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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.
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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?
If they didn't forsee the possibility of discovery down the road then their legal team wasn't doing it's job (assuming they had one).
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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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Only copyrighted music. Or copyrighted anything else to which you don't have distribution rights.
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If the copyright cartel had their way, any piece of technology which could possibly be used for things they don't approve of would be illegal.
They've been trying very hard to get that for years. If they keep bribing the right people, they might eventually get it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
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 hate to be obvious, but in the U.S. at least, all "recent" music is subject to copyright protection unless the creator specifically places it into public domain (or it is so under law, like works of U.S. gov't employees). To distribute any such music at all you need a license.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
So, where in the CTO's email is asking to share copyrignted music to hang them all for that?
It says so in the summary of the article. Not literally. He didn't say "Please share copyrighted music". He said "download all the mp3's you can and share them". To any judge, that is the same.
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
I hate to be obvious, but in the U.S. at least, all "recent" music is subject to copyright protection unless the creator specifically places it into public domain (or it is so under law, like works of U.S. gov't employees). To distribute any such music at all you need a license.
this probably goes some way to explaining why virtually all music you are likely to hear in public places (bars, shops etc) is likely to be 'golden oldies'... I actually heard ELO playing from a restaurant the other day, and The Specials another time.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"mp3". The six copyright purist nerds in existance who might take such an instruction to mean you should do it while respecting copyright would have insisted on ogg vorbis or FLAC.
Probably unrelated. In this case recent means after 1923 (yes there are a bunch of exceptions but they are all either very narrow or involve music you haven't heard of). If they were going for copyright expired stuff you would hear the likes of Ragtime, early jazz and blues.
The whole intellectual property thing is government regulation and it is all outside of any kind of free market.
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He also said, "If you have CDs, MP3s or any other music that could conceivably be converted to MP3s at the office, please bring them in".
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.
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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How is this modded "Interesting"... there needs to be another label "Obvious"
* Sometimes the obvious needs to be repeated.
* There should be two ways to mod "obvious": "-1 Thank you Captain Obvious..." and "+1 Obvious but worth repeating."
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Can't you recognize sarcasm?
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