Slashdot Mirror
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.
Best I can do now is a shark that can slow dance. It's just not the same.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.
But you still continued? Good plan there.
Who said they are getting to walk away with just an apology? Their statement includes:
Note the "as part of a settlement agreement ..." part - which indicates that shutting down operations isn't the end of it for them.
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.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Be seeing you...
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.
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)
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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.
GrooveMutantSeaBass
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
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.
they forgot the lasers
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
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.
"95% of all Slashdot
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.
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.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
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.
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?