From what I've heard, Grooveshark has been pre-emptively making payments to the labels monthly for over the past year so that they don't sue. They labels seemed to be okay with this as they sort of figured out what Grooveshark was - I wonder what happened to cause the change of heart by Universal.
Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
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Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#32From what I've heard, Grooveshark has been pre-emptively making payments to the labels monthly for over the past year so that they don't sue. They labels seemed to be okay with this as they sort of figured out what Grooveshark was - I wonder what happened to cause the change of heart by Universal.
What changed is their lawyers gathered enough evidence to bring them to trial. Grooveshark pre-emptively paying labels is not a replacement for a licensing deal. Grooveshark is a company formed to exploit a legal technicality, nothing more. Their service is indeed good for the end user who doesn't have to pay to listen to any song that they want, but it is obviously bad for music labels and artists.
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's uncharacteristic for a corporation to wage "ideological" wars I thoroughly disagree with this. Corporations often wage "ideological" "wars". That's what lobbying is all about -- a corporation has decided Public Policy X will either help or harm their corporate interests, so they pay lobbyists to advocate for or against it. Media companies like Universal, Disney, et al guard copyright very closely. They want to…
I don't think the word ideological means what you think it means. Ideological behaviour is behaviour motivated by ideas, not profits. Corporate lobbying is essentially always motivated by profit, not ideas. Can you name a company who lobbies for policies they honestly think will lower their profits?
I think it's fair to say that nobody at Universal has any idea if Grooveshark is actually raising or lowering their profits. Nobody has conducted any kind of inquiry to see whether the sales lost via Grooveshark are compensated by the value provided to music-owning consumers (upload, play anywhere) and the free publicity gained, and nobody cares to.
Rather, the industry decided long ago that it would take it as an a priori truth that any kind of piracy costs them money, and act accordingly. That's an ideological stance.
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#34slightly offtopic: would it work to tag music on Youtube via Musicbrainz(eg http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Jaikoz ) and replace GS tracks with YT streams? Would it offset legal issues onto YT? Probably better to do for a new startup.
I can't remember what is is, but I'm pretty sure there's some program that uses an interface similar to Napster/Limewire, but in the background it searches YouTube for a song, downloads the video, and extracts the mp3. A service like this is bound to yield inconsistent quality, and YouTube will constantly be removing videos, but I suppose it could be made to work.
Yes, there's been tons of YT interfaces over the years, but for some reason I always go back to youtube.com. I didn't know about downloading the mp3. I think that'd be against YT's terms, although I would like to be able to access a vid's soundtrack and not be forced to dl the video.
The innovation is really about labeling YT vids with the correct metadata automatically, rather than manually. In fact, YT should be connecting its music and artists to Musicbrainz already upon upload. It's about connecting artists and songs on yt to their corresponding pages on MB,
In effect, there could be a browser plugin that placed a play button next to each song here that gets the right song every time: http://musicbrainz.org/release/8d0bc6d4-8700-44e8-90c8-b86c2... - you could also bookmark songs for your collection.
YT must be already catalogging its music to some extent to produce artist pages like this: http://www.youtube.com/artist/Pearl_Jam
So you could take your local mp3 collection, tag it, save as a playlist, delete all the files and then access all the music on site from YT via the playlist.
I think the best way to operate such a system without YT involvement would be to have a browser plugin that fingerprints and tags YT music vids as they're played in the browser, there'd have to be some interaction, but as a distributed effort, you'd gradually build up a yt-mb database.
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grooveshark did this without inking the necessary deals. If I understand correctly, their library is provided by their users uploading.
Right, Grooveshark's entire business model is centered around DMCA protections. Only "user-generated content" affords a DMCA safe harbor defense, so all the copyrighted music they host has to be uploaded by individual users who each assert that they have the rights to distribute the song.
Why can't the labels just send mass DMCA takedown letters? Are users really uploading songs faster than they can be taken down?
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#36Here are the questions I have every time I see these music lawsuits:
How many of the people using this Grooveshark service are present/former/would-be Universal customers?
How do you prove this? Should you attempt to prove it before deciding to sue?
What if the people using Grooveshark are just too cheap or too poor to ever buy Universal releases? Is that possible?
On the flipside, what if they are also Universal's best customers? Is that possible?
The article says they named specific uploaders in the complaint. Maybe they have been able make some assumptions about them as existing/potential customers? (e.g. They have some assets and/or they've bought Universal releases in the past.)
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#37"UMG is seeking maximum damages of up to $150,000 per infringement from Grooveshark, which could mean more than a $15 billion payout if the lawsuit is successful." Those numbers seem ridiculous. I imagine the only real purpose they serve is to create fear in similar / emerging ventures and to set an upper bound that guarantees bankruptcy. It seems as pointless as condemning somebody to 1000 death sentences.
I think it's safe to assume without digging up legislative history that those amounts represent a theoretical deterrent, not an estimated measure of lost profits.
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#38I've been wondering how Grooveshark's existence was even possible. I assumed they just hadnt been messed with yet by content owners, and that was why it was still around. Maybe that's about to change.
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#39I don't understand why the CEO was uploading illegal files. Seems like the worst possible thing he could have done -- really kills any "we're trying to provide a legal service; not our fault our users are uploading copyrighted material" arguments. The safe harbors won't protect them if this is true.
I remember hearing Shawn Fanning say he never shared anything illegal on Napster.
Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, Grooveshark's entire business model is centered around DMCA protections. Only "user-generated content" affords a DMCA safe harbor defense, so all the copyrighted music they host has to be uploaded by individual users who each assert that they have the rights to distribute the song.
Why can't the labels just send mass DMCA takedown letters? Are users really uploading songs faster than they can be taken down?
They have and the tracks pop back up*
*According to the leaked emails.