

Judge Rules Against Grooveshark in Copyright Infringement Case - bdb
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/business/media/judge-rules-against-grooveshark-in-copyright-infringement-case.html

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siliconc0w
The reality is more and more services will switch to the 'client-side-
encrypted' model and then you're left trying to stomp out easily replicated
and anonymously sharable lists of pointers to legally stored encrypted blobs.
Good luck with that.

From an ideological point it seems hard to rationalize. We pretty much have an
obligation to fix copyright law, build a digital Alexandria, and give it to
the world. For Free. All art, movies, music, books, educational materials,
everything. Free. We can figure out another way to reward creators without
creating artificial marketplaces that demand most go without so the few left
have reason to spend.

If we're going to fuck up the climate for later generations - I think we can
manage to at least figure this out. It's pretty low hanging fruit from a
technical perspective.

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nemothekid
>We can figure out another way to reward creators without creating artificial
marketplaces that demand most go without so the few left have reason to spend.

I'd argue that we have already. Creating media is expensive, and if you take
away the ability for people to monetize media you get rid of a segment who
create media for the sake of media. The only people left are those wealthy
enough to do so, and are no doubt looking to protect/expand their own profit
centers.

The extreme view of this is that now Tarantino can only make his movies as
long as he reminds everyone that "he gets the good stuff, Folgers® Brand
Coffee, the best part of waking up."

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Xylakant
> Creating media is expensive

Creating media has never been as cheap as today. My ex roommate has been
playing in bands ever since I got to know him. First recordings were done on 6
track tape recorder an replicated to cassette. Then the first, big towers were
capable of recording a handful of tracks with low quality. Now, all he needs
to go and make solid recordings is a laptop and a semi-professional external
sound card. The distribution costs drop to zero on the internet.

The equipment he uses to record is much cheaper than the room they rent for
the band and the instruments.

People that create media for the sake of creating media can do so at an
unprecedented scale. The issue is with those that want to make a living of
being a media creator.

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easytiger
I think people who are happy to acquiese to the music recording industry pleas
for pity are failing to observe a simple and normal economic event wherein the
value of what is being sold is not what it was 10 years. Industries change and
then they die all the time. There is little novel about music anymore compared
with the joy once brought in a less media entrenched time by the simple
pleasures of buying and listening to an album, say 20 years ago.

Your point can roughly be paraphrased as the commoditization of media creation
processes.

Schumpeter's gale:

""process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic
structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly
creating a new one.""

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munchbunny
It's interesting (at least to me) to think that without the likes of Napster,
LimeWire, Kazaa, Grooveshark, Pandora, etc. we would not have gotten to a
place where the music industry is willing to play ball at Spotify's level.
It's too bad that there was a lot of collateral damage in the process.

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tantalor
The iTunes Store deserves much of the credit for that shift.

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Animats
True. That, not the iPod, was Apple's real weapon. Apple was able to bring
that off because for a reason that's not well understood. Remember, Apple was
nowhere in consumer electronics at the time. There were bigger companies with
MP3 players. But Apple had an edge.

Hollywood, which includes the music industry, is very hierarchical. Steve Jobs
was not only CEO of Apple. He was also CEO of Pixar. As the head of a major
movie studio, he outranked all music executives. He could deal with them as
their superior. That got him in the door.

iTunes is now the largest music vendor in the world.

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e12e
Lets not forget that Sony Music/Entertainment kept hobbling Sony Tech. Which
supposedly is why Sony had a few brilliant mp3 players, and then ... nothing.
For a few years.

It's ludicrous -- the company had the music rights, movie rights, patents and
technical know-how -- but just refused accepting the way the trends were
going.

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teachingaway
WARNING - the Grooveshark founders were __Personally __liable for the
copyright infringement. This means its not just the Grooveshark company that
has to pay the fine, but cofounders Tarantino and Greenberg will need to pay
out of their own pockets.

