Grooveshark Shuts Down

An anonymous reader writes: Grooveshark, one of the most popular music streaming websites, has announced that they are shutting down immediately. Several lawsuits from the record companies pushed the company out of business. In a notice posted on the Grooveshark website, its two founders said, "[D]espite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation." All of their music has been deleted, and the site itself now belongs to the record companies. NewYorkCountryLawyer adds that according to the settlement (PDF), Grooveshark must pay $50 million, but no money judgment has been entered against individual defendants.

Comments

Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another

Re:Try again... 4?

[sycodon]

Why do people think all this music is Free?

Sure, musicians are being screwed over by the labels and publishers, but that's not a reason to outright steal it and deny the musicians the meager cash they are getting paid.

Re:Try again... 4?

[NatasRevol]

Welcome to the Entitlement Generation.

Population - just about everyone.

Re:Try again... 4?

[geekmux]

Why do people think all this music is Free?

Might I remind you that our app stores are slam full of Free apps, which is the price that the users today demanded.

You know, apps like Pandora...that users can download and install without charge and listen to thousands of hours of music.

I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.

Re:Try again... 4?

[TheCastro1689]

Radio, I don't pay for it, Pandora, I don't pay for it, Youtube, I don't pay for it. But I think radio and youtube downloader apps make people think it's already out there for free.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

a. Because we payed for the music already when we bought vinyl/cd/bluerays
b. Because digitizing of soundwaves that reach my ear, should not be illegal.
c. Because anything that can be digitally reproduced, should not be artificially limited by law, its the road to "intellect" can be "property" which is the road to thinkpolice.

Take your pick, and go to live events, pay for those. Abolish copyright, it is IMHO a road to nowhere.

Re:Try again... 4?

[surd1618]

The idea that a recording is worth money has been around for ~100 years. Why is an audio recording worth money? Well, the pressing, the artwork, the liner notes, are all cool things to have, but paying someone money for a copy of them playing...? It's kinda silly. Musicians make money from performing, educating, and from patronage. But patronage via records almost never primarily brings money to the artists; it's mostly going to record labels. Copies of music, I don't care where they come from. OTOH, if a DJ is playing other people's music for gain and not crediting them, well, that is just weak. If musicians can sell their artwork or collaborate with artists and make beautiful things to own that include copies of the music, I'm happy to pick them up sometimes for $1-30 depending.mostly on new versus used. But I hope the major labels choke and die.

Re:Try again... 4?

[MightyYar]

All it would take is a single act of congress to make all music free. There is no moral argument here, simply one of policy. There is a belief that letting artists control their recordings will lead to more recordings, and so that's what we do. If we decide that doesn't work, or that it isn't worth it, then that government-granted "right" can go away and we are back to the natural order of things.

So I turn the question around on you: in the age of the internet and cheap professional-level recording equipment, justify why music shouldn't be free. It's almost free right now, despite the special rights over the material.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Nyder]

Why do people think all this music is Free?

Sure, musicians are being screwed over by the labels and publishers, but that's not a reason to outright steal it and deny the musicians the meager cash they are getting paid.

Yes, but I refuse to support these some companies who keep lobbying to extend the copyright law, and do over devious actions in the name of profit for themselves, not for the artists.

Re:Try again... 4?

[damicatz]

Stealing is the taking of property with the intention of depriving the owner of the use of said property.

Copying a piece of music is not stealing because it does not suddenly disappear from the hard drive of the musician or render the musician unable to perform it.

Re:Try again... 4?

[thedonger]

Why do people think all this music is Free?

Sure, musicians are being screwed over by the labels and publishers, but that's not a reason to outright steal it and deny the musicians the meager cash they are getting paid.

In the past, free (stolen) music was not common - relatively speaking - because the means of distribution were limited. The average consumer of music understood that the form factor - record, 8 track, tape, CD - required they buy it once. This set the bar for musicians (though let's be honest, record companies always made the lion share of the profit) to expect they could sell their music at a certain price.

Fast forward to our hyper-connected world, delivery seems effortless, or at least bundled with the monthly fee we pay our ISP. Stealing music no longer feels like actual stealing because it is all digital, and we're accustomed to sending and receiving bits without a thought to the huge amount of infrastructure and manpower required to create content and keep all those servers running. Additionally, the market forces dictate a new pricing structure because we're consuming music sans physical medium, so the expectation is that price will drop accordingly. But we have a decades old system predicated on the $10 - $15 price point (give or take inflation) for an album.

We have conflicting interests: Joe Musician still has to perfect his craft and write all those songs. He can engineer it at home, but let's be honest, that is often obvious in the end product. Either way, Joe still has the same level of effort to make an album, but the consumers now have the world at their fingertips and an expectation that with a widespread and immediate audience Joe will take a lot less for his record.

Note: This is not a new phenomenon, nor is it only in the digital space. Costco and Walmart have done the same thing for the cost of manufactured and farmed goods. Do those cheap chicken thighs really reflect the cost of raising chickens? They do if one is okay with cramming chickens into a factory farm. In this instance, the environment and well being of the animals suffer, so no one complains.

Re:Try again... 4?

[neghvar1]

those radio and youtube download apps follow the same principle as cassette tapes recorders and VCR's. Sony Betamax case made such actions legal. These downloader apps do the same thing. It's just a different source.

Re:Try again... 4?

[neghvar1]

Exactly! The legal definition of stealing or theft involves tangible property. When you can take one copy of a thing and effortlessly make hundreds of copies, their is no tangible value. That is why it is called copyright infringement. No stealing or theft.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Coren22]

I'm guessing you have never heard of mix tapes or mix cds? I imagine it even happened in the 8 track era as well, but I don't have experience back that far.

In the middle ages, it was common for music to be shared for free, what suddenly changed to make it so expensive? It has only gotten easier to reproduce music.

Re:Try again... 4?

[spire3661]

Maybe RADIO had something to do with it......You know getting free music for almost a CENTURY...

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't think it's free, they think it's paid for indirectly. They listened to the radio for years, and never (directly) paid a dime. It was paid for by the resulting sales of records, concerts and merchandise that those radio listens generated. Why should it be any different just because "radio" is now "streaming"?

Re:Try again... 4?

[fortfive]

Most people did not record on 8-track, but cassette and 8-track were largely coincident formats, kind of like betamax and vhs. 8-track offered playback convenience and maybe a little quality bump in the beginning, cassette offered size convenience (until we got auto-reverse).

True audiophiles back in the day would record to reel-to-reel.

To return to the thread, pirated music goes back a long, long way. It was just sheet music before performance recordings. And before that, bards copied each others' songs. And before that, Grog beat his rocks just like L'hurd.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope all those artists are compensated now...of course that's not how all that works. The real winners here are the lawyers and the labels -not the listeners. Not that GS was right or wrong: they promoted music outside their system which as I understand is basically like saying to a friend, "here listen to this", but the RIAA disagreed. I'd love to see guaranteed compensation to the Artists from cases like this as well as an accounting of money NOT going to Artist promotion now that GS is unable to continue helping the Artists that they promoted...anyway, "mute" point now? :P

Re:Try again... 4?

[gnasher719]

Copying a piece of music is not stealing because it does not suddenly disappear from the hard drive of the musician or render the musician unable to perform it.

It is not stealing. You are absolutely right. It is copyright infringement. Punishable with fines up to $150,000 per work (unless the copyright holder can prove that the actual damage is higher).

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'll bite. Let's turn your question back around on you, going on the likely assumption that you're a computer programmer given that you're posting on Slashdot.

Justify why YOUR SOFTWARE that you wrote, should NOT be legally REQUIRED BY LAW to be free? As in, free beer free?

Think about it. You may love the open source movement, but how would you like it if you wrote software at your day job for a salary...and then one day the government said "Hey, we decided that all software is free now. So you can't charge for it, even if you worked hard to make it and invested tons of money in the software-making process."

This sounds absurd, but that's my point. You can't FORCE music to be free. Artists should have the right to give it away for free if they so choose, or to charge for it.

This is where you admit that even though you want to be able to charge for the software you write all day, you also have a pirate collection of OTHER people's software (warez) that's been cracked and you didn't pay for it.

You, or at least anyone reading this who fits this profile, should think carefully about the foundation of your own ethics.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Penguinisto]

It goes back even farther than the 8-track era... I still have a *huge* collection of my father's mid-to-late 1960's equivalent of mix-tapes and concert bootlegs... on reel-to-reel.

But, yes, there were kids dragging portable reel-to-reel recorders out to concerts back when the Beatles were still a fairly new thing, and they were certainly running a wire from their friends' record players to the line-in/mic jack on the aforementioned player/recorders (and more than a few who rigged a few similar setups off their dads' brand-new HiFi AM/FM stereo sets.

The biggest draw from what I've heard is that you can fit a whole lot of LP albums and/or a metric ton of 45-RPM singles onto a single reel...

Re:Try again... 4?

[Penguinisto]

To be fair, radio is/was was as 'free' as Google is today.

The radio's 'product for sale' isn't the music, but the ears of its listeners sold in a 15/30/60 second time-slice to advertisers.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not "free", but writing music doesn't guarantee you get paid for it. Copyright isn't a property right, despite the assertions otherwise. Copyright doesn't guarantee revenue.

Musicians being screwed by labels and publishers is coming to an end, but things like this suit is ensuring that end keeps getting extended by the dinosaurs of music publishing.

I'll say it again... Copyright isn't a property Right. Copyright does NOT guarantee revenue. For the cheap seats, that means you don't "deserve" to be paid because you wrote a song.

Slashdot used to understand this. The comments here are a testament to the stupification of Slashdot. It was good while it lasted.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Atzanteol]

Thanks! Now can you define "colloquial" for us all too?

Re:Try again... 4?

[schnell]

Maybe RADIO had something to do with it......You know getting free music for almost a CENTURY...

