
Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring - nitashatiku
http://betabeat.com/2012/10/rap-genius-andreessen-horowitz-ben-horowitz-internet-talmud/
======
numair
Sometimes people will make investments that truly, really, make no sense. In
order to appear smart, and to fit in with people they want to befriend (and
with whom they want to work or do deals), others will give you very long-
winded explanations of why you simply don't get it, this time is different,
etc. In the end, common sense prevails.

Most of the "contrarian" bets out there weren't really contrarian at all; you
simply didn't have enough information to understand what was going on. AH's
deal for Skype, for example -- you didn't have an understanding of the
psychology of dealmakers at eBay or Microsoft to know what would happen (and,
to be honest, I find it strange and distasteful that they are so proud of an
investment in which they screwed over all of the portfolio company's employees
so severely). Investment managers, all of them, have no imagination
whatsoever; a good deal is one in which you simply have a lot more information
than anyone else, and are thus able to engage in high-stakes information
arbitrage.

Sometimes investment managers forget they are just that, investment managers.
They want to be cool, they want to be the man in the ring, they want to be the
creative artist. That's where they screw up. Phil Falcone's disastrous bet on
LightSquared is an excellent example of a really smart guy shooting himself in
the balls in this manner.

RapGenius is one of these investments. And anyone who has been around the
block longer than a couple years is fully aware of it. Whether they are
willing to piss off AH and state this publicly, however, remains to be seen.
Very few people have ever truly called out KP on Segway, or Sequoia on Color,
for example. It pays to remain quiet.

As for me, I'm just hoping smart young kids will stop trying to analyze this
deal, and others like it, in the hopes of finding or "discovering" any sort of
logic in what they see. Don't waste your time. Don't base any of your own
ideas on what you see happening. Just focus on what you're doing, and ignore
all of this nonsense. Yeah, these guys raised $15 million. No, they aren't
role models; no, their business doesn't actually make sense within the context
of the deal; and no, you shouldn't try to emulate any of this crap.

Oh, and this article has it all wrong. It isn't at all difficult to get close
to people in the entertainment industry. They are all watching their
businesses getting disrupted by young technologists, so they have an obsession
with getting to know all of the young technologists they can. You used to
collect cars or jewelry -- now you collect smart kids with startups. I can't
wait for the next big rap song that has someone bragging about how "I got way
more startups than you."

Call me a hater, I don't care. I'm just being honest.

~~~
pemulis
I don't know about that. A universal annotation platform that reached its full
potential could basically eat the entire Internet. You can see hints of that
in the founders' public interviews, when they say they want all of Business
Insider's articles annotated on Rap Genius, for instance. The area is fraught
with copyright concerns, and who knows if Rap Genius is the company to pull it
off, but anything with that sort of growth potential is worth watching.

[Edit] Here's the most interesting quote from the Business Insider interview:

"Some books are in the public domain, like Moby Dick. Then there are some
books that aren't in the public domain. And when people start to annotate
these things, they create something new so people aren't just coming for the
book anymore. They come for the meaning."

That would be a huge expansion of fair use. If they can make this argument
successfully in court, everything ever written would suddenly be on the table,
and they would be well positioned to gobble it up.

~~~
johnrob
If they pulled that off it would mean the government effectively repealed the
notion of copyright (I could read any book I wanted to on rapgenius). I'm not
sure how likely that is.

~~~
pemulis
I doubt they could go so far as hosting full books, but they're going to find
out exactly where the line is.