From Pages 54-56 of the decision:

> Here, defendants Tarantino and Greenberg satisfy the criteria for corporate
> officer liability. Tarantino and Greenberg are the co-founders of Escape.
> Tarantino is the Chief Executive Officer and Greenberg is the Chief
> Technology Officer. Together, Tarantino and Greenberg manage all aspects of
> Escape’s business. They both directed the infringements at issue in the
> present litigation by: (1) creating a business model that was based upon the
> unlicensed sharing of copyright protected material; (2) sending written
> instructions to the entire company requiring employees to operate “seeding
> points” so that they could launch the Grooveshark P2P Network; (3) creating
> the Central Music Library and directing employees to upload files to the
> Library; (4) deciding to launch the Grooveshark Lite streaming service and
> instructing Escape employees to upload files for that service; and (5)
> personally uploading copyrighted protected material, Moreover, they both
> have a substantial equity interest in Groovershark and thus, directly
> benefit from the infringing activity.

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ztratar
I never really agreed with the whole "ignore copyright law" approach. I think
tech companies in our increasingly examined world need to stand for
righteousness and integrity.

The power of tech and ramping up of robotics is going to bring the pressure of
public opinion on us all very soon -- we need to be on the right side of the
fence, and so, although I enjoyed the technical capabilities and innovation
from Grooveshark, I'm glad they've lost the war.

The founders are still smart and will be able to continue to do great things.
They've proven their ability to build/design a functioning, beautiful product
and amass an very large audience. Excited to see what is next...

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nickonline
> I'm glad they've lost the war

I don't understand this statement, that wasn't the end of the 'war',
Grooveshark lost a battle, just like Napster and Limewire were not ends of the
'war'.

Ultimately (as another poster has said) the reason we can get nice things like
the Spotify, iTunes and Amazon music services is because people were fighting
these battles and winning until the law smacked them down.

I think you should reflect on the first paragraph further, services such as
Grooveshark and Uber are skirting the law and users prefer these methods for a
reason. Without these disruptions maybe we'd have to buy albums on a USB thumb
drive rather than download them over the net.

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Terr_
Whelp, time to export my playlist-metadata so I can find the songs again:

[http://groovebackup.com/](http://groovebackup.com/)

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vorg
Content, like code, should be free!

We also need a judge somewhere to rule against the shark who hijacked the
Groovy codebase and turned it all into something it wasn't originally intended
to be - surely that's a copyright infringement. Instead of a specified
language with many open source implementations and much documentation as per
its creator's vision, it's all being controlled by one corporate with hardly
anyone contributing. The project person who makes the announcements is now
using his own personal blog instead of the public mailing list to announce new
versions, and is trying to replace the open communication channels by
soliciting for subscribers to a personal mailout that mostly contains links to
tweets.

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talmand
Content, like code, should be priced at the level the creator wishes it to be
while considering the price the market is willing to pay.

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vorg
> [...] while considering the price the market is willing to pay

What about considering the cost of enforcement? Content "creators" in
Hollywood and CBS et al offload their enforcement costs to U.S. government
agencies which are funded by tax-payers, not those "creators" (though in fact
those "creators" are really content _copiers_ most of the time).

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fragsworth
I don't see how the judge could rule against Grooveshark. How is Grooveshark
any different from Youtube, for instance?

The only difference is that the users, on their own, upload much less of their
own content on Grooveshark than they do on Youtube. The users are more prone
to upload illegal work.

But that seems like an arbitrary reason to make this ruling. It's unfortunate
that the law can be so vague and ill-defined, and arbitrarily interpreted,
usually to the benefit of larger corporations.

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wmf
Did you see the part of the article where _employees of Grooveshark_ uploaded
infringing music?

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flavor8
Youtube weren't significantly better:

[https://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/viacom-google-youtube-
founders...](https://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/viacom-google-youtube-founders-
willfully-ignored-infringement/)

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ue_
When will we stop hobbling ourselves with copyright? It's used to harass
people or guarantee profits (or both; the evidence that copyright infringement
has an effect on profits is debatable). The failed business models of
publishers is not my problem.

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diafygi
Awww, I loved their Programming broadcast. I originally went to groovshark
after turntable.fm shut down. Now where should I go for a programmer radio
stream?

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retroencabulato
Why do you link to websites with a paywall?

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bdb
Because the content is of high quality.

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jediforce
Digital Music News has a copy of the decision. Fascinating stuff:
[http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/u...](http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/umg_escape_140929Decision.pdf?638cab)

Also, Paul Resnikoff's take on the story:
[http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/29/breakin...](http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/29/breaking-
grooveshark-found-guilty-massive-copyright-infringement)