Radio isn't "free." The radio stations had to pay the record labels, songwriters and artists for the music they played. In turn, they charged businesses money for - horrors - "unskippable" ads that you had to listen to. Or in the case of public radio stations, asking you for money directly to keep them on the air.

There is no free lunch.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Dan667]

sorry, but Musicans see no cash from music sales. They make their money playing live shows. So what your meant to say is it is wrong to steal from shady music execs who legally steal from Musicians.

Re:Try again... 4?

[sycodon]

You are depriving the artists of revenue. You are taking money out of his pocket.

Re:Try again... 4?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Think about it. You may love the open source movement, but how would you like it if you wrote software at your day job for a salary...and then one day the government said "Hey, we decided that all software is free now. So you can't charge for it, even if you worked hard to make it and invested tons of money in the software-making process."

That's a nonsense argument. Absent monopoly grants, software goes to the person who paid for it, and they have the choice of whether to release it or not.

It's when it's released to the public, do you have Men With Guns threaten the People for making copies of that software or not? That is the ethical question. Do predictions of purported benefit from social-engineering justify threats of murder?

You, or at least anyone reading this who fits this profile, should think carefully about the foundation of your own ethics.

*Yours* is based on threats of violence for duplication (not stealing) of information. It abolishes a portion of _real_ property rights for imaginary ones, when there is no demonstrable harm other than a postulate of diminution of earning potential.

The reduced argument is "murder for profit".

Re:Try again... 4?

[sycodon]

copyright
käprt/
noun
noun: copyright; plural noun: copyrights

        1. the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.

adjective
adjective: copyright

        1. protected by copyright.
        "permission to reproduce photographs and other copyright material"

Sure...just because you write a tune doesn't mean people will pay for it. But if someone wants to hear what you wrote, you have every right to charge them. Same as if you wrote a book. If you charge too much, or what you wrote sucks...no profits for you. If they DO like it, then you have every right to profit from it.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest draw from what I've heard is that you can fit a whole lot of LP albums and/or a metric ton of 45-RPM singles onto a single reel...

Not really. The biggest draw for reel-to-reel tape was audio quality. A Quarter-track 7 inch reel of 1Mil tape running at 7.5 inches per second (normal speed) will only hold 30 minutes of music on each side.

If you had the "Big" 10 inch reels, then you could fit an hour on each side at 7.5 IPS, or if you slowed the thing down to 3-3/4 IPS you could get 2 hours per side, but then the quality was no better than a modern Cassette.

If you wanted very high quality, then you ran 2-track mode, (one direction only) at 15 IPS, thus only 30 minutes on a 10 inch reel.

History never had a way to record "a whole lot of LP albums and/or a metric ton of 45-RPM singles" onto a single media until the mp3 encoded compact disk, then flash media.

Yes, I am broadcast engineer, recording studio engineer, Hi Fi enthusiast, old timer >my lawn, etc...

Re:Try again... 4?

[chilenexus]

> Musicians being screwed by labels and publishers is coming to an end

Oh, that's hilarious. I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Justify why YOUR SOFTWARE that you wrote, should NOT be legally REQUIRED BY LAW to be free? As in, free beer free?

Why should I? My software can be free. 0 shits remaining.

But if you want me to build it for you from scratch, or if you want to know how it works, or if you want changes made, or if you want me to fix it after you screw it up... well, my time is money, bitch. Pay up. And that's why free software with paid support works just fine. If you don't want support for something that already exists, you're not a drain on my resources. If you're a drain on my resources for any reason, you pay.

For a musician, it's similar. If you want me to write you a song, pay me. If you want me to take the time to make a copy of my song for you, pay me. If you want to hear me play in a venue, pay me. If you just want to share what I've done with your friends and not involve me in the process, go ahead.

Think about the foundation of your ethics before you start pissing and moaning that we need to maintain the obviously-shitty status quo.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Glarimore]

When I make a company that makes product A and it competes with product B from abother company, I'm "depriving that company of revenue". Is that stealing as well?

And also, as is commonly stated here, just because I'm willing to download an album for free does not mean I would have bought it for ten dollars had the free download not been available. If anything, my downloading the free album exposes me to an artist that I otherwise would not have been as familiar with and make me far more likely to attend their shows, where they can charge me anywhere from 10-200 dollars at the door.

Re:Try again... 4?

[SydShamino]

The definition of stealing does not require tangible property, it just involves depriving the owner of that property.

If you take a trade secret from someone and share it with the world, you have stolen the trade secret, because, while the owner might still have the information, they have been deprived of a secret that was not yours to share. Plagiarism too is a form of stealing, for you are depriving the author of a work from their name rights. (And yes, while not honored in the U.S. outside the bounds of copyright, I agree with the moral rights of authorship.)

Copying a song does not deprive the owner of the source copy nor the author of the original work of anything, hence it is not stealing. It's not even a crime morally. In the U.S., Congress has decided to sometimes make this a civil crime called copyright infringement, because the Constitution allows them to do so if they think it will encourage more work from those authors. Something it's not a crime at all, like for older works or government publications.

In other words, I agree with your sentiment, but don't wrap the definitions of theft and copyright infringement up in the terms of tangible property. Intangible things can be stolen, too. Focus on how it deprives the author of something they previously possessed.

Re:Try again... 4?

[thedonger]

I'm guessing you have never heard of mix tapes or mix cds? I imagine it even happened in the 8 track era as well, but I don't have experience back that far.

In the middle ages, it was common for music to be shared for free, what suddenly changed to make it so expensive? It has only gotten easier to reproduce music.

As I said, people tended to buy music once. Yes, there was pirating in the form of mix tapes, but I'm fairly certain it was not even a drop in the bucket of online piracy (to use the parlance of our time).

Re:Try again... 4?

[MightyYar]

This sounds absurd, but that's my point. You can't FORCE music to be free.

I don't understand. You don't force soundwaves to be free. They are free by default. Similarly, bits and bites are free by default. There is nothing absurd about it - proprietary software and singers are in the same boat.

Re:Try again... 4?

[thedonger]

online piracy

Or maybe I should say, digital piracy.

Re:Try again... 4?

[gnupun]

You know getting free but old, overplayed music for almost a CENTURY...

FTFY! Radio plays the same, banal top 100 music over and over. These songs have been played so many times on radio, nobody enjoys them anymore. If radio started to play all the good music, nobody would buy records, they would just listen to the radio.

Re:Try again... 4?

[sycodon]

If you wrote some software and sold it to someone for $1000, you are cool with them making copies and giving it away?

After all, you still have your copy and the original buyer still has theirs. So it's not stealing, right?

Re:Try again... 4?

[sycodon]

So I expect you are against patents too. So if you invest 5 years and 5 million dollars into designing a product that no one else has and everyone needs, you're cool with someone stealing your design and selling it for lower costs?

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are depriving the artists of revenue. You are taking money out of his pocket.

How so? I didn't hire him. It was his decision to record music and make it available to the public. If he did so with the expectation of profit, then all the power to him, but that was a very foolish decision that I have no obligation to support. I'm not taking money out of his pocket; I was never going to pay him in the first place.

I play music, did it professionally for a few years. It makes a lousy vocation. But if your primary motivation is to do it because it is fun, because you love to do it, in all likelihood the music will be better than if your only in it for the money.

Re: Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa, I usually get charged extra for bites! Which red light district do you visit?

Re:Try again... 4?

[tlambert]

If you wrote some software and sold it to someone for $1000, you are cool with them making copies and giving it away?

If it took him less than 20 hours, he's making over $104,000 / year writing software, so he's probably OK with it.

The entire GNU philosophy / GNU Manifesto is based on the idea that software writers are craftsmen engaged in making works for hire. It's no different than making furniture.

I personally don't agree with that economic model, but I'm pretty sure by his statements that he's OK with it.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, it is not stealing. It may be copyright infringement, but it is not stealing.

Re:Try again... 4?

[sycodon]

It was his decision to record music and sell it to the public.

Fixed.

If you enjoyed his work, he happens to have a sale going on...$10 for the album and you can enjoy it anytime you want. You can put it on your computer, ipod, cell phone and enjoy it anywhere.

But if you just download it and do the same, then you are taking money out of his pocket just the same as if you lifted a bag of chips from 7-11.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

So can you share those bits and bytes that form an OS or video game, for free?

Re:Try again... 4?

[tnk1]

The patent system is actually there to let other people copy your design, but adds a grace period where you can be paid back for your effort in working on an idea, usually through making sure you are first to implement that idea. It is merely supposed to be a provision to encourage you to share an idea which you might otherwise hide while you sought to benefit from it. It is not supposed to "protect" your "property".

It is quite possible for a company to preserve its trade secrets without a patent. Patents are primarily supposed to help the People, not the "owners". The patent period is a bribe so that the information is more effectively spread and not hidden.

If a patent is turned from a vehicle which is supposed to encourage the spread of ideas into simply a government sponsored industry, which counter intuitively tries to make it harder to spread ideas, it goes against the original reason for patents.

Copyright has a similar premise, and is going the same way. Mickey Mouse or a Metallica album is supposed to be protected only long enough to make it worthwhile for the artist to profit from its creation. That isn't supposed to be a guarantee that they get to drive a Bentley at the end of it or that you'll be able to have an industry based on the limitation of ideas.

What is actually happening is that the copyright and patents are being used to make it worthwhile not for the artist to make their music or the inventor to profit from their invention, it's being used to make it possible for publishing companies and patent-holding organizations to profit from the works of those artists. That's why copyrights are getting extended all the time.

Ease in which music or ideas can be copied should be a hint that these are not a solid basis for an industry. And the extremes to which these industries go to in order to halt the natural spread of performances and ideas only proves that point.

As someone who works in software, I think we have actually solved this issue very simply. Open source software makes money and provides a living to people who work with it every day. The ease in which that software can be copied has only made it more popular and the people who have created it even more in demand.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

We used a Sony PCM box that would record 4 hours of 44K/16 bit digital audio on a VHS tape.