~~~
001sky
_In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits
<<limited>> use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the
rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines,
criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and
scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation
of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing
test._

\-- They will need to overcome the spotify issue, presumably [1]

____________________

[1] The underlying issue is the model appears to be leveraging in-copyright
source material. The rights holders will argue its a for-profit platform for
re-publication, rather than a permitted use in a limited capacity. That is the
issue at hand for the market and/or courts to decide.

viz:

 _17 U.S.C. § 107

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. §
106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction
in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for
purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including
multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an
infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in
any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

    
    
      1     the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
      2     the nature of the copyrighted work;
      3     the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
      4     the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.**
     
    

_______

_However, there is reason to think a deal could be structured that benefits
all parties. The business has potential to add _real value_ , as it is a new
channel for adding new life into legacy content libraries (for example).

~~~
pemulis
One of the biggest questions will be how _transformative_ annotations are, and
whether that will give adequate protection if users upload large chunks of
copyrighted text. Google's use of thumbnails in image search wound up being
covered by fair use[1] for this reason, and a judge recently ruled that book
scanning was covered by fair use[2], as well. From the article:

> "The use to which the works in the HDL are put is transformative because the
> copies serve an entirely different purpose than the original works: the
> purpose is superior search capabilities rather than actual access to
> copyrighted material," wrote Judge Baer. "The search capabilities of the HDL
> have already given rise to new methods of academic inquiry such as text
> mining."

This might set precedent for a showdown over annotations that quote
extensively from the source text, since online annotation systems also "[give]
rise to new methods of academic inquiry."

The main point here is that laws about fair use are pretty vague, and new
technologies always shake things up. We don't know what is legal and what
isn't until it's put before a judge. In the case of Google's book scanning,
the court case took seven years, which shows just how tricky this area of law
can be.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/05/google-v-
perfect-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/05/google-v-
perfect-10-appeals-court-affirms-that-thumbnails-are-fair-use/)

[2] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-rules-
book-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-rules-book-
scanning-is-fair-use-suggesting-google-books-victory/)

~~~
001sky
_Over annotations that quote extensively from the source text_

The page they have up with the Topic Blog post, however, is just a 100%
reproduction with flyover notes. If You were to reprint the entire Harry
Potter series, and add notes to the margins, it might seem similar. I believe
that was already a subject of legal debate, though. Which might be precedent
[see notes 1,2].

That being said, I don't per-se disagree with any of the issues being raised
in your post. Also, I wouldn't rule out they will find a way to license
content. The issue is just at what price? That's the spotify connundrum, IMHO.

_______

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._and_J._K._Rowling_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._and_J._K._Rowling_v._RDR_Books)

 _Judge Patterson said that reference materials were generally useful to the
public but that in this case, Vander Ark went too far. He said that "while the
Lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works,
reference works that share the Lexicon's purpose of aiding readers of
literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled." He said he
ruled in Ms. Rowling's favor because the "Lexicon appropriates too much of
Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide."_

[2] Another example, might be you-tube. Who has its "annotations" listed below
each work of art. These are commonly referred to as "Comments". Some of the
comments can now even be time-inserted into flyovers, more similar to the
"flyover" type annotations currently up on the linked article. This is an
example where there is both licensing and unlicensed content as a hybrid
model.

~~~
pemulis
That's a great point about the Harry Potter Lexicon case. One thing that's
interesting about that ruling is how narrow it was, and the implication that
if the Lexicon contained more extensive commentary it would be legal.

Here's a question[1]. Let's say you took a work that was not in the public
domain but has been the subject of extensive academic study, like A Perfect
Day for Bananafish. Every line of that short story has been quoted in an
academic paper at this point, and each quote was fair use. What would happen
if you compiled all of those papers in a single website? That website would
contain the full text of A Perfect Day for Bananafish, but in a fragmented
form. Would it still be fair use?

Now let's say you pieced the quotes together like a jigsaw puzzle, and
included the extensive commentary in flyover annotations. Is it still fair
use? Probably not, would be my guess.

What if only half of the quotes were pieced together, and the rest was
summarized? What if the annotations of the summaries included quotes that fill
in the rest of the story? Where exactly is the line drawn?

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, I promise. I just find it
interesting. It's like we're facing the metaphysics of copyright, sort of a
Borges As IP Lawyer thing.

[1] Posed as a thought experiment, because I have no idea what the answer is.

