Vote to amend the DMCA and help music apps like Grooveshark stay alive

http://blog.grooveshark.com/post/2519052858/help-grooveshark-stay-alive

by trustfundbaby • 16 years ago

90 64 16 years ago

blog.grooveshark.com

citricsquid8• 16 years ago

> ...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... and a comment from an artist http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c2udg/iama_grooveshark... 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.

okalex• 16 years ago

Yeah, and I'd be willing to bet their lawyers don't even know how the back-end software works. Idiots.

cont4gious• 16 years ago

while you may not support the company and it's methods, the point they are trying to make is more honorable: making the dmca more complicated is pointless.

citricsquid8• 16 years ago

They're not against making it more complicated, they're for making it less complicated and desirable for them, unless I misread the post. They're for making it "less complicated" with the goal of it changing to covering what they do entirely so Universal etc. can't sue them any more.

"...respectfully submit this opinion in support of such adoption..." (from the letter they want users to send)

ique2• 16 years ago

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.

citricsquid8• 16 years ago

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?

cletus3• 16 years ago

> Doing what Spotify did isn't that easy.

Indeed.

The record industry's business model for the internet seems to be this: bleed dry any startup (or any company for that matter) who tries to innovate in this space by making them bleed through the nose in legal fees and lose money on ridiculous royalties until they run out of money.

michael_dorfman• 16 years ago

I disagree completely. Grooveshark is trying to build a business, and to do so without paying the artists is unconscionable. They need to have that in place before launching, and if they can't do that, they shouldn't have a business.

Cf Spotify, who did it the right (and difficult) way.

redthrowaway3• 16 years ago

I'm really not sure of the difference between Grooveshark and Youtube. Youtube had tons of copyright violations in its early days. It still has tons of copyright violations. the difference is, Youtube is mature and big enough that record labels are finally trying to work with, rather than against it.

I'm sure Grooveshark responds to DMCA requests, and that's all they're obliged to do.

tptacek5• 16 years ago

Youtube may have been slightly more tolerable to rightsholders because it generally hosted content that was materially inferior to the content consumers were buying from them; nobody used it as a substitute channel for commercial TV.

tptacek5• 16 years ago

I don't pay attention to this space (I just buy music, lots of it, from iTunes). Can you explain a bit more about how Grooveshark is abusing the DMCA?

(I don't doubt you, for what it's worth; I'm not at all sympathetic to arguments that there should be a "startup exemption" to copyright law).

steveklabnik4• 16 years ago

The DMCA's 'safe harbor' provision[1] allows service providers to not be held responsible for UGC if they respond in a timely manner to takedown requests.

criticalsquid is claiming that they're willfully ignoring pirated content that's being uploaded in order to turn a profit, and that this is an 'abuse' of the DMCA.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca#Title_II:_Online_Copyright...

rhn4• 16 years ago

Grooveshark is not equivalent to the Pirate Bay.

I use the service to stream music that is completely paid for and legal. Allowing other users to stream the music I uploaded seems to be no different in principle than playing it on a loudspeaker in a public space. Do I have the right to let other people listen to my music? This doesn't seem to be a copyright issue because no media has been actually copied. Grooveshark allows multiple users to listen to a single, legally owned copy. Grooveshark not only removes copyrighted material upon request, but also blocks uploading privileges for users who have violated the rules.

It is also not the case that they are acting selfishly and without regard for the industry. They are constantly taking steps to work with the major labels and have already closed a deal with EMI. Only Universal is suing them. They also have a profit sharing program with artists and do seem to care about finding new revenue streams for the music industry.

citricsquid8• 16 years ago

music being used is opt-out, revenue sharing is opt-in, that to me explains all about their ethos and how they run the service. It would not be at all difficult for them to go legitimate like Spotify with regards to technology and number of employees needed, but it would kill their business because they can't operate "legitimately" like Spotify, that's not their business model.

