Really great to see that Universal may be held accountable for their thuglike behavior. Be nice to see some class action suits over the mass litigation against consumers using BitTorrent too.
Grooveshark is by no means innocent here. It's hard to get around the fact that they're distributing content without compensating its copyright holders through mechanical licenses, and without any agreement with these copyright holders. If it was your copyrighted content being distributed by Grooveshark for profit, with no money going to you, you might feel differently.
It's websites like Grooveshark that weaken the premise for laws like DMCA safe harbour. Their entire business lies in using DMCA in a way in which it was clearly not designed, making it much easier to against such provisions. It's not only big music who might lose out because of them.
"Morally guilty" is hugely subjective. I'm sure it's very, very easy to find a lot of people who would argue that Grooveshark's behavior is more moral than that of Universal, and it's hard to argue against them without falling back on legal arguments.
The question is not one of who is worse. Universal does some morally reprehensible things, that does not excuse Grooveshark.
Grooveshark aren't for anybody other than themselves, they base their entire business on people uploading sharing songs without giving any money to the musicians. If a user uploads the song, not a registered artist then the artist gets nothing and the money goes where?
As a result I believe through those actions they weaken the argument for DMCA safe harbour provisions by showing such a clear loophole in the meaning.
That's my moral and non-legal argument against Grooveshark (but not for Universal).
If they spend shareholder capital to enforce someone else's copyright out of the goodness of their hearts, they're legally guilty of breach of fiduciary duty.
The argument that they're abusing the DMCA is a slippery slope. Who else should be helping the copyright holders freeload on their enforcement duties? Your ISP? Computer manufacturers? Your landlord, for not not searching your home regularly for copyright-violating media?
If you're shafting people, then you're not innocent in my eyes.
The law is a set of tools commonly used to give people a sense that there is justice and order in our society. When the tools are found inadequate, new ones are developed. Ultimately, this probably won't work in Grooveshark's favor.
LOL. That may be true, but with a good lawyer (and I'm sure Universal spared no expense here), it may come to be the opinion of the jurors (if there are any in this type of case) and judge as well. My point is that at least to me, it seems obvious that Universal is getting screwed over by Grooveshark, along with all the other copyright holders whose content they're distributing without a license.
Juries don't get to decide points of law. Judges make those determinations precisely because of what you just said.
If you don't like it, you can advocate for a change in the law. Frankly, you underrate the difficulty sites like Grooveshark face. Copyright infringement relies upon whether or not a person has permission and that's not something a computer program can determine.
You're using a simple heuristic that doesn't work well at scale, relies upon human judgement (which also doesn't scale), and fails utterly when the marketing departments of these places put out their own leaked versions of things (see Viacom v. YouTube) which are permitted.
It's weird how often I hear how "easy" this is. This is HN. If you want me to believe that it's easy, create a computer program that acts as a filter and we'll see how well it works in the real world. I realize that you see someone getting shafted and want to fix that. That's a good thing. The problem is that you advocate for a solution that would merely shaft someone else instead. That's not a good thing.
That's why participation in Grooveshark should be opt-in for copyright holders, not opt-out. They should control how their works are monetized, and they should be compensated for it. It's a matter of respect for the work the artist puts into creating this stuff.
That's not how the law works, though. Music is subject to compulsory licenses. I haven't heard of any sizable movement to get rid of those licenses, either.
You are incorrect - a music "track" consists of two separate copyright - one is the copyright in the sound recording (the audio that you hear), the other is the copyright in the underlying composition embodied in the sound recording (in other words the lyrics, the arrangement, the composition of the music).
There is no compulsory license for sound recordings in any territory for downloads or interactive streaming. You have to explicit permission from the copyright owner to make the recording available for download or interactive streaming, i.e. you can choose when to listen to it.
There is a compulsory license in most territories for the composition side, under certain specific conditions, in which an entity like Grooveshark would obtain a mechanical license for the composition from the copyright holder of the composition (usually music publishers) in advance of its public availability, and then account and pay royalties for its use. This requires Grooveshark to know the songwriters, publishers, and splits of each work, which is not something that comes from the user uploads. It may be the case that their terms of use pass this responsibility to the uploader.
In short, however, you need sets of permission (sound recording and composition) to legally distribute music for download or interactive streaming.
While it is true that several countries have provisions in their copyright law for compulsory licensing, Grooveshark does not respect the terms of those licenses either. Without a compulsory license covering the country the user is in, and without a separate distribution license, Grooveshark is not authorized to distribute the content.
Can you point to a court ruling to back your statement that "Grooveshark does not respect the terms of those licenses either"?
I realize that there are a lot of lawsuits alleging that, but as far as I know they are all still pending and nothing of the sort has been established in court. That makes your statement premature, at best.
For Grooveshark to be in compliance, they would need to pay royalties and restrict distribution to places where those licenses apply. They don't, so they're not.
If that is true, it will get proven in court. I see no Pacer links, so I take it that none of that has been proven.
Personally, I put about as much stock those claims as SCO's claims that we should all write them $699 checks for Linux, but we'll find out whenever the courts rule.
Feel free to supply a Pacer link if the situation changes.
Universal must have forgotten to mention that Grooveshark has been trying to work with them for years. It's sad to see what a company does to cripple competition and innovation.
Apparently, they were not able to reach an agreement. Grooveshark should then stop distributing Universal's content and build their business with content partners with whom they can reach agreement. If that's insufficient, maybe they need to question their business model. No one should be coerced by a company into doing business under terms with which they disagree.
Grooveshark has removed every file that Universal requested them to remove through the appropriate channels. If they didn't they would've been shut down a long time ago. Grooveshark is completely safe in assuming that any remaining Universal content posted on their site is approved by Universal.
The New York court mentioned in the article these comments are attached to.
The MegaUpload case is entirely different. It is a federal criminal indictment and none of the allegations have yet been proven in court. Grooveshark has not been charged with anything of the sort. However, given that Hollywood has circulated a "hit list" of businesses they want to kill around Washington (one of which was MU, incidentally), I would not be overly surprised if it comes to that eventually.