~~~
001sky
_That website would contain the full text of A Perfect Day for Bananafish, but
in a fragmented form. Would it still be fair use?_

This is a good question. The Academic purpose, however, would seem to be very
useful as a criterion for Fair use (under point 1). The completeness of a
compendium, however, may create its own issues (under point 4).[1]

The closest commercial example, might be sampling of music. Perhaps the early
80's, with the emergence of DJ culture etc. Small pieces of extant art,
repurposed. This did not usually impact the original adversely. And the issue
is not that no new value is being created -- it most certainly is -- its just
that these things tend to end up in court. So, to avoid that, people settle or
license.

I would be open to hearing other arguments or cases, but I think that we would
need to start with something that has at its origin a commercial endeavor.
Another example that comes to Mind is Shep Farley, the Obama Hope poster. This
had a good amount of transformation on top of a sample of an image from a
photograph. But ended up being settled out of court. See eg:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey#Legal%20issues%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey#Legal%20issues%20with%20appropriation%20and%20fair%20use)

_______

[1] Eg if it rendered away in full the need to buy at least 1 extant copy to
study

~~~
pemulis
All good points. I want to make note of two other cases that seem relevant,
both related to Youtube. In 2010, a judge in the US threw out Viacom's lawsuit
against Youtube/Google, ruling that they were protected by the Digital
Millenium Copyright Act when users posted copyrighted material[1]. In Lenz vs.
Universal Music Corp.[2], a judge ruled that rightsholders have to consider if
a piece of content is protected by fair use before filing DMCA takedown
notices.

Let's say an annotation platform allowed users to post snippets of material as
freely as Youtube, along with annotations and commentary. And let's use A
Perfect Day for Bananafish again as the source of these snippets of text.
Imagine the following sequence.

Alice posts the first paragraph of the story, along with extensive notes. Bob
posts the second paragraph of the story, along with extensive notes. Carol
adds an annotation to the first paragraph with a link to the second paragraph.
Dave, Eve, and a few dozen other people jump in the mix, and pretty soon you
have the entirety of A Perfect Day for Bananafish on the annotation site, and
it's incredibly easy to read the paragraphs in full and in their original
order. Maybe the annotation site even has an algorithm that detects related
pieces of content, and creates the links automatically. (This is certainly the
case for Youtube.)

Where should the takedown notice be directed? Each person in the chain only
posted a small part of the work, and each post includes annotations and
commentary that would seem to grant it fair use protections. Taken as a whole,
though, the entire work has been recreated in full. Can the rightsholder
demand that the website remove links users make between posts? If so, under
what section of the DMCA? And what happens if the links are made
algorithmically?

Does a rightsholder have to issue takedown notices for each piece of the chain
individually? If the people who made the posts file appeals, does the
rightsholder have to take each and every one of them to court in separate
cases? And if they do, would they get demolished by counterclaims?

This isn't an idle question, when you think about the annotations for The
Great Gatsby[3] that the founders of Rap Genius have been mentioning in their
recent interviews. It seems like this sort of scenario is inevitable, and I
don't know if copyright holders have any way of actually dealing with it.

[1]
[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h_AfErLSM...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h_AfErLSMMGD417l8aR0CYib0aNQ)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp>.

[3] <http://rapgenius.com/search?q=the+great+gatsby>

Edit: It's important to keep in mind that, in this scenario, all of the
potentially infringing content is being posted by people with no commercial
motive, which makes it different from the Shepard Fairey case. The annotation
site itself is making money, but is protected by the DMCA under current
understanding of the law.

Edit x2: I love how deeply annotated this discussion of annotations is. Quick,
someone link to this thread from Rap Genius and close the loop!

~~~
001sky
[Just to play devil's advocate]

__________________

 _Each person in the chain only posted a small part of the work, and each post
includes annotations and commentary that would seem to grant it fair use
protections._

Is likely going to fail under (4). ie, it fails not at the annotation-of-a-
single-sample-in-isolation stage, but in the pre-meditated-compendium-cum-
reproduction for profit stage.

You Tube, for the most part is a different example. They have a reasonable
expectation that their content is intentionally UGC (original) or short-form
(sampled) or a montage (also sampled, with transformation). The are multiple
cases of ex-ante reasonable fair-use. So they can claim safe harbour.