Later came VHS-HIFI or whatever it was called, with FM recording on the tape. Could do 8 hours. Still wondering how that could be so free of rattles from the head switchover point (there were some, in any case). Betamax had a similar Hi-Fi feature.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Em Adespoton]

And as someone who has produced both software and music, I agree 100% with the parent on this. And I'm not posting AC :)

I get paid for what I produce, not for what other people experience/consume. This is the case for most developers of intellectual property. It's the next level up: the lawyers/distributors/vendors that require payment for distribution of intellectual property. A lot of their work would vanish if Congress made such a move, because their jobs are artificially created.

Anyone who actually produces intellectual property who would feel threatened by things becoming free needs to take a hard look at why they feel threatened. Do they feel like they are currently being paid more than what they develop is actually worth on an open market?

Re:Try again... 4?

[jfengel]

Pandora makes it pretty clear that music at least costs attention. It has a *lot* of ads, both audio and on the screen. They tell you that you can make the ads go away, for a price.

People still don't quite connect that attention is being used as money, and they do still think of things as "free" even when they're paying in attention. But of all the ad-supported mechanisms I've seen, Pandora most specifically seems to make clear that you're paying one way or another.

Re:Try again... 4?

[jjbenz]

agreed.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Em Adespoton]

It was his decision to record music and sell it to the public.

Fixed.

If you enjoyed his work, he happens to have a sale going on...$10 for the album and you can enjoy it anytime you want. You can put it on your computer, ipod, cell phone and enjoy it anywhere.

But if you just download it and do the same, then you are taking money out of his pocket just the same as if you lifted a bag of chips from 7-11.

Really?
First part is false if you live in the UK: format shifting is considered infringement, as it deprives the author of funds they could have gathered by providing it to you in that format.

"Just download it and do the same" -- are you saying that my iTunes downloads don't give me the same freedom to format shift as if I bought a CD?

"you are taking money out of his pocket just the same as if you lifed a bag of chips from 7-11" -- No. If I downloaded something without paying when I would have gladly paid $10 if the free version hadn't been available, I am depriving the author of potential profit. If I walk out of 7-11 without paying for physical goods, I've taken something with tangible value and deprived the store of it (and deprived them of selling it to someone else who would be willing to pay the $2.50).

Look at it this way: if an audio track is on a website next to a "donate" icon, anyone in the world can download it and donate. The cost is the cost to serve the bits, plus the sunk cost of producing the audio track.

If a bag of chips is sitting on a shelf next to a "donate" jar, anyone who is locally present can take the bag of chips. Once that's done, all that is left is the jar, possibly with some money in it.

Where things break down is that we have a concept built around the exchange of value. I might have a bag of chips, you might know how to fix a leaky faucet. In exchange for the bag of chips, I could a) fix your leaky faucet (this is exchange of goods for services) or b) tell you how to fix your faucet (exchange of goods for information). Music is exactly like the second one of these, even though some people conflate it with the first.

If I told you "you can't tell anyone else how to fix a leaky faucet without paying me first" you'd probably just ignore me.

Many music contracts are, however, written up this way, so that the distributor gets the right to say who can tell who (and how) how to fix that faucet. If someone breaks their agreement not to tell, and then tells a bunch of other people how to fix the faucet, are those other people suddenly taking money out of the pocket of the guy who sold this information to the distributor?

Think about that.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Em Adespoton]

If they DO like it, then you have every right to profit from it.

Not every right, just copy right.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

try finding music on non RIAA labels then, there are plenty of them out there.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how people justify taking/copying things that don't belong to them.

Re:Try again... 4?

[MightyYar]

"Can you"? Could you clarify? Do you mean legally under copyright law?

Re: Try again... 4?

[MightyYar]

There's a whole list in Bite magazine :)

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy: The use of an expression, instead of the actual original term, with connotations that are offensive either about the subject matter or to the audience, or both, in order to make it sound worse.

Oops...I defined "dysphemism" instead! ;-)

Re:Try again... 4?

[gnupun]

Let me put it this way... there's plenty of free sand on the beaches. Can someone offer me a free CPU, since it is mainly made of sand (and should therefore be free according to your logic)?

Re:Try again... 4?

[synapse7]

Lets be clear, when you say music do you mean some nerd hitting running some scripts in some synthesizer program, because that definitely has value.

Re:Try again... 4?

[gnupun]

It is quite possible for a company to preserve its trade secrets without a patent.

In which case they don't file patents. If trade secret is incapable of protecting the IP (by threats such as reverse engineering), they file patents. It's common sense, since trade secrets can last almost infinite years.

Patents are primarily supposed to help the People, not the "owners".

Not true. Patent are an exchange of resources -- a deal/trade. The patent holder can make a ton of money off his novel invention (because of 20 years of govt enforced monopoly) and the govt and the people get improvement in lifestyle because the secrets of the invention are exposed for anyone to remanufacture the product.

Also, let's not forget that the invention still needs an implementer. The implementer of the patent (after its expiry) also makes a lot of money of other people's work and a big corp is usually such an implementer of expired patents. So the patent system benefits the inventor less and the implementer most (along with the govt.). IOW, patent laws were written to benefit big business the most, since after the patent has expired, big business can bring the product based on expired patent to the market, at the lowest cost . And they can make profit off expired patents for infinite years as long as they have the lowest cost of production and distribution.

So just like short copyright terms, inventors are screwed of long term profits so that big business benefits the most. So patents are not a great deal unlike what many /.ers say.

Re:Try again... 4?

[tnk1]

Of course, I am speaking of the reason for patents to be authorized, at least under the US Constitution, not the actual functioning of patents, which definitely has a debatable effect on the ability of an inventor to profit reasonably from their invention.

Personally, I'd be fine with them doing away patents at this point. A scenario that punishes an implementer to the benefit of someone who buys a regulatory fiction like a patent, is counter productive.

Re:Try again... 4?

[easyTree]

this kind of attitude isn't going to allow musicians to snort coke off've hookers, is it. what's wrong with you.

Re:Try again... 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are taking money out of his pocket.

You can't take something that wasn't there to begin with. You might as well say that anyone who doesn't buy is stealing because they could have bought.

Re:Try again... 4?

[MightyYar]

Are you the same guy? Anyway... there is inherent value added when you manufacture something from raw materials. The raw materials themselves are also on someone's property. Sand is not "free" and neither are microchips.

On the other hand, if someone is whistling a song and the song winds its way into your head and you start to whistle the same song, you have not stolen anything, there is no moral hazard, and copying the song was completely free.

Re:Try again... 4?

[CauseBy]

It doesn't have to be tangible, it has to be exclusive. I can steal your bitcoins because they can only be used by one of us.

Re:Try again... 4?

[jeremyp]

Absent intellectual property laws and copy protection, software and music recordings are are worth nothing on the open market because anybody can get it for the price of a USB stick or the bandwidth.

Who would pay you to produce software and music if "the next level up" couldn't sell it on?

Re:Try again... 4?

[doccus]

Because, for tens of THOUSANDS of years, performers needed to be able to, you know, perform, in order to get paid.. WHen the phonograph first appeared the very thought of trying to make money from recordings was ludicrous. We (As a professional musician myselffor 40 years) used recordings as "advertisingt" to get people to comne to our shows. At 5 cents a record profiteering from recordings was considered absurd. The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and Allen Klein changed all that.. Nowadays, "artists" NEED to sell their recordinhgs because the big selling artists are talentless nimrods that can't even sing in tune without electronic help. The artists that CAN perform live, conversely, are the ones supporting musiuc sharing, almost to a one...

Re: Try again... 4?

[ChrisHarris9596]

What you don't understand is that music production is expensive and if you want to be a musician you should be able to make a living at it without having to play I. Clubs every night. There is only one Mona Lisa by davinci, would you pay a lot for a copy? Just because it can be copied and distributed daily doesn't make it right. The artist and the label should be paid. How do you people live in a capitalist society and not understand the basic principal of our economic system. An artist mushy spend $100000 in studio expenses and instruments along with weeks of work and tons of creative effort. And you think you should just be able to get that stuff for free? You think the studio should provide a million dollar recording studio for free? Music and art are a business and just be user distribution mean gods changed doesn't change how the business works.

Re:Try again... 4?

[cavebison]

> I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.

Firstly, no, people don't think music is free, unless you're standing next to a busker or at a venue playing what they paid for to play. Everyone knows commercial music is commercial.

Secondly, by your reasoning, giving people samples of something makes everyone believe all the rest of that thing is also free.

Remember Kazaa back in 2001? Nobody thought they had a right to free music until Kazaa got plastered all over the news and everyone discovered they could be naughty kids and get stuff for free. The concept has stuck ever since - mainly because it's still easy to do with any torrent program. People love getting free stuff if they can, no matter what it is, that's just human nature. As long as it's easy.

If anything, companies giving away free music is a *response* to the how torrenting has presented music to people as free.

Re:Try again... 4?

[teknosapien]

There are musicians that would love to have this type of platform. Oh wait they do.
Freshjamradio.com does with the consent of the owners of the music.
The old Model just doesn't work any longer.

Re: Try again... 4?

[Em Adespoton]

What you don't understand is that music production is expensive and if you want to be a musician you should be able to make a living at it without having to play I. Clubs every night. There is only one Mona Lisa by davinci, would you pay a lot for a copy? Just because it can be copied and distributed daily doesn't make it right. The artist and the label should be paid. How do you people live in a capitalist society and not understand the basic principal of our economic system. An artist mushy spend $100000 in studio expenses and instruments along with weeks of work and tons of creative effort. And you think you should just be able to get that stuff for free? You think the studio should provide a million dollar recording studio for free? Music and art are a business and just be user distribution mean gods changed doesn't change how the business works.

Let's take this assertion by assertion.

1) What you don't understand....

Are you sure I don't understand? Or maybe you're not getting part of what I was saying?

