seed points' to house tens or even hundreds of thousands of files, but we can’t do this alone." He also threatened employees who didn't contribute.
I don't see any statement about stealing MP3s to share, ignoring copyright claims by artists, or copying personally purchased music into the service. Those things would surely be illegal, and perhaps that is in the evidence somewhere and just didn't make the summary.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I went to high school with Josh and I remember when he started this company. I certainly wish him the best of luck with the courts, I suspect it's not going to be pretty. How they survived for this long without getting taken down continues to amaze me.
I can listen to practically any song I want on youtube or spotify.
You're assuming that sound recordings are treated in the same manner as other copyrighted works. They're not. Read up on pre-1972 sound recordings. They're covered by a messy patchwork of state laws, with the result that probably neither you nor I nor anyone here can know exactly how long those recordings are protected by copyright law.
Welcome to the wacky world of intellectual property.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Funny how YouTube just keeps getting away with doing exactly the same thing. Google is apparently to big to be sued into submission. Class justice much?
Where by "exactly the same" you mean "almost entirely different"
There's a huge legal difference between a site where the users post pirated stuff and one where the management themselves post pirated stuff.
As well as dozens of other music and video sites across the internet.
Not like the RIAA/MPAA really cares since their whole west coast setup was to dodge patents and such from Edison and Co on the East Coast.
How did grooveshark lose their DMCA status? If they're handling copyright case, they have already somehow lost their DMCA status?
The whole intellectual property thing is government regulation and it is all outside of any kind of free market.
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YouTube was purchased, Google's own initiative Google Books is has been using this exact method. Even though YouTube is now mostly annnoying it's users and mostly paying people for ads served, not for content, before Google bought it it was doing the same thing.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
perhaps that is in the evidence somewhere and just didn't make the summary.
Yes, there are some statements that ex-employees made:
The opinion also took note of the testimony of ex-Grooveshark employees who testified on behalf of the record companies. They explained how their bosses ordered them to acquire "the most popular and current songs" and upload them into the Grooveshark system.
As well as this:
"Escape openly acknowledged that their business plan was to exploit popular label content in order to grow their service and then 'beg forgiveness' from the plaintiffs and seek licenses," wrote Griesa.
So that coupled with the email seems to make it beyond reasonably doubt that the email was referring to downloading copyrighted music rather than looking for public domain music.
perhaps that is in the evidence somewhere and just didn't make the summary.
Yes, having read TFA there are some statements that ex-employees made:
The opinion also took note of the testimony of ex-Grooveshark employees who testified on behalf of the record companies. They explained how their bosses ordered them to acquire "the most popular and current songs" and upload them into the Grooveshark system.
As well as this:
"Escape openly acknowledged that their business plan was to exploit popular label content in order to grow their service and then 'beg forgiveness' from the plaintiffs and seek licenses," wrote Griesa.
So that coupled with the email seems to make it beyond reasonably doubt that the email was referring to downloading copyrighted music rather than looking for public domain music.
How is this modded "Interesting"... there needs to be another label "Obvious"
It's not that they lost their DMCA status completely, it's that some of their activities were not covered by the DMCA - enough to result in a judgment against them strong enough to possibly shut them down via injunctions and/or financial judgments that will drive them into bankruptcy.
Read the court ruling. I'll pull out one of several examples of "bad behavior" that led to the adverse ruling:
"Accordingly, the court finds that plaintiffs are entitled to judgment as a matter of law that Escape employees illegally uploaded 1,800 additional files to Grooveshark.
Moreover, as it did above, see supra at 30, the court finds that Escape streamed a copy of each of the illegally uploaded 1,800 files 21,000 times." (from page 30 of the PDF file)
There are others.
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Can't you recognize sarcasm?
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