Also I would eat my hat if you have a license that allows you to redistribute music you "purchased", I'd be even more surprised if that license allowed you to grant streaming rights to a third party. The license terms for an itunes purchase are extremely limited.

parbo• 16 years ago

> than playing it on a loudspeaker in a public space

Read the licence on your cd's. You're NOT allowed to do this without explicit permission.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

It's hard for me to gather sympathy for an industry that fines people thousands of dollars per song.

http://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later

"The organization also targeted a fully disabled widow and veteran for downloading over 500 songs she already owned. The veteran’s mobility was limited; by downloading the songs onto her computer, she was able to access the music in the room in which she primarily resides. The RIAA offered to settle for $2,000, but only if the veteran provided a wealth of private information regarding her disability and her finances"

If Grooveshark has found a legal loophole that will let this disabled widow listen to her music in comfort, which she already purchased once, more power to them. Sign me up for as many petitions as I can legally sign.

cookiecaper2• 16 years ago

The really dangerous thing about exploiting the safe harbor provision like this, where you know that almost 100% of the content is infringing, is that it may ultimately provoke legislators (puppetted by the RIAA and other industry groups, of course) to modify the safe harbor provision in a way that is much less tolerant. That is the biggest reason what Grooveshark is doing is a no-no; they're going to spoil it for everyone else.

cletus3• 16 years ago

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.

citricsquid8• 16 years ago

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.

cma2• 16 years ago

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?

jbri2• 16 years ago

Keep in mind that content isn't created in a vacuum, and any content that an artist creates draws significantly from prior works.

alextgordon• 16 years ago

Because the massive corporations the artists are "appointing" are abusing their power. And neither the artists nor the consumers benefit from that.

cletus3• 16 years ago

It's naive and inaccurate to view copyright (or, in fact, any form of intellectual property) as an absolute right.

The state allows IP so that creators can be rewarded for their efforts in the hopes that this will allow various industries to flourish.

But such IP has limits. Patents can't be granted on certain things. For example, India does not allow patents on certain (all?) pharmaceuticals because it views low-cost health care for its citizens as being more in the national interest.

The US does not allow the patenting of nuclear technology.

Copyright has term limits, typically being X years after the death of the creator, although lobbying has steadily increased this limit (the so-called "Mickey Mouse" law).

The idea is that at some point copyrighted works will pass into the public domain because that's in the public's interest without needlessly enriching countless descendants of the creators.

You may not even be aware that there is such a thing as compulsory licensing [1], which allows you to pay statutory royalties and use something without permission for certain enumerated purposes.

Basically, copyright (or any IP for that matter) is not absolute. So we're simply haggling over what those limits are.

As an aside, the content creators themselves, apart from a very few, don't derive significant economic benefit from their works (particularly in the music industry). What you're really doing is simply protecting the intermediaries (being the record companies).

So arguing that they have the right is not only incorrect but it misses the point entirely: those rights exist by the grace of the state for the perceived (alleged?) national interest.

"Stifling innovation" is not really something worth arguing about (in the sense of having a right to do so). Any protected industry fighting the tide still loses in the end. The genie never goes back in the bottle.

Look at the millions spent on lobbying Congress to pass crazy laws, abuse of the judicial system for mass lawsuits, PR campaigns and so on. Have they stamped out piracy? No. Have they killed the idea of and the desire to download content over the Internet so we can all go back to buying CDs from the corner record store? Hardly.

The writing is on the wall. So legislation is important too obviously but here it's only an issue because the various industries are so intransigent to the inevitability of change.

[1] http://copyright.gov/circs/circ73.pdf

steveklabnik4• 16 years ago

> 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.

This is your axiom that others don't necessarily hold to be true, and the root of most IP disagreements.

CamperBob2• 16 years ago

If they ever did -- which they didn't -- they don't now. Deal with it, and get over it.

endlessvoid94• 16 years ago

Screw grooveshark. Give Rdio a shot (http://www.rdio.com)

omouse• 16 years ago

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

steveklabnik4• 16 years ago

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.

cookiecaper2• 16 years ago

The DMCA does some bad things, but without its safe harbor, I think it's doubtful YouTube or other early media-oriented user-generated content startups would have been able to exist; as far as I know, they would have only had fair use, and many infringing articles were obviously not fair use. IANAL.

Vote to amend the DMCA and help music apps like Grooveshark stay alive

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