2) Music production is expensive

It doesn't have to be. As I said, I've produced music. I've also performed music and recorded music. I've never spent more than $100/sitting for studio time; if you don't go with the major labels, you don't have to pay the major fees -- and the equipment has got to the point where recording and production doesn't really cost all that much in real expenses -- even Garage Band can handle basic production tasks (but doesn't have the recording room, which IS a major sunk expense). These days, I just trade studio time for services, and it costs me nothing but my time (and keeps my ears sharp).

3) If you want to be a musician you should be able to make a living at it without having to play I. Clubs every night.

I've never played I. Clubs. Of course, as a musician, I've never made it my day job either. But I could easily do so simply using an indy producer and social media, and not sell myself to the major labels, who might or might not decide to promote me. There's lots of ways to make a living as a musician; just not as a pop star -- because just like sports stars, there's only room for a few of those. Entitlement doesn't put food on the table.

4) There is only one Mona Lisa....

I personally wouldn't pay for a copy. I can see it online, I can make duplicates, take photos of it, etc. Copies are in the public domain. And da Vinci isn't going to be making any money off it anyway -- and didn't have copyright on his side back in the day; people copied his work freely, and yet people still appreciate it. So how did he make a living? He was a good painter, and people paid him to paint things. I think this example kind of proves my point much better than it proves yours.

5) Just because it can be copied and distributed daily doesn't make it right.

So you think it's wrong that I can copy and distribute the Mona Lisa daily? Do you think it's wrong that Disney can copy and distribute such titles as Cinderella, Mulan, Pocohantas, etc. daily, and even charge money for them? Because that's also copying the works of others. Or is your problem only with works that were produced by people still alive, who are expecting a certain level of remuneration for what they created?

6) The artist and the label should be paid.

Time to review my comments you replied to. Personally, I think the artist should be paid a lot MORE. I think labels should for the most part be abolished. I think recording studios should get paid what they charge the musicians, and if demand drops because someone can do it for less, then they don't deserve to be paid more, just because they want it. Right now, the labels only use specific studios, and so the studios have a monopoly on the labels' musicians, and can charge what they want (which gets paid by the labels, and docked against the musicians' contract).

The bigger question, and the point I was raising is WHO should pay the artist? In my view

Re:Try again... 4?

[Em Adespoton]

Who would pay you to produce software and music if "the next level up" couldn't sell it on?

The consumers. You don't need a "next level up". Also, advertisers, corporations that want works for hire, any anyone else. Would you end up with individuals making millions off of one hit song? Probably not. But you'd end up with many more musicians than now actually able to make a living producing music.

Re:Try again... 4?

[beastofburdon]

They get their money for that from concerts.

Re:Try again... 4?

[speedplane]

An artist has a moral right to choose how their work is distributed. Copying an artist's work without permission deprives them of their right to choose how they want to share it.

Re:Try again... 4?

[jwhitener]

I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.

Or, people gravitate towards the natural state that music has been in for thousands of years: people pay to hear a live performances, not so much copies of the performances.

A copy of a song, just like on the radio, should serve as advertising for the artist. A live show is the work that the artist should get paid for, not an infinitely copy'able digital file.

Now where will I find a shark, that also grooves?

[NotDrWho]

Best I can do now is a shark that can slow dance. It's just not the same.

Best of intentions

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.

Huh? Surely it can't be best of intentions if you publish music on your service for which you know you don't have proper licenses.

Re:Best of intentions

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Anyone with some legal experience able to clarify this? Given that grooveshark wasn't...exactly...apologetic about their strategy(nor has it changed all that much), my assumption is that the sudden shift to grovelling-apology-mode has much more to do with losing than it does with any change of heart.

Do courts give grovelling apologies enough weight that this 'contrition' is a logical strategy to try to reduce any awards of damages? Are such apologies sometimes added as conditions of a settlement, presumably so that the victor can grind the vanquished further into the dirt? Is there some other advantage to issuing one?

Re:Best of intentions

[subanark]

If it was settled out of court, then it is up to the company they settle with. "You can have the website" "We will apologize" "We don't have any money" "Will you leave us alone now?"

Re:Best of intentions

[Jason Levine]

Well, if the site itself belongs to the record companies now, the "apology" might be the record companies speaking for the people who originally ran Grooveshark rather than those people being seriously apologetic for their actions.

Re:Best of intentions

[i.r.id10t]

This is a local-to-me company and I casually know one of the founders/owners. Since the message isn't "signed" and doesn't have a name attributed I can't say for sure if you are right or wrong... of course, even with his name on the message, it wouldn't be a "for sure" thing...

Re:Best of intentions

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Do courts give grovelling apologies enough weight that this 'contrition' is a logical strategy to try to reduce any awards of damages? Are such apologies sometimes added as conditions of a settlement, presumably so that the victor can grind the vanquished further into the dirt? Is there some other advantage to issuing one?

I'm not a lawyer, but as an informed layman I can only point out that in some/many/most cases, juries and not judges determine damage awards. Based on the juries I've served on, I can tell you that a rather large amount of people on a jury don't know anything about technology and thus tend to see this kind of thing in real black and white terms where they overvalue the "damage" that the defendant does. I've never served on a jury where this strategy would have made any difference in the damage awards, but they may be gambling that just giving up may stop the lawsuit in that the music companies may find it cheaper to reach a quick settlement where the founders/owners agree never to do this again than to try to get blood from a stone and squeeze money out of the defendants. Given that it was likely going to be a slam dunk in court to prove that Grooveshark violated copyright law and failed to pay legally required licensing fees, giving up and apologizing is probably the best choice out of a bunch of not very good choices. I've seen people and companies fight in court when it's been ridiculously easy to prove that they were in the wrong and the results of that have often been financially disastrous to the defendants.

Re:Best of intentions

[fortfive]

I think more important is that they gave up all their own intellectual property to whomever.

My guess is that they were required to do this as part of settlement, and the hope on the other side is that somehow grooveshark users will be swayed to change their behavior based on this statement.

As regards the statement itself, it appears crafted by a gifted communications expert, but the smell of PR/inauthenticity is not completely masked. Or, it was crafted by the groovesharks and encoded with a little Wayne's World style snark ("It certainly does suck. . .").

Re:Best of intentions

[BuckaBooBob]

They have the infrastructure and know how to run a music streaming business.. They should reopen a pandora type service for unsigned artists that are willing to forgo royalties to get their music out there..

There needs to be someone that will champion a new music business model and weaken the control the recording industry has on music today...

Re:Best of intentions

[Holi]

What courts, there was a settlement.

Re:Best of intentions

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this Youtube's original model?

Re:Best of intentions

[CauseBy]

I figured the statement was written by the new owners of the domain.

The copyright cartels...

[leon.gandalf]

strike once again.

Wait what?

[kthreadd]

We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.

But you still continued? Good plan there.

Re:Wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

A statement clearly written by lawyers and publicists, from a company under legal threat.

Re:Wait what?

[NatasRevol]

I don't think there's any legal threat anymore....

Re:Wait what?

[tnk1]

It was probably in the terms of the settlement. When they ask for an apology in a settlement, you can't half-ass it or make it a smirking "apology". That doesn't mean they believe it personally.

Re:Wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, unfortunately they didn't get bought in time. Do you remember how YouTube got big, before Google bought it? You know that eBay faked it till they made it too, don't you?

Re:Wait what?

[guruevi]

The company was taken over by the music industry, any statements and actions are thus by the record companies who're sending a clear message they don't want a streaming service.

Re:Wait what?

[Rinikusu]

Maybe they should've claimed they were just tunes-sharing. Like Uber.

It's a sad day here in Gainesville

[Anonymous Coward]

Our national-championship-winning basketball coach of 19 years, Billy Donovan, is leaving, and Grooveshark is shutting down.

Mayday! Mayday!

K Bye.

[bazmail]

[D]espite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service

How is it that if I shared that many songs with that many people without authorization I'd be fined literally trillions of dollars, but they get to walk away like this? Very odd.

Re:K Bye.

[Richard_at_work]

Who said they are getting to walk away with just an apology? Their statement includes:

“As part of a settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all of the record companies’ copyrighted works and hand over ownership of the website, our mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.”

Note the "as part of a settlement agreement ..." part - which indicates that shutting down operations isn't the end of it for them.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you don't have any collateral they can take in return for not suing you into oblivion, like a website hosting a buttload of infringing material. They are not exactly "walking away" from this, their website has been seized.

Re:K Bye.

[cdrudge]

How is it that if I shared that many songs with that many people without authorization I'd be fined literally trillions of dollars, but they get to walk away like this?

Because you aren't a incorporated company. Individuals in management might get to walk away, but the company and all it's assets (if any) doesn't.

Re:K Bye.

[Junta]

They didn't quite get to 'just walk away'. They were given a choice, an impossibly high fine to pay or hand over all their patents, copyrights, infrastructure, software, basically everything while very publicly scraping the ground about how wrong what they did was.

Essentially, they had something of value that was interesting to the plaintiffs that was bigger than their realistic chances at getting actual money out of them.

Re:K Bye.

[ArhcAngel]

IANAL but I believe since Escape Media Group is incorporated they can fine the company but not the employees/owners of the company. To get anything from them they would have to pursue them separately.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not always clear that the individuals in question get to walk away. If they knowing and deliberately chose to engage in criminal behavior, the fact that they were incorporated isn't an absolute shield against personal liability.

Re:K Bye.

[circletimessquare]

if the music companies were smart, they'd continue to operate the site

"we shut down the pirates! that will end this threat once and for all!"

(two weeks later, 20 more sites)

it should have been:

"this is a popular site. now that we own it we will modify it slightly so that we derive some revenue from it while not pissing off the listeners, thus gracefully transitioning to a new distribution model that listeners desire"

Re:K Bye.

[Junta]

I agree that the more intelligent thing would have been for the site branding to be used for legitimate service rather than trying to shame the users while pointing out other services and hoping for the best.

