
Genius sues Google and LyricFind over allegedly stolen song lyrics - msaltz
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20993621/genius-google-lawsuit-stolen-lyrics-lyricfind
======
cthalupa
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how Genius has any chance if winning this
lawsuit.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is this:

1) Genius does not hold a copyright on any of these lyrics

2) Genius licenses these lyrics, and that license is not an exclusive one.

3) Google does not hold a copyright on these lyrics

4) Google licenses these lyrics, and that license is not an exclusive one.

5) "Watermarking" lyrics is not enough to get a derivative work copyright

As both parties have non-exclusive licenses and neither own the copyright, I
really don't see how Genius has any chance of winning this case. As best as I
can tell, it would be perfectly legal for Google to purposefully and
specifically copy the lyrics from Genius.

Edit: Reading through the filing, they seem to basically be suing them for
violating their website's TOS and some 'unfair practices' laws local to
California and New York. I am unsure of how legally binding TOS are for
websites in general, and whether or not being able to view lyrics without ever
viewing the TOS effects things, etc.

~~~
ehmorris
This lawsuit isn't about copyright. It's about violating Genius' TOS and
anticompetitive behavior.

~~~
akersten
Google never signed a contract with Genius? How would violating a terms of use
they were never subject to be illegal?

~~~
McDyver
Would it be ok to scrape google's results and distribute them, while saying
you don't accept their TOS? It's a bit like not paying taxes and saying you
didn't sign up for that. Who knows, maybe that's the way forward

~~~
inetknght
I am not a lawyer. But I think this was settled with the LinkedIn lawsuit.
Yes, it's perfectly fine to scrape public facing information.

------
ehmorris
Better source: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/genius-media-sues-google-
claimi...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/genius-media-sues-google-claiming-
anticompetitive-use-of-song-lyrics-11575391257)

This is different from the story that came out this past summer, about Genius
watermarking lyrics.

1\. There’s a new watermark. After the first watermark got exposed, Google
said they’d investigate, but Genius has caught them again.

2\. Genius has filed an actual lawsuit.

Disclosure: I used to work at Genius

Also, a direct link to the legal complaint, which is a surprisingly fun read:
[https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docInde...](https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=3E0o8kQz4X3cWcbbid67wQ==&mod=article_inline)

~~~
crazypyro
So Genius gets people to transcribe the lyrics mostly for free and then sells
them to other companies for a lot of money.

Google found someone to provide lyrics and that company allegedly scraps
Genius for cheaper than Genius charges for direct access.

So this is basically a continuation of the on-going question of whether
scraping is legal? That's my basic understanding from reading the complaint.
I'm also not sure why Google is at fault, except for a bunch of ranting about
the Information Box stealing their business.

Guess there's also the attempt to try to enforce Genius' ToS...

~~~
edmundsauto
It looks more like a ToS claim; they aren't claiming to own the lyrics. They
aren't objecting to Google scraping their site for the index -- they object to
Google/LyricFind scraping the lyrics, removing hidden watermarks to prove
provenance, and displaying the lyrics in whole on SERPs, without attribution.

The removal of watermarks, after repeated contacts and the WSJ article,
indicate that Google/LyricFind acted in bad faith.

The best part is they encoded the watermark so that Watermark #1 spelled out
REDHANDED and Watermark #2 spelled out GENIUS, using a pretty clever method
that survived multiple data transfers/transformations.

~~~
chipperyman573
If the watermarks are just text oddities, wouldn't it make sense that they
were removed during some sanitization process?

~~~
edmundsauto
They weren't removed at first - that's how Genius confirmed the lyrics were
being lifted. They were only removed after the WSJ article.

Then Genius embedded a second watermarking scheme, and -- drumroll! --
Google's results only removed one of the two sets (the ones they knew about).

~~~
gpm
Ok - but what's the issue with that?

I don't think anyone is debating at this whether or not Google was in fact
copying the genius lyrics, just whether or not that was in fact breach of
contract or otherwise a violation of the law.

Changing fake apostrophes to real apostrophes after they found out their (in
their mind legally acquired) data had them is just plain sensible, fake
apostrophes break functionality like search for users (both ctrl-f and
possibly more sophisticated search engines like google.com). They add edge
cases to any software that wants to use them for text to speech or whatever.
And so on. Literally the only use case fake apostrophes don't impact by at
least adding an edge case is humans reading song lyrics that they have already
found.

