
Genius used watermarks to catch Google stealing its content - polytely
https://twitter.com/ASankin/status/1202032481135996928
======
dang
Discussed five months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194952)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201139)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20204625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20204625)

------
zozbot234
The Twitter thread states that Google has blamed unspecified "data partners"
for stealing the content. This is about the "knowledge-graph"-powered
infoboxes that sometimes appear on a SERP page. But which "data partner" would
be providing Google with lyrics data, and why didn't Google ban them from the
platform after they were caught stealing 3rd-party content previously?
(Wikidata is one example of a well-known source for Google's KG, but obviously
they don't provide any copywritten lyrics. There was a fun instance though
where Google would say someone who lived in Ancient Rome is still alive and
thousands-of-years old, because Wikidata had no indication that they were
dead. It was fixed there by putting in an "unknown value" death date.)

~~~
polytely
Yeah I really wish I had more insight into how this actually works, how many
people in google work on these info-boxes, where do they get their data from
(plundering existing sites it seems). It's weird to me that google is so
cheap. If they want the data so bad why don't they buy Genius or setup an
equivalent, or train some AI to extract song lyrics from songs. The amount of
brainpower working at google is huge but the output is often quite
disappointing, I guess the scale at which they operate is impressive but the
results not so much.

------
rfwhyte
I find it a bit disingenuous to call song lyrics Genius' "content." If
anything the content here belongs to the artists who actually wrote these
songs, not some website that puts a text version of songs other people wrote
on the internet.

Also likely indefensible from any kind of legal standpoint as Genius' can't
possibly claim any kind of copyright on song lyrics unless they've licensed
these lyrics from their original authors.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The following tweets do say Genius does have a licensing deal with the
publishers.

------
theflyinghorse
Unbelievable! I've always held Google in high regard but this is beyond slimy.

~~~
NullPrefix
Can't tell if sarcasm or not.