However, the likelihood that they could have modified it 'slightly' while 'not pissing off the listeners' is pretty slim. The music selection would have had to be torched and started over from scratch (too many content owners without an agreement between them) and something would have had to give to actually extract revenue.

Re:K Bye.

[circletimessquare]

true

i still feel there is a more nuanced solution to these situations where more benefit is derived

just turning the power switch off seems like a waste of value, however damaged

Re:K Bye.

[TheCastro1689]

I've always wanted to incorporate myself. You hired Colin Castro LLC not Colin Castro Person, sorry, you have to sue the LLC, I was driving as a company, not a man.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

The record companies could continue the service themselves as a way to promote their music collections and offer a paid subscription model in addition to the free tier. I am not a user of Grooveshark.

Re:K Bye.

[Kjella]

Note the "as part of a settlement agreement ..." part - which indicates that shutting down operations isn't the end of it for them.

It might not be all of it, but I'm pretty sure it's the end of it. Nobody settles half a case, particularly not when you bend over like this. The only reason Grooveshark would agree is if they got an exit opportunity where they could fold their hand and walk away from it, presumably because the other side's lawyers found there was nothing more to be gained from the company and piercing the corporate veil or pursuing criminal convictions wasn't possible or not worth it.

Re:K Bye.

[tnk1]

Can't really do that or they legitimize this model and Spotify and all the rest start jumping on the bandwagon and the publishers start losing their juicy cuts of those services.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't shamed at all. Back when I started using GS, there were services like Pandora. I could not generate a playlist of my own, I would have to listen to the "Radio" with the privileged of "skipping" some tracks, so I could listen to more tracks that I didn't want to hear. Better than Top 40 radio, but not much.

I might be able to buy some service to get me that music track by track, but I'd be paying .99 per track, no matter if it ended up sucking or not. It's not much better today with paying $120 a year so that I have the ability to basically create my own radio station rather than have what the company wants to play on a station jammed down my throat.

RIP Grooveshark. I will miss you, although your passing was long expected.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

> If they knowing and deliberately chose to engage in criminal behavior

In the grooveshark case it was civil liability. After having plausible deniability, this is usually how corporations end up dissolving (see the Auto industry, security traders, etc). It's almost like you are trying to make a theoretical argument...which falls flat in the face of reality.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

> They didn't quite get to 'just walk away'.

That's exactly what happened. Being given a choice, doesn't change the nature of one of the choices. They can start again today.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said they are getting to walk away with just an apology? Their statement includes:

“As part of a settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all of the record companies’ copyrighted works and hand over ownership of the website, our mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.”

Note the "as part of a settlement agreement ..." part - which indicates that shutting down operations isn't the end of it for them.

Ladies and gentlemen, in tonight's performance, the part of the Nazi's will be played by the record companies, and the part of the French will be played by Grooveshark.

Please, enjoy the show.

Cheers.

Re:K Bye.

[Junta]

I suspect that the situation is more complicated than that. Multiple recording labels, multiple interests. All the licensing of the music would revert to square one, with all the current copies having to be disposed of.

The world of intellectual property is too complicated for this sort of thing to be easy, sadly. I also never used Grooveshark. I'm still mostly a broadcast radio kind of person when it comes to music.

Re:K Bye.

[tnk1]

They don't want to operate Grooveshark. They just want to make sure that no service operates where they don't get paid. They're being paid by Spotify and the other services. It's Spotify and their ilk's problem to operate a streaming service. The *industry* doesn't care, since a lack of streaming just means they can go back to making sales on CDs.

Re:K Bye.

[tnk1]

You can get at the owners in certain circumstances, and it is likely that rolling over at settlement probably was the line where further fighting would have started exposing the owners to actual liability either from the fines or investor lawsuits and such.

Re:K Bye.

[Anonymous Coward]

if the music companies were smart, they'd continue to operate the site

"we shut down the pirates! that will end this threat once and for all!"

(two weeks later, 20 more sites)

This is Universal Music we're talking about here. Smart doesn't enter into the conversation at any point.

I keep wishing bankruptcy on those assholes, but instead they make more money than ever, every fucking year.

Re:K Bye.

[circletimessquare]

The *industry* doesn't care, since a lack of streaming just means they can go back to making sales on CDs.

that will never happen again. customers will share files online

but in your sentence is exactly the stupidity that shows why the music industry is dying. for not embracing the technology where their customers are

That won't save them

[Anonymous Coward]

They forgot to say 'very wrong', see you in court.

Corporations are people too

[Overzeetop]

Except without all that silly permanence when things go wrong.

As long as the founders played the corporation game right, they have no personal liability at stake. A corporation is just like a person, except that when a corporation violates a law which would burden it for life, or financially destroy it, it magically disintegrates leaving the real people who ran it into the ground clean and unencumbered by their wrongdoing.

There are good reasons for the existence of corporations; this isn't one of them.

Re:Corporations are people too

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a class of people in america that see a corporation failing as being just as tragic (or not) as watching an individuals life get destroyed.

From their perspective, if you are poor, and have debts, allowing your debtors to kill you and claim your remains as their own to justify the cost of the bullets is entirely reasonable. After all people are corporations too!

We are all limited liability in that we only have so much you can take from us before we are "shut down" (dead) and have no more assets to provide (estate and next of kin are both also depleted, or dead)...

Re:Corporations are people too

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean, "too"? Surely you don't mean to imply regular plebs count as real people with all the rights that would entail?

Re:Corporations are people too

[tnk1]

It is tragic in a manner of speaking, when you see the death of an idea that the company wanted to bring to the table. If Grooveshark would have succeeded, it would have been... interesting. It was never going to happen, it was just too explicitly illegal, but they held out awhile.

It is also tragic in that real people lose their jobs, possibly suddenly.

Corporations aren't just CEOs and shareholders. I can feel bad for one going under, even if I don't necessarily consider them to be people. Corporations don't exist without individuals within them, those people can represent something you can feel for, even if the tendency is for them to be faceless. So it is a case-by-case proposition.

Re:Corporations are people too

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a class of people in america that see a corporation failing as being just as tragic (or not) as watching an individuals life get destroyed.

A corporation failing IS that tragic - because the individuals (or at least some of them) that make up that corporation ARE having their lives destroyed by losing their jobs.

Re:Corporations are people too

[Anonymous Coward]

Except without all that silly permanence when things go wrong.

As long as the founders played the corporation game right, they have no personal liability at stake. A corporation is just like a person, except that when a corporation violates a law which would burden it for life, or financially destroy it, it magically disintegrates leaving the real people who ran it into the ground clean and unencumbered by their wrongdoing.

There are good reasons for the existence of corporations; this isn't one of them.

Ironically, this is one of the most important and good reasons for the existence of corporations. I'm sure the people on Slashdot are familiar with the concept of "fail fast." Corporations allow this in the business world. If a person had to bet their entire life savings *and* future livelihood on a business idea, many fewer would be willing to. True it would stop more fly-by-night scams and half-baked ideas, but it would stop many legitimate risky but revolutionary things too.

In practice there are ways this gets abused and subverted; but the fact that a limited liability corporation limits losses is a major factor for the ability for a capitalist economy to change and adapt to new technologies and environments.

Re:Corporations are people too

[minkie]

That's the most common outcome, but it doesn't always work that way. It is possible for the court to hold the corporate officers or investors personally liable. It's called piercing the corporate veil. Doesn't happen too frequently, but it happened to Limewire (http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/05/limewire_smacke.htm), who played in the same space, just a few years ago.

Strange terms?

[buckfeta2014]

I get that they have to remove their music library and have decided to shut down as a result... but why must they hand their software, patents and other IP to the music cartels? Why can't they keep their own stuff and choose to go legit?

Re:Strange terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they get to survive without all filing for personal bankrupcy as well, or even avoiding jail time?

Re:Strange terms?

[abelenky17]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that fairness and justice has something to do with this.
It doesn't.

It is about the simple exercise of power.
The record companies *can* take everything... so they *do* take everything, right or wrong.

The alternative would've been that Grooveshark fights a losing battle in court for years or a decade, only to lose everything in the end anyway.

Re:Strange terms?

[Jason Levine]

Because the copyright infringement fees* they would have been subjected to would have likely bankrupted them and those patents, software, etc would need to be sold off anyway. So the settlement was likely "give us all your stuff and we won't seek further fines that might wind up bankrupting you, personally, for life."

* You can agree or disagree with copyright laws/fee structures (and I often do), but you don't get to violate copyright, get caught, say "Oops, silly me, I'll go legit now", and get off scot-free.

Re:Strange terms?

[B1]

This keeps them from closing the doors on Grooveshark, and then immediately starting some new service, say GrooveBarracuda (or selling their software, patents and IP to some other enterprise looking to do the same thing).

Since the record companies now own their IP, anybody who tries to resurrect Grooveshark using the old software would also face charges of patent infringement, trademark infringement, etc (unless they build everything from scratch, which would be a much larger investment).

For the record companies, this helps them avoid future legal battles, and lowers the threat of a similar service emerging.

For Grooveshark, maybe this gave them a better settlement (e.g. lower damages owed to the record labels).

Re:Strange terms?

[tnk1]

Those are corporation assets and are being taken in lieu of a punitive fine. If they didn't turn them over then the corporation would have been fined, gone into bankruptcy, and those assets would have been sold off to pay the debt by the bankruptcy trustee anyway.

It's not clear why they wouldn't have just gone bankrupt, but there's probably terms in there that would be better than they would get if they had gone down kicking and screaming. Well, more kicking and screaming than they did before the case went against them, anyway.

Re:Strange terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that they would be sued into the ground otherwise.

The corporation was breaking the law (like it or not), they could be sued into oblivion for it, my guess is, the founders figured it was easier to just feed their corp. to the beast and walk away.

Too good to be true.