~~~
Shakahs
The issue is intent, did they remove the watermark as a matter of input
sanitization, or did they remove it to conceal their behavior. Genius claims
it was the latter.

------
taejavu
Are sites like Genius still in a legal grey area concerning copyright? As in,
the lyrics are unauthorised reproductions of copyrighted works.

(I’m aware this lawsuit isn’t about copyright, I’m just curious)

~~~
exhilaration
From TFA:

 _Genius doesn’t have a copyright claim because it doesn’t own the lyrics.
Both Genius and Google hold licenses from music publishers to print song
lyrics, which makes the lawsuit trickier, focusing more on how Google and its
partners got the lyrics to begin with._

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20993621/genius-google-
la...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20993621/genius-google-lawsuit-
stolen-lyrics-lyricfind)

~~~
taejavu
That makes sense, but that license surely wouldn’t include independent artists
that do not have a publisher. Then again, independent artists most likely do
not have the means to take legal action, or at least the outcome wouldn’t
justify the expense, so I suppose that point is moot.

~~~
toast0
Music licensing (at least in the US) often involves blanket licenses that
cover all music, without requiring consent or knowledge of the
rightsholder(s). There's usually a designated administrative company, such as
ASCAP, that royalties are paid to in absence of more specific agreements, and
they divy them up. In this arrangement, for covered uses, generally
rightsholders have no claim against the company, if it followed the forms,
they would need to take it up with the administrative agency.

------
dijit
I’ve noticed this actually. Sometimes I look up lyrics only to see them
incorrectly transliterated on Google’s search box drop down. So I click
through to genius and see the same error.

But other sites have a different transliteration.

I thought it was just them exposing the content from genius, the same way it
works for weather.

------
paulpauper
Google is notoriously hard to sue. they don't settle easily or readily

Genius was caught many years doing blackhat SEO that would have gotten smaller
sites permanently banned, but thanks to google's kindness was forgiven.

~~~
Dwolb
“Thanks to Google’s kindness”

The business isn’t kind - it’s practical. This should read “thanks to a
positive transaction value Genius was forgiven”

~~~
paulpauper
how is letting a tiny company game its algos and get away with it help
google's hundred-billion dollar search business

~~~
OnlineGladiator
Because Genius was popular enough it would piss off users if their results
didn't show up on the first page.

Clearly Google seems to agree that Genius has the best results based on the
efforts they've taken to steal and even hide the fact that they're stealing
from Genius.

Just to be clear, Genius may be small compared to Google, but they are the de
facto source of lyrics for music. Can you imagine if users suddenly no longer
found Google useful for figuring out lyrics? It would genuinely cost them
users switching to Bing, DuckDuckGo, etcetera.

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wilde
I love dunking on Google, but isn’t this vacated due to the LinkedIn scraping
case?

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/10/20859399/linkedin-hiq-
dat...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/10/20859399/linkedin-hiq-data-
scraping-cfaa-lawsuit-ninth-circuit-ruling)

------
clSTophEjUdRanu
>Genius doesn’t have a copyright claim because it doesn’t own the lyrics. Both
Genius and Google hold licenses from music publishers to print song lyrics

Genius makes the lyrics publicly available on the web and there was just a
good outcome on web scraping public data. I can't imagine Genius has a case
here but IANAL.

~~~
FireBeyond
If I make content publicly available on my website, should you be able to
scrape it wholesale, AND commercialize it, AND tell me to piss off when I
raise a complaint?

If so, why?

~~~
toast0
"Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340
(1991), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States establishing
that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be
protected by copyright"

Given that the lyrics aren't owned by Genius, and that Google has a license to
them, there's no reasonable claim of copyright violation.

There have been several cases lately that seem to suggest there's no problem
with using public data either.

If you don't like it, don't make the data public. Require a login, and then
you might have a case.

~~~
FireBeyond
“Phantom streets”.

Come up with the same map as me based on research and first principles, you’re
safe.

Plagiarize my effort and in the process capture the fake/non existent streets
I -added- to the map to show that you were plagiarizing my work? Then
absolutely I have a case against you.

Come up with the same lyrics for a song as I do based on listening to it?
Fine.

Cutting and pasting my content, including unnecessary embedded Unicode spaces
used to watermark my content, my transcription (see my other comment on this),
absolutely problematic and actionable.

~~~
cthalupa
Perhaps this varies from country to country, but for the US, doesn't Nester's
Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co. explicitly say that you cannot copyright
these fake streets and someone creating a map that includes them would not be
grounds alone for infringement?