Right now, ex-ante, that would be a tough argument for Rap Genius (given Harry
Potter example). Their protoype looks to a plain observer like re-purposing in
full the material (Annotated Linked Article), as a base upon which to add XYZ.
Just like the NYTimes has to license a photo to annotate a story (they cant
claim the story is annotating the photo=fair use), or else Getty images would
complain. etc.

[edit]

Also, I do think you need to start with the presumption of a for profit
business. If Wikipedia (or its foundation, etc) did a non-commercial version,
I think then the analysis would change, fairly. The combination of extant
materials/prototypes/early versioning, and their VC backing, etc. seem to put
them in a different game.

------
001sky
[http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/9292_10100103...](http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/9292_10100103162428464_506599619_n1.jpg)

This image > says bubble

------
pemulis
Let me start by saying that I like Rap Genius and use it pretty frequently.
They've done a great job creating an annotation system for rap lyrics, and I
think that it could scale well to other genres of music and certain kinds of
poetry. Their public personas may or may not hurt adoption outside of the hip-
hop community, but it's too early to tell[1].

I think a bigger challenge will be overcoming the natural constraints of the
format. If the goal is to become the Internet Talmud, they will need deeper
levels of commentary. You can see the strain when you look at the Rap Genius
page for Ben Horowitz's latest essay[2]. The annotations were split evenly
between useful links, jokes (which were decent, admittedly), and fairly
pointless "explanations" that just repeat what the essay said in a way that's
drier and harder to understand. A better set of annotations would consist of
comments from other domain experts either agreeing with Ben's conclusions and
adding more evidence, or disagreeing and explaining why[3]. There could also
be factual notes explaining the context (digging into the history of Opsware,
for instance). But Ben's essay is written in plain language and doesn't rely
on many external references, so the Spot the Allusion style of annotation
doesn't really work there.

To take a couple of examples from poetry, Spot the Allusion goes a long way
towards explaining poems like The Wasteland[4]. But how would Rap Genius go
about annotating William Carlos Williams? Well, we can actually look and see.
If you look at The Red Wheelbarrow[5], you can see the format breaking down.
There is no one true exegesis of a line from that poem, but Rap Genius isn't
built to handle the kind of commentary the poem needs.

I'm sure this has already crossed their minds, so I'm interested in seeing how
they deal with the problem.

\--

[1] For me, at least, it comes across as unnatural posturing and rubs me the
wrong way. That's just my gut reaction. I wouldn't be surprised if it
eventually led to a backlash within the rap community, too.

[2] <http://rapgenius.com/B-horowitz-making-yourself-a-ceo-lyrics>

[3] The comments wouldn't have to come from the experts themselves; amateurs
could add links to things they've written and said elsewhere.

[4] <http://rapgenius.com/Ts-eliot-the-waste-land-lyrics>

[5] [http://rapgenius.com/William-carlos-williams-the-red-
wheelba...](http://rapgenius.com/William-carlos-williams-the-red-wheelbarrow-
lyrics)

~~~
MattGrommes
> I'm sure this has already crossed their minds, so I'm interested in seeing
> how they deal with the problem.

This is the really interesting thing here. There are already song explanation
sites but they are pretty terrible. They've got a great interface and a
vision, now they have lots of resources to really step their game up and offer
deeper commentary, multiple commentaries, etc. I'd love to see some kind of
interface to show multiple readings of a poem; all the feminist viewpoints,
historical, all the different ways in to something really complex.

~~~
pemulis
Not to mention (potentially!) becoming the place to go to talk about articles
on the Internet. This all depends on the direction they take their technology.

------
hnwh
Congrats to the team and all, seriously...

but $15m investment in rap lyrics? When research on machines that could
eradicate cancer struggle for crumbs? <http://www.kanziuscancerresearch.org/>
WTF SV?

~~~
jmduke
Ugh.

Are you trying to argue that cancer research is inherently more valuable than
text annotation? Because that's, well, brash. Or are you arguing that cancer
research has a moral imperative that makes it inherently more valuable than
text annotation? Because that's naive.

Investors make investments. You invest in things that you expect to make the
most money.

