

Vote to amend the DMCA and help music apps like Grooveshark stay alive - trustfundbaby
http://blog.grooveshark.com/post/2519052858/help-grooveshark-stay-alive

======
citricsquid
> ...help awesome music apps like Grooveshark stay alive...

haha, what? Grooveshark profit off streaming content they do not have the
rights to stream and abuse the DMCA to get away with it. As much as the music
industry is broken and as awesome as the DMCA is, Grooveshark is not in any
way shape or form an example of its true (or proper) purpose.

Grooveshark suck, they wilfully let users upload pirated material (if they
didn't want it to happen they could easily prevent it, how many labels just
mosey along and upload an artists entire library to a service without as much
as a phone call?) and then use the DMCA to justify it, "oh if you don't want
it here you can remove it!". No thanks, not supporting them, if they want to
be legit they can follow Spotify in their methods.

Edit: I'll find the grooveshark AMA from reddit where a bunch of employees
basically said "we don't know how we get away with it, that's for the
lawyers".

Edit: Here you go, here's the IAMA:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c2udg/iama_grooveshark...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c2udg/iama_grooveshark_developer_ama/)
and a comment from an artist
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c2udg/iama_grooveshark...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c2udg/iama_grooveshark_developer_ama/c0ptsuq)
who happens to want his music there, but what if he hadn't? They have made
money off it until he noticed, how on earth is that justifiable? Why didn't
they do what Spotify did? Maybe that's the sort of thing ycombinator likes,
just saying "whatever fuck you" to an industry that works differently to how
you'd like, but doesn't seem ethical to me...

"As many of you know, we are involved in a major lawsuit with Universal Music
over this exact issue." because you took their content and made money from it
without permission. "We’ve worked hard to stay legal so that we can continue
bringing you the music you love, and a few minutes of your time could go a
long way." we've worked hard to abuse the rights we have to make money from
stuff we really shouldn't be without permission. If someone came along and
made a website (think themeforest) and took your website designs and sold them
_until_ you said "oh hey, uh, can you stop selling my work?" would you support
that? So much contempt for the music industry makes easy for grooveshark to
persuade people to support them, when if it were an industry people using
grooveshark worked in they'd be super pissed.

~~~
ique
Doing what Spotify did isn't that easy. They had years of lawyer negotiations
before they got any label to sign up. They had to have some serious dough
before they could even broadcast the first tune. And that's with the swedish
STIM organization that pretty much lets you broadcast any music as long as you
pay per listener.

Grooveshark is trying to build a business. To build a business on music you
have to let people listen to music. Once they have working business-model (if
they ever get there) they can get to paying the artists.

I agree it's somewhat twisted, but I think that's what is necessary.

~~~
citricsquid
So it's okay to abuse the law while building a business because it's "hard" to
do it legitimately? You can't be serious? If it's too hard to do it
legitimately, you don't do it. Spotify have proven it's possible to do so what
on earth gives Grooveshark (or any company) the right to abuse the law and
make money from things they don't have the rights to? I don't get it...

I must be misunderstanding your argument because that makes no sense on earth
to me... couldn't the same lines be used to justify the BP problems ("when we
have enough money we'll follow safety regulations") or even drugs ("when we
have enough money we'll start a florist")? If you intentions to build a
legitimate business at the end, who cares what you do on the way?

~~~
ique
It's just the same old piracy arguments as always. Using a legal loophole is
not the same as selling drugs or not follow safety regulations.

Grooveshark is not doing anything illegal even if they might be "abusing the
law".

The fact remains that people want to consume music in a way that the music
industry does not allow.

If it werent for legal loopholes we wouldn't have YouTube and we wouldn't have
tourism in eastern Europe. The world isn't as black and white as you portray
it and Grooveshark provides an amazing service of much higher quality than
Spotify.

We can't all sit on our hands and do nothing because someone in the world
thinks we shouldn't. Innovation sometimes requires using loopholes.

~~~
carussell
"Using a legal loophole is not the same as selling drugs or not follow safety
regulations."

It's not even a legal loophole; it's straight-up, conscious infringement
complete with a wink and nudge.

------
cletus
This is really only one part of the problem. There are two far bigger
problems:

1\. Content owners are stifling innovation in the industry as they try and
bolster dying business models. This applies to content including music, TV,
movies and books; and

2\. Intellectual property, particularly in the US, is a complete mess (which
this is but a part of).

(2) is important but let's not lose sight of the fact that if the industries
themselves were forward thinking, this wouldn't even be a problem. (2) simply
allows them to be somewhat more of a problem than they would be otherwise.

~~~
citricsquid
Surely the most important fact to consider and the one that over-rides
everything else is that the person who created the content has the ultimate
decision on what it's used for, who is allowed to use it and how it's allowed
to be used. Surely if an artist creates a something it should always be their
right to decide what happens with that music, whether they want to sell it for
$0.99 a download or $1,000,000, or even give it away for free, who is anyone
but that artist (or someone they appoint) to decide? So what if they're
"stifling innovation"? It's their content to do with what they see fit.

~~~
cma
So now under this ultra-hardline view you can't even quote short snippits of
an article it in criticism of it, without first getting permission from the
author?

~~~
qq66
So having a site like Grooveshark host whole datacenters of illegal content
for anyone in the world to play at will is the same as quoting short snippets
of an article?

~~~
cma
I replied to a specific comment, not to the article in general.

------
omouse
The DMCA should be gotten rid of completely. Piece of shit Act is abused like
nobody's business.

~~~
steveklabnik
It _would_ be nice if we could keep something like the Safe Harbor Provision
around in some form, though. Don't get me wrong, I hate the DMCA too, but I do
like that provision.

------
endlessvoid94
Screw grooveshark. Give Rdio a shot (<http://www.rdio.com>)