[mwvdlee]

Grooveshark let users to listen to the music the users payed for.
When you pay for music, you neither own the music, the media, the files or even the right to listen to it where you want.
You should have known it was too good to be true.

Re:Too good to be true.

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes no sense.

Re:Too good to be true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you hit your head? Your comment is utter NONSENSE

Copyright is corrupt, public domain is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Corruption and greed is killing public art! As a consequence, I no longer support an evil industry. I don't buy new music or go to concerts, I don't go to movies or subscribe to cable ... in my view, all thanks to evil corporate suits who sell us out.The rich are the real problem.

Re:Copyright is corrupt, public domain is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Only sysadmins and webmasters deserve to be paid(*) for their work.. musicians, writers and actors need to provide their stuff for free, because they're doing what they love to do.

(*) and no Indians or Sri Lankans need apply. These jobs are for AMERICANS only, that's not evil thinking.

Re:Copyright is corrupt, public domain is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, did someone seriously want me to look at the music business and feel sorry for those poor struggling artists? I mean... publishing companies.

Yeah, there are people trying to "make it", but in the end, you aren't buying music from them, you're buying it from publishers. There will still be music without publishers because there was music before publishers.

Re:Copyright is corrupt, public domain is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make the exact same argument using the exact same wording, about companies in software or any other industry. Do you have any idea how much CEOs get paid?

Re:Copyright is corrupt, public domain is lost

[Grishnakh]

I don't buy new music or go to concerts

Lots of people don't buy new music, and it's not because they're boycotting an "evil industry", it's because all the new music sucks.

I don't go to movies or subscribe to cable

"Cord cutting" is skyrocketing, and again it's not because people are intentionally boycotting, it's because cable TV is just commercial-packed bullshit programming like Honey Boo Boo and people have lost interest, as they would rather spend their free time doing or seeing things on the internet. It's not just geeks, it's everyone.

If you didn't sing it...

[mi]

If you neither sung it yourself, nor obtained the singer's permission, you have no right to play it. Seems like a perfectly self-evident rule to me.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[cdrudge]

Anymore isn't it if you didn't compose the music, write the lyrics, and then perform both, all while using a series of words, notes, and/or chords that have not been organized in a similar fashion, either as an entirely or as smaller subsets, then you have no right to think about it in a public space.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[circletimessquare]

people are poor and don't have time for a hassle and want to listen to music right now for free. if you yell at them this is wrong, they won't care: they want to listen to music. hardly a grave moral transgression

so they do. because they can. because the internet allows for myriad ways to share files

so what you are left with is a classic situation in human history: new technology changes the balance of power and the old way of doing things is thrown out. let the old guard grimaces and sputters with rage. who cares?

in the future, recorded music will be nothing but free advertising for the artist. the artist gets his income from live shows, ancillary items, advertising, etc. this crazy arrangement used to function with an esoteric strange technology called "radio": music for free, supported by ads, and artists get exposure to make money in other ways. so we're hardly in weird new territory here

is it written somewhere in the bible or the quran that making money off of recorded music is some sort of basic human right? no, there is merely a legal convention from the last one hundred years only, when recorded music existed on physical medium. for thousands of years before that, and now forever more from this century on, you make money form live performance, patronage, ads, ancillary revenue, etc.

idiots gnashing their teeth over a hollow legal arrangement based on a technology that has been leapfrogged don't mean anything except an example of how people can be clueless

the words you say are in defense of a temporary power arrangement, physical media, that is almost done completely fading away

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[nitehawk214]

Whatever you do, don't tell someone to shut up, you will get sued for that.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[mi]

they want to listen to music. hardly a grave moral transgression

I said nothing about listening. I wrote only about playing.

is it written somewhere in the bible or the quran that making money off of recorded music is some sort of basic human right? no

If the 10 Commandments were the sort of "living and breathing document", that certain people claim the US Constitution to be, the "Thou shalt not play records without recorder's permissions" would've been in it by now.

you make money form live performance, patronage, ads, ancillary revenue, etc.

Why must an artist's (or, indeed, anyone's!) money-making be restricted to the sources you find agreeable? And what of others of your kind, who'll claim, for example:

• that mixing ads with art iis wrong,
• or that patronage is immoral,
• or that live performance is insufficiently egalitarian?

We are paying people for their utilizing their skills in the way we like. If Elon Musk can profit from designing a wonder battery in different ways, why can't a singer squeeze everything from a successful song?

If the artist didn't exist, you would've had no song and nothing to complain about. If does exist, but you don't like him or his desire to be paid — well, just ignore him, as if he didn't exist. Problem solved.

the words you say are in defense of a temporary power arrangement, physical media

Which words of mine do you consider relating to any particular "physical media"? I certainly meant no such relationship — the only presumption in my post was that a verbatim recording of musical performance is possible. Whether the recording is on a tape, CD, a flash-drive or whatever is of no consequence.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[Ksevio]

It's sort of an odd arrangement that we provide them a government mandated monopoly over their songs essentially forever. The original intent of copyright was for artists to share their works and in exchange after a limited time, the works would move to the public domain.

Due to abusive legislation, that has been stolen from us. Your great grand-children will be dead before the song you heard on the Top-40 station this morning is in public domain. Even Elon Musk's batteries will be out of patent protection in a couple decades.

Most artists make music because they like it. YouTube is full of artists sharing their works for free. They wouldn't suffer with shorter copyright and we as society wouldn't suffer. Many people see this disconnect which is why services like Grooveshark were able to thrive - they provided an alternative that was easy to use. There shouldn't be any right-to-profit that harms society more than it benefits the profiter.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[Em Adespoton]

You forgot about recording, producing, post-producing and distributing -- these all have copyright law attached to them too.

This is actually why recording companies exist -- they navigate the legal morass so that individuals don't have to.

However, it seems to me it'd make more sense these days to incorporate an entity for each album you produce, so that if someone takes umbrage with your composition/writing/performance/format/recording/production/post-production/distribution, you can just dissolve that incorporation and your own livelihood and the fate of all other music is still protected. And you wouldn't end up being beholden to a recording company who does pretty much the same thing, but takes most of the profits.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[circletimessquare]

thank you, well said

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[mi]

It's sort of an odd arrangement that we provide them a government mandated monopoly over their songs essentially forever.

Why? What's "odd" about it? If you build — or purchase — a house, you and your ancestors can live in it forever. Why must a song be ever confiscated from its owner?

How about a program you write — and release under, say, GPL? Should that licensing be perpetual, or do you consider that to be "abusive" as well — and would like all software to automatically become public domain after a (short) while?

Due to abusive legislation, that has been stolen from us

So, we can use the term "stolen", when referring to intangible things, after all? Good to know...

Most artists make music because they like it. YouTube is full of artists sharing their works for free.

You are right! Under the current system an artist is free to release their works "into the wild" whenever they please. They have a choice between trying to profit and trying to gain renown. You want to take that away (steal) from them, mandating some arbitrary (and short) time limit. I fail to see, how this can possibly be considered "fair".

They wouldn't suffer with shorter copyright

But others would suffer from the confiscation you are proposing. So, if you dislike them so much — just pretend they don't exist and enjoy the works of those you like.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[Ksevio]

Why? What's "odd" about it? If you build — or purchase — a house, you and your ancestors can live in it forever. Why must a song be ever confiscated from its owner?

If a person makes a house and sells it, then it is no longer theirs to sell (or as you'd say, it's "confiscated"). There are also lots of other people around to sell houses. If you're selling your house for too much, I can buy it from the guy next door.

If we had better laws regarding copyright then we wouldn't need the GPL (though that's also a response to non-open-source software which is a different matter). Code licensing should also not be perpetual

So, we can use the term "stolen", when referring to intangible things, after all? Good to know...

That was a jab at people who say you can "steal" music - glad you got it!

You are right! Under the current system an artist is free to release their works "into the wild" whenever they please. They have a choice between trying to profit and trying to gain renown. You want to take that away (steal) from them, mandating some arbitrary (and short) time limit. I fail to see, how this can possibly be considered "fair".

I'm not advocating for the elimination of copyright - just shortening it to a reasonable period. If copyright lasted 3-7 years (government protected monopoly), artists would still make most of the money they do now (most songs aren't even going to be making money for that long) while society would benefit from having the works come into public domain. Really a win-win situation unless you're a media mega-corp.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[mi]

If a person makes a house and sells it, then it is no longer theirs to sell

Sure, but what if he rents it out? A song is rarely sold — what you buy is a right to play it with certain limitations. Since you are compelled by neither the law nor even physical necessity to enter into the transaction in the first place, I fail to see, what right you have to even complain of any and all strings attached. If you don't, how the "infamous" Metallica sells their music, take your money to YouTube. Problem solved.

Code licensing should also not be perpetual

There you go. Glad we cleared that out. Neither of us is an artist, but at least one is a programmer — kind of brings the topic closer to home. So, in your opinion, software-licensing — include what's licensed under GPL — should not be perpetual. I think, we are done here.

I'm not advocating for the elimination of copyright - just shortening it to a reasonable period.

All of the arguments you've put forth so far in support of shortening the copyright, would apply equally to eliminating it altogether. Therefor either the arguments are BS, or you ought to embrace the greater cause and stop being shy about it.

Re:If you didn't sing it...

[Ksevio]

If someone rents a house, they cannot rent it to another person during that time. A house has physical value, making a new house costs money. The same is not true for a song.

I think there is value in shorter copyright periods. It gives artists protections against their works being ripped off, Longer copyrights don't help that case as much since most works are popular when they are first released, not 150 years after.

Can you tell me the benefit of copyright on works where the artist is dead?

1998 called.

[Anonymous Coward]

They want their headline back.

RIP Grooveshark

[hagnat]

you will be missed

i wish they could at least allow me to download my playlist in a CSV format
it's going to be though to build it back from scratch

Re:Now where will I find a shark, that also groove

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you settle for sharks with lasers attached to their heads?

