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

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: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?

[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.