
Genius discovered Google was scraping their lyrics - vvoyer
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyrics-site-genius-com-accuses-google-of-lifting-its-content-11560677400
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filleokus
> Starting around 2016, Genius said, the company made a subtle change to some
> of the songs on its website, alternating the lyrics’ apostrophes between
> straight and curly single-quote marks in exactly the same sequence for every
> song.

> When the two types of apostrophes were converted to the dots and dashes used
> in Morse code, they spelled out the words “Red Handed.”

Clever. Reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street).

Can Google really be so stupid/careless to just scrape Genius directly? Their
explanation that they source these lyrics from someone, which in turn
apparently scrapes Genius seems more plausible to me.

~~~
aorav
It’s indeed a lot more likely that LyricFind, from whom Google buys the
content, scrapes the lyrics.

Why risk showing stolen content when you are already paying for them?

I understand that Genius focuses on Google though. That makes the story a lot
more interesting for publications like WSJ that have a bit of a anti-Google
campaign going on.

~~~
lowdose
WSJ had a focus on Google and NYTimes has Facebook in the crosshair.

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SomeOldThrow
Ironic that genius scraped other lyrics sites to bootstrap their business.
Cute analysis can’t hide the basic hypocrisy here.

~~~
butteroverflow
I feel it's pretty typical for some of these companies who like to complain
about other's unethical practices. Strongly reminds me of Crunchyroll.

~~~
sqldba
What's wrong with crunchyroll? I thought they were legitimate?

~~~
cr0sh
NOTE: The following may not be correct...

I might be wrong, but IIRC, CR used to be a fan-sub type of site; I don't
recall if they hosted stuff, or just linked to it. When I first found them,
though, that's how they seemed to be. But since then, I think they license all
of their content now or something like that. I may be totally wrong here, keep
that in mind...

~~~
croon
Reminds me of Spotify during the invite only service (2008ish?), when a lot of
albums still had scene release tags in their titles from the mp3 scraping.

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NikolaeVarius
1) Extremely recent Repost
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194952)
2) I find it extremely aggravating how needlessly accusatory the title is. It
presumes guilt when its still technically an accusation

~~~
verroq
Hacker news isn’t a criminal trial.

~~~
cameronbrown
The presumption of innocence is supposed to be a shared value of western
culture, of which the WSJ is part of. Unfortunately we all know the narrative
they're trying to frame here.

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aplusplus
Relevant history how they had to be forced into agreeing to pay royalties for
lyrics [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/business/media/rap-
genius...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/business/media/rap-genius-
website-agrees-to-license-with-music-publishers.html) (via @CaseyNewton
[https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1140266508318334977](https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1140266508318334977))

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orbifold
They don’t really own the lyrics in any case. In traditional publishing you
would have to pay the original artist to reproduce the lyrics, as you have to
do for poems and other lyrical works.

~~~
kerng
They were forced to pay royalties, so should others incl Google.

~~~
gfrff
Sure, but to whom? If your web site has data or works you uploaded but have no
particular rights to, you can't prevent someone else from reusing it if you've
given them access to download. Royalties are fine -- it depends on where you
draw the line on fair use -- but they should go to the artist or publisher,
not a random web site with no particular rights to the work who just happened
to aggregate it. That's not how IP works.

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pjc50
Anyone here remember lyrics.ch and their inevitable takedown?

The copyright situation is not complicated; lyric copyright resides with the
songwriter, and is usually sublicensed exclusively to the publisher. Like
Napsterisation, these were forced open by hugely widespread infringement, and
eventually a stalemate has been reached between publishers and the internet.

Like youtube, this will result in lots of weird anomalies where ownership is
disputed and the publishers claim all sorts of things they're not technically
entitled to.

Like a lot of other things, the publisher may never have made a clean official
copy of the lyrics available, so the actual compilation is done by third
parties - but that doesn't grant them a formal copyright in that work. (Unless
the weird sui generis right of databases comes into play)

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evolutionxbox
Do Genius actually own lyrics?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Pretty sure that's the main reason Genius will have difficulty pursuing this
case. Google isn't infringing their copyright, because they can't copyright
someone else's work, and I doubt the unique pattern of apostrophes is enough
of an infringement to claim Google stole, it merely proves the source of the
content was them.

It does, at the least, suggest Google is paying someone who less than
ethically sources their data though.

~~~
gfrff
Why do you say "less than ethically"?

Copyrights, patents, and trademarks have clear limits. An overly expansive
theory of copyright would be stifling to innovation and free expression.

It was sourced from someone who was liberal about taking legal risks, but I
have a hard time seeing what ethical rights were broken. Indeed, the opposite
theory is that if we don't exercise out rights, they go away and Google's
source is risking litigation to preserve our rights.

The rightsholder here are the artists and their proxies (publishers and
agents), not Genius. I wouldn't feel bad of they asked for a takedown or
royalties.

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cwtpk
I hope Google delists them so they go fuck themselves.

azlyrics is SO MUCH better. I'd rather see them at the top instead of Genius.

~~~
foozed
For pure lyrics viewing azlyrics might be better (I don't think so), but
Genius is so much more than just raw lyrics. I love the comments /
interpretations by other users.