Records companies...

[midifarm]

And I'm sure all the artists are rejoicing in the victory that they'll financially benefit from handsomely!!!

Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[sonnik]

As an occasional substitute DJ, this will impact me. I use Virtual DJ software package; it uses GrooveShark as a primary music service. (It also scours the web with their own service that isn't as good.)

(Without reading all of it...) It looks like the judgment cites digital distribution, which is generally covered by SoundExchange. SoundExchange generally covers the type of license (statutory) that covers the media or streaming rights. Whereas the performance rights (BMI, ASCAP) cover the performance rights. Also, for those interested ... business establishments that play music generally need to secure performance rights licenses directly from performance rights groups like BMI or ASCAP. Licensing from BMI and ASCAP increases significantly if your restaurant/club includes a dance floor (implying more of your revenue originates from music).

So, I'm just curious how the breach of non-licensed music (digital distribution) occurred. I'm sure my usage case of GrooveShark doesn't apply to all users. But I am curious how they failed to secure licensing.

Nevertheless, there will be a good chunk of DJs that are scrambling to get music tonight and tomorrow. Credit to those who use their own on-computer library with something like Serato or Traktor. Virtual DJ (on their forums) state that they are looking for another music streaming provider.

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[Anonymous Coward]

Aka you publicly perform with unlicensed music. Good stuff mate.

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[sonnik]

I don't know if I did. Apparently there were 4,907 recordings out of the 15 Million. I haven't had time to check my history against a list of the 4,907 cited that I haven't found yet. But thanks for your concern.

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[sonnik]

http://www.virtualdj.com/forum... (For Virtual DJ's comments, by the way.)

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[Anonymous Coward]

Credit to those who use their own on-computer library with something like Serato or Traktor.

Just buy the music from the various online sources. You can't exactly say that the process of buying music hasn't become convenient these days. With beatport, juno, amazon, bandcamp and what not it's become easier than ever before. Aside from that if you have any decent contacts you're getting sent a fuckton of promos every week. I'm glad I don't have to carry a fuckton of CDs and vinyl anymore, my back is really thankful for that especially now that I'm getting older.

I don't use virtualdj and groovershark so please excuse me if I have the wrong idea here, but isn't it a big risk to rely on streaming music from an online source? Most places I've been to have very unreliable internet connections where as soon as enough people start checking their twitter/facebook/foursquare the connection goes down for unspecified amount of time. I carry around my laptop and contoller, and a small bag of CDs incase of technicals so that I can use the in-house equipment (the typical pioneer CDJ setup usually, optionally with rekordbox).

I don't get the amount of risk from a legal point of view some DJs are willing to put themselves through when I glance at their library and I see "downloaded from [somefreemp3site.ru]" in the comment field in their libraries. If you don't want to pay for the track, don't play it. I can get over the fact that the average consumer has an mp3 library from questionable sources, but really now, if you're going to be making money playing someone else's works at least have the decency to buy the goddamn tracks.

I can get that if you do this sort of thing in between and irregularly that it's costly affair to buy all that music. The cost doesn't change if you do it regularly, and the rates at which you play are usually barely enough to recoup the costs. With the barrier of entry being so low nowadays (decline of equipment prices, PCDJs, etc) there's a lot more competition on the market as well (which is ultimately a good thing), but it's also pushed down the rates. Profitable is in very few DJs dictionary lately to be honest, especially if a lot of people just download their music from various unofficial sources with an extended middle finger to the the scene they desperately try to be a part of while lowering their rates even further.

Anyway, most of this is just my opinions and I get that times are a changin', but still... At least support the artists you're willing to rep, and if you're not comfortable with feeding the big labels more money, buy music you like from the small labels and independent stuff, and just skip the catalogue of the big labels. There's plenty of interesting music to be found at the smaller labels, and even at the netlabels. A lot of it depends at the types of events you play at, or at the audience you're trying to capture, I guess. If you end up not buying the music you play out of spite for the artist or labels, then you might as well just not play at all since you're obviously not into it in the first place.

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[Anonymous Coward]

No the whole point is that performers and venues pay fees to BMI or ASCAP (or your local country's copyright system). How can you not get this? You can play radio or vinyl or anything; if your vinyl is stolen you are legally playing music if you've got your day or site license to play music, and if you bought your vinyl but didn't pay the fee, playing it is breaking the law.

There are two "crimes" and they do not interact.

Think of it like committing a robbery with a stolen weapon, with no license and stolen music.

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[sonnik]

I'm sorry, what causes you to think I do not 'get' it? I believe I included the SoundExchange delineation on the performance rights on my original post. As I stated, I simply stated I hadn't sat and read the entire PDF.

The complaint was specifically about 4,907 of 15 million recordings. I don't know what the 4,907 specific recordings were. To be honest, I don't really care.

But, if you're the same AC who implied that I played unlicensed music - I think "I don't know" is a more accurate answer than your conclusion.

Many DJs do not carry physical media with them anymore, aside from what music files are on the hard drive. There are a multitude of music services that tailor specifically to DJs, which falls into the "digital streaming" category. It's one of the niceties of being in the 21st century. Think of a patron wanting a request ... the DJ can pay $50 a month or just buy each individual request they may get. The subscription model generally works out better for most DJs.

The Venue's ASCAP/BMI/etc license covers performance rights. The Grooveshark legal complaint covers digital distribution/streaming.

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[sonnik]

It's economics. DJs can spend ~$1 per song if it's a one off request that they'll never play again (losing money) or they can subscribe to a service that should cover them for pretty much everything ... just like Rhapsody, Spotify, etc.

One thing I want to be clear about... most DJs, myself included aren't people who download scoured music. There are a multitude of services that cover the digital distribution legalities (SoundExchange) for you. Just do a search for "DJ Music Service".

They are actually quite handy for today's DJ.

The Virtual DJ service (GrooveShark) can range from $10 to $50 a month, depending on if you want to play music videos also.

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[sonnik]

Here's the Virtual DJ page ... http://www.virtualdj.com/produ...

Virtual DJ is one of the three software packages most commonly used by DJs.

Note their comment on the Audio service.

"It appears that one of our main content provider for our Audio Plan has been uploading a small number of tracks without proper licensing. We are shocked to learn that, and until we can get more information about this situation, we suspended the delivery of their content from our Music Plan. We are working as fast as we can to understand what happened and find a solution to this situation."

Re:Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[sound vision]

Honestly, these DJs should have seen it coming - especially the ones that post on Slashdot. There are articles here all the time about some cloud-based service going under, oftentimes without warning, leaving the users high and dry. Recently I've heard more and more people say things like "I don't download music anymore, I just use [insert streaming service of the month]." I've been warning them that while these services provide a good alternative to radio, they are not a substitute for a music collection. Even if they are doing it legally, the whole thing is a house of cards that can get knocked down at any time when someone tries to re-negotiate a licensing deal (or any number of other scenarios).

It'd be like the DJs of yore showing up at a party with an FM radio instead of a crate of records. "But it was playing the songs I wanted yesterday!" Well, now it isn't. I'd expect a DJ, of all people, to recognize the value of a permanent music collection.

Re: Virtual DJ / DJs often use GrooveShark

[Anonymous Coward]

I can buy music online no problem, and I do. What made grooveahark great is the ease of use of creating and sharing playlists, online. They also had a great API to let third parties create cool apps. All of that is gone now and there is simply no adequate replacement. Thanks, UMG & friends. Way to go serving your customers.

FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Grooveshark let users to listen to the music the users payed for and all music ever uploaded to Grooveshark even if they didn't pay for that music.

There. FTFY.

Re:FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's like youtube.
Why can youtube get a license for that but grooveshark can't?

how did they even find investors?

[slashmydots]

How did they even find investors or loans or any money at all? "Do you have permission to use the music on your site?" "No" "Okay, have a $10 million loan!"

Kissing arse

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the start-semi-legit get-an-audience go-legit business model worked for Youtube and Crunchyroll. Grooveshark got unlucky.

> Do courts give grovelling apologies enough weight that this 'contrition' is a logical strategy to try to reduce any awards of damages? Are such apologies sometimes added as conditions of a settlement, presumably so that the victor can grind the vanquished further into the dirt? Is there some other advantage to issuing one?

In criminal cases, yes, they love that contrition thing, but in civil cases, it's all about money: Under defamation law in non-free speech countries like Airstrip One and Austrafailia (not the US, Thank God!) an apology in a civil suit can soften the judge's blow, though lawyers being lawyers it's all about the money so it'll have no effect on them, but it'll sometimes calm down a hysterical client more interested in vindication than cash. http://sydney.edu.au/law/slr/slr_35/slr35_2/317_Carroll.pdf http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/publicspace/article/download/535/482

They could off just asked me if it was legal

[Agrippa]

...because I spent 1.5 years of my life @ MP3.com running reports and collecting data as discovery for the lawsuits of record companies, publishers, individual artists, and whomever owned any percentage of any playback rights in any country (and yes this means people who owned less that 1% of a song's rights in Turkmenistan).

Hoping they return...

[pushing-robot]

I'd love if they could start a new company that pays royalties, Spotify-style, where it can, yet allows users to share rare or otherwise unavailable content as well. Because of the mess of regional rights ownership there will probably never a fully legal way to enjoy all music worldwide, so a gray market will always be necessary to fill the gaps.

In the meantime, I'll sing a song for them.
(...and good luck downloading that legally, US slashdotters)

Re:Hoping they return...

[Coren22]

It does not appear to be available from Google Play. However, in the US, it is perfectly legal to grab the Youtube video, so there is that.

Re:Now where will I find a shark, that also groove

[RivenAleem]

Raveshark?

Re:Now where will I find a shark, that also groove

[nitehawk214]

Downgraded to GrooveEvilTrout.