~~~
moocow01
Lets see how they do on their investment before calling people naive and
brash.

Id suggest some "market research" on whether consumers want better cures for
cancer or rather text annotation for rap songs

~~~
mrkurt
There's no better market research than selling things.

------
flipside
Successful crowdsourcing is about identifying a community with passion that
can be channeled into useful work. Hats off to Rap Genius to nailing this for
annotations.

~~~
bksenior
Eh, not to be negative but their hardest work is still ahead. This reminds me
an awful lot of Quora early days. Hyper growth because they tapped into a
chatty community with both passion and technical knowledge. They even got some
fringe no-tech questions answered (both Quora and RG) in spaces that were
universally debated and ubiquitous.

Unfortunately when they (Quora) started to try to scale new verticals the
growth rate was significantly reduced and panic set in on both the leadership
front as well as the investment front. The act of debating is what drives
annotation, not the act of annotating itself.

I'm not saying that the can't do it, in-fact they seem like some ballin' ass
hustlers, but they have in fact not yet solidified a product to market fit
that can scale universally.

~~~
flipside
Rap Genius's stated plans are to be more like Stack Exchange than Quora. Each
vertical will have it's own separate community and site so things will be more
focused. As long as they're smart about picking verticals where they can get
past critical mass, they'll be fine.

Quora on the other hand has been pursuing the one-size-fits-all approach which
conflicts with the diversity that comes with increasing popularity.

------
tbenst
I strongly disagree with the negative sentiment expressed thus far in the
comments. Understand, that when articles are hosted on the rapgenius.com
domain, that the user base will mainly comment on allegories, make jokes, and
explain vernacular. However, Law Genius, Bible Genius and other areas they
expand to will be targeted to people working / following those domains: people
with expertise to add valuable commentary.

rapgenius.com (the site) proves the model of Rap Genius (the company). They
were able to attract a critical mass of domain experts to explain rap music.
Moreover, their SEO model works. Imagine if in a year a search for Brown v.
Board gives you results for Wikipedia and Law Genius. Wikipedia summarizes and
quotes. Law genius is a primary source that presumably will have annotations
from domain experts. If properly executed, the Rap Genius model will enable a
wider audience to deal with primary sources, leveraging crowd-sourced
commenting to enable a person with little domain knowledge to understand the
original document.

------
geori
There's a very simple explanation. Ben Horowitz invested in them because he
loves rap music. Perhaps these kids chose this specific niche (rap music
lyrics) in order to target a name partner in a top VC firm. Not a bad strategy
if you want to raise a shitload of money in order to win the annotated web.

------
aswanson
Crazy, I remember the old days of hip hop, the late 80s. Arguably the zenith
of the art form, the golden age. I hadn't the slightest clue back then that it
would be used to sell Chryslers, vodka, and that some of the veteran
practicioners would be chopping it up with Warren Buffet.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/warren-buffett-
jay-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/warren-buffett-jay-z-
diamond_n_1216458.html) [http://video.forbes.com/fvn/forbes400-10/jay-z-
buffett-forbe...](http://video.forbes.com/fvn/forbes400-10/jay-z-buffett-
forbes-success-giving)

It's come a long way, from basement/block parties to a cultural force.

------
kanamekun
What about when Rap Genius creates a Chrome/Firefox plugin which lets users
annotate the entire web?

All of a sudden, their valuation makes sense... that sort of data would be
hugely valuable for Google as part of Google Plus.

~~~
grimtrigger
Thats an entirely different product. And convincing people to install a plugin
is much harder than convincing them to visit your site.

------
citricsquid
Previous discussion from the investment announcement (14 days ago):
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4608511>

------
DaniFong
Azealia Banks' 212 is absolutely killer -- and it is, in fact, exactly the
track upon which I found out about Rap Genius. Kudos.

They should think about alternative branding for the other types of content,
though. Maybe "what's the rap?" or "rapsheet."