------
criddell
If Google can show that the lifted lyrics come from LyricFind, does that get
them off the hook?

~~~
ehmorris
They do have an indemnity agreement with LyricFind, but they're kinda
implicated here because they knew about the issue for so long and did nothing.

~~~
FireBeyond
And quite possibly -told- LyricFind about the watermarking method Genius was
using so that LyricFind could strip it and continue unabated.

------
Deimorz
Mike Masnick's thoughts about how dumb this lawsuit is:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191204/10251043506/it-
do...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191204/10251043506/it-doesnt-take-
genius-to-recognize-how-dumb-genius-lawsuit-against-google-is-over-stolen-
lyrics.shtml)

~~~
FireBeyond
Many of Mike Masnick's arguments about how "dumb" this is are ... entirely
lacking.

When Genius points out that - after being told what their apostrophe watermark
scheme was - LyricFind / Google started stripping that watermark while still
copying things wholesale, Mike says:

> Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Which is obstinate to say the least. Mike tries to paint the picture that it's
entirely okay, because they removed the mechanism to detect copying, while
still copying. Poor LyricFind.

Poor LyricFind, who, while covering their tracks, -weren't- deleting the
_second_ watermark, that Genius didn't tell them about, thus showing that this
was an entirely wilful, knowing act.

All of his arguments complain/whine about "how dare they, they have no
copyright, of course, because they did nothing!", wilfully ignoring that
Genius, and any other sites who _actively license_ the ability to reproduce
lyrics these days have to generate their own lyrics from first principles -
the days of liner notes/lyrics are largely gone.

Mike's arguments for the most part consisted of calling Genius "idiots" for
failing his tests as to what the law is, often wrong, or willfully ostrich-
like to anything that might derail his diatribe.

~~~
criddell
The fact that Genius has to do work to get the lyrics doesn't really matter
from a copyright point of view, does it?

~~~
FireBeyond
You licensed the lyrics, which the rights holder didn’t supply. You didn’t
license a third party’s (often subjective) interpretation of them.

~~~
criddell
The third party's interpretation isn't protected, AFAIK.

~~~
true_religion
It can be. Without a license from the original artist, Genius’ derivative work
would be unusable by them, but the derivative work still receives its own
copyright.

~~~
criddell
What Genius did (tweaked punctuation) isn't covered by copyright. This case is
about the scrapers violating Genius' website terms of service.

------
organicfigs
On a side note, I met the founder of Genius (then called RapGenius) at the
first hackMIT. It's been 7 years but I still remember him insulting multiple
people and being embarrassingly immature.

~~~
yowlingcat
Do you mean this one [1]?

[https://www.vox.com/2014/5/26/11627246/rap-genius-co-
founder...](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/26/11627246/rap-genius-co-founder-
moghadam-fired)

~~~
organicfigs
Unfortunately, that article isn't surprising at all

------
dang
Url changed from [https://futurism.com/the-byte/genius-sues-google-
allegedly-s...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/genius-sues-google-allegedly-
stealing-music-lyrics), which points to this.

------
fierarul
So Google licenses lyrics that don't exist in text format. How does that work?

Seems like Google has a license to _listen_ to the audio, _produce_ the text
lyrics and then use these lyrics.

Since Google is indirectly stealing these lyrics, their license is not valid.

~~~
cthalupa
Do you have a source for this interpretation of their license?

It does not match the interpretation of anyone else out there that I am aware
of - it is not even an argument that Genius is making in their lawsuit.

~~~
fierarul
If two parties get gold mining rights in a river can one party steal gold from
the other since they both have rights to the gold in the same river?

Certainly Genius is reading these threads and get new ideas.

~~~
cthalupa
You're trying to conflate physical items with intellectual property here -
that isn't how the legal system works in the US or in any country that I am
aware of.

Genius has no ownership over the lyrics - they are not their intellectual
property. When you get a license to mineral rights, whatever you extract is
your property and you have ownership of it. That isn't the case here, and as
such, it's a nonsensical analogy.

~~~
fierarul
OK, maybe my gold example was not so good. But in what way is Google licensed?
The lyrics in text format do not exist. So the 'rights owners' license
something that provably does not exist and they do not have? That is valid
how? Which means the license covers a process Google is allowed to apply to
the recording. Since Google gets stolen lyrics I doubt their license covers
that.