Re:Now where will I find a shark, that also groove

[mrbester]

GrooveMutantSeaBass

Most likely part of their shutting down deal

[Anonymous Coward]

If not lawyers will love to take that statement to court having their own words acknowledging they were trying to profit through stealing or piracy. I know nothing about Grooveshark to form an opinion either way.

i want GROOVESHARK back

[Anonymous Coward]

waaaaaaaat theeeeee fuckkkkk!!!!!.......alll my shit is gone

Re:i want GROOVESHARK back

[znrt]

yet another victim of the cloud. tragic.

My playlists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any way I could get my playlists?

no wonder they got shutdown

[Connie_Lingus]

they forgot the lasers

RIP 3 Grooveshark

[Anonymous Coward]

You will be missed. The depression is setting in as now i have no way to listen to my awesome broadcasts. Grooveshark was an awesome service.

Figures

[lennier1]

A streaming service that offers more than the usual EU/US crap had to end sooner or later. This seemed to be pretty much the only service in the western world with a decent enough selection of Japanese and Korean music.

The labels own it now so...?

[AdamD1]

So now that the labels own the website, what will they do with it?!

They have a crappy reputation for shutting down sites which actually function pretty well in terms of giving consumers what they actually want, and then never reviving them again.

Wouldn't it make sense for the labels to operate these things? Why don't they? It's been over 15 years now.

ad

Refunds?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how they're going to refund current customers who prepaid (yearly)

Only some music should be free

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people think all this music is Free?

Not all music. Only recorded music should be free. You should still have to pay to attend a live performance.

Sure, musicians are being screwed over by the labels and publishers, but that's not a reason to outright steal it and deny the musicians the meager cash they are getting paid.

Makes you wish that musicians would wake up to the fact that, thanks to the internet, they don't need labels/publishers anymore, don't it?

What?

[newbie_fantod]

Stealing has nothing at all to do with the intention to deprive others. Stealing is the taking of anything that does not belong to you.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're retarded. If I pluck a berry in a forest and eat it, it was not mine. I am a thief!

Morons like you are why north american first nations are no longer nations. Your ideas of property and wealth are a thin veneer over your greed or foolishness, or both.

Re:What?

[Em Adespoton]

I haven't traced back what the GP said, so I'm not exactly sure of the point of the parent.

However, where I come from, forests are for the most part public property. I grew up not only picking berries, but also picking mushrooms, and selling those on to distributors. Does this mean I was stealing for profit? Others were unable to pick those mushrooms after I did. However, I made sure to cut them appropriately so that a new bunch would grow back, and I put in the actual work of picking, sorting and transporting the mushrooms. My picking was only depriving other people of immediate mushroom gratification/profits from doing what I had done.

Now, if you live in a place where all forests are owned by individuals and corporations, then picking berries/mushrooms would indeed be theft/poaching. But I'd argue that "owning" that forest could be considered theft from people at large as well -- just like "owning" a public event such that any re-depiction of that event afterwards by anyone other than you is cultural theft. Yes, I'm talking about DIsney/IOC/etc. here.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US forests aren't public property. They are either owned by the government, companies or by private citizens and picking even a single berry without authorization can get you into legal trouble.

Re:What?

[newbie_fantod]

Morons like you should learn how to read. I never said that they were my ideas of property and wealth. I was commenting on the convenient re-defining of "theft" to exclude oneself from moral censure. Grow a brain.

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

They wrote it and performed it. If you want to listen, pay up.

Otherwise, GTFO.

Shit. Lost GCCX music.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone had posted GameCenter CX music on grooveshark. I never figured out how to download it, so it's now gone forever.

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

They wrote it and performed it. If you want to listen, pay up.

Otherwise, GTFO.

How about you pay up every time you use your toothbrush? Not everyone can create a toothbrush. Same concept.

Re:We failed to...

[Anonymous Coward]

They should get off just like Hillary.
She didn't admit wrong-doing, just a failure to follow the law.
It's no biggie!

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

You fundamentally fail to understand intellectually property rights.

I suppose you think it's cool to just check a book out of the library and then scan it in or copy it on a copier, THEN read it?

This is denying the author revenues they are entitled to. And don't start with the digital copy bullshit. You are paying to experience the author's story. The cost of the paper and distribution is incidental.

I just don't believe you people. Are you the same people that feel it's OK to loot just because someone suffered an injustice?

Re:Now where will I find a shark, that also groove

[chilenexus]

With frickin' lasers on its head?

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

And here we have the modern freetard. Living on EBT cards and section 8 housing no doubt.

Because he doesn't think he or anyone else should be rewarded for his labor.

If you were a professional writer, you can fucking bet you'd care.

The clarification...

[tlambert]

Anyone with some legal experience able to clarify this? Given that grooveshark wasn't...exactly...apologetic about their strategy(nor has it changed all that much), my assumption is that the sudden shift to grovelling-apology-mode has much more to do with losing than it does with any change of heart.

I'm pretty sure the apology has a hell of a lot more to do with the transfer of control of the domain name to the record label than it has to do with the actual opinions of Grooveshark, or really, anyone who was employed by them, since whatever statements are up currently are hosted on RIAA owned servers on a RIAA owned domain, and likely dictated to RIAA employed web masters by RIAA marketing executives.

I don't think anyone at Grooveshark would willingly admit legal liability so blatantly, unless they had discontinued their schizophrenia medication.

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[gnupun]

How about you pay up every time you use your toothbrush? Not everyone can create a toothbrush. Same concept.

If you pay 1/100th or 1/200th the full retail price of a toothbrush, expect to pay every time you use it. That's what's happening with streaming music. Listeners are paying a tiny fraction of the 99 cent song to listen to it once.

Re: Now where will I find a shark, that also groov

[Anonymous Coward]

At the Super Bowl hanging with Katy Perry?

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[znrt]

You fundamentally fail to understand intellectually property rights

i do understand intellectual property rights, that's how i know intellectual property is fundamentally wrong.

you, however, seem to fail to understand how the media industry works.

http://groovebackup.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://groovebackup.com - it worked for some friends, but not others (or me.) Thankfully my grooveshark page was open on my collection from the other day so I was able to cut/paste and go through the tedious process of saving the list.

This is a HUGE blow to anyone who likes to listen to music, and there is just no other way to frame it. Grooveshark had a lot of obscure and hard to find stuff, and I loved surfing through their broadcast channels.

I disliked UMG before this for their dipshit dinosaur beliefs and practices and unwillingness to accept the realities of the 21st century world, but my feelings for them are now leaning more towards outright vicious hatred.

Music Music Music

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting that people can't seem to do anything these days without having their music playing, but they can't be bothered to pay for it. I've seen College kids almost walk into traffic because they are too busy screwing with their playlist. When I was a kid it was quite a treat to get a new album, and I had to be careful what I spend my money on. In the present the kids seem to want everything for free and don't seem to appreciate any of it. I guess that's why you have musicians these days that are in 4 or 5 bands just to try and make a living.

Honestly, they were probably going to fail anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

• I had to scour the site to put together complete albums. Most of the songs in these albums would periodically get DMCA'd and became too time-consuming to keep doing so.
• It was impossible for me to run the original site without adblock because of the constant stream of flash ads that did not exit memory.
• Sound quality was inconsistent.

Bitcoin and Anonymous Networks

[Anonymous Coward]

Artists themselves get shit money for every copy, play, etc.
The corporations take like 85% or more of the share as largely useless middlemen.

Anyone can understand wanting to give directly to the artists themselves, those who actually make the works.
You have BITCOIN for that now.

And you can permanently cut out the middleman by sharing all your lossless audio and video over Anonymous Networks such as I2P, Phantom, Gnunet, etc without fear of ever being sued because those networks all support sharing completely internally within themselves without EVER CONTACTING THE CLEARNET.

Bitcoin and Anonymous Networks are your perfect final solution to this stupid game that's been going on since Napster.

Re:Now where will I find a shark, that also groove

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be fun at parties.

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, you sound angry bro.

Re: Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise you have to pay for toothbrushes?

There's no toothbrush Santa.

Re: Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

You go 200 brushes without changing your toothbrush?!!

curses CAPTCHA: wicked

[Anonymous Coward]

Heil Hitler you jewburning nazi monsters. Go burn some jews and eat them, you cocksucking pieces of shit. Suck Hitler's arsehole in hell for eternity, you shiteating nazis.

Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

This not about rights, rules or laws, it's about record companies and money and power. And maybe a touch of despair. If you watch Artifact, the documentary about 30 Seconds to Mars and Virgin Records, you might start wondering what's going on here. You can see Grooveshark as a pirate radio station, but then there's the record companies, and you could call them a bit worse than pirates.

Re: Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Record companies are the music industry's proverbial thief, shouting "catch the thief!" meaning anyone else with a stake in the industry other than themselves. They are the sort of people that got on the first ships to leave earth in Douglas Adam's HHGG. Well done.

Major labels gotta be the most stubborn outfits ev

[Anonymous Coward]

gee, when are you going to learn there is demand for services like grooveahark and that demand will be met, if _you_ the labela don't offer legal means? Instead of killing this great service the ethical thing to do would have been to buy them and make thia a legally operating outfit. Instead you just alleniated 30m+ users *worldwide*, plus about 10 times us much as they will tell their friends and spouses. Do you actually think you will get new customers this way? Well, think again. Duh!

Screwed up priorities

[haruchai]

Grooveshark may have caused a very theoretical $50 million in "damage" and were forced to "apologize without reservation" but the greedy evil fucktards that nearly sank the planetary economy get to pay relative pittance fines without apology or admitting guilt?

yeah this is a only money world

[Anonymous Coward]

they try to keep it contolled. . . . but they cant .there will come other and other again just like napster . . . . juty sit and wait for the next one

Re:Not everyone is a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but one toothbrush is not shared by the world entire.

$.99 is a fucking hell of a profit for something that can be copied ad infinitum at effectively zero cost. Why would I ever want to pay somebody to make me a copy? I'm a big boy. I can do it all by myself.