7 ms·

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

90 points by trustfundbaby 16y ago

citricsquid 16y 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_developer_ama/ 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_developer_ama/c0ptsuq 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 16y ago
  Yeah, and I'd be willing to bet their lawyers don't even know how the back-end software works. Idiots.
- cont4gious 16y 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.
  - citricsquid 16y 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)
    - gloob 16y ago
      Your complaint against them, in your original post, is a legal one. They are advising that action be taken such that they are no longer in such a precarious legal position, which would seem to appease the complaint you made. Absent other reasons to support your position (a few of the many potential reasons: "Copyright is a moral right", "I support the status quo against all comers"), I'm not certain what your argument is. Edit: To further sate my curiosity: you have repeatedly said that Grooveshark "abuse" the law, which strikes me as a strange choice of word. Do you mean "break"? Or do you mean "they don't break the law, but I believe that what they do should be illegal"? Or something else entirely?
      - citricsquid 16y ago
        by abuse I mean they take a piece of law (DMCA) and then manipulate it. I absolutely suck at explaining things, so forgive me if it makes no sense, but imagine your parents said to you when you're a child "You can't watch TV after 9PM on a school night" and then at 1am you watch TV and say "but mom, it's not a school night, it's the morning!". The way Grooveshark do it is by having users upload music, if they wanted to be legitimate they could easily require anyone uploading music to call and verify their identity (how many record labels are there out there?) but instead they have users upload and that covers them under the DMCA, so they can then make money off those uploads and when they're notified it's there (which they of course know it is, that's their entire business!) they say "oh hey, so sorry! We thought it was you uploading, sneaky users eh! We'll delete it now for you" when if they had wanted to make sure the rights owner was uploading in the first place, they could have done. I have a copy of Rihannas latest album here, if I wanted to upload it to Grooveshark right now for other users to listen to I could, they could prevent that if they wanted but they don't, they use the DMCA to build their business off those uploads. I hope that explains it, if not I guess I'll just have to give up :( I guess a simple way of explaining it is that without the DMCA, grooveshark could not exist. Edit: Actually I thought of a better way to explain it, one that I think matches the idea of a hacker more. They had a problem: they needed to stream music to users and cover costs without having the rights to stream that music, they realised to be able to they'd need money and they didn't have it. So they found a solution: DMCA, that would cover what they wanted to do as long as they responded to labels who didn't want their music and they had deniabilty when it came to how the copyrighted content ended up on their service: users uploading. So they had a problem ("how to stream music that requires rights to stream without those rights") and they found a solution ("dmca") and used the requirements of the dmca ("users uploading and removing when requested") to shape their service. Does that explain it better?
cletus 16y 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.
- citricsquid 16y 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.
  - cma 16y 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?
    - qq66 16y ago
      So having a site like Grooveshark host whole datacenters of illegal content for anyone in the world to play at will is the same as quoting short snippets of an article?
      - cma 16y ago
        I replied to a specific comment, not to the article in general.
endlessvoid94 16y ago
Screw grooveshark. Give Rdio a shot (http://www.rdio.com http://www.rdio.com)
omouse 16y ago
The DMCA should be gotten rid of completely. Piece of shit Act is abused like nobody's business.
- steveklabnik 16y 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.
- cookiecaper 16y 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.

90 points by trustfundbaby 16y 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_developer_ama/ 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_developer_ama/c0ptsuq 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 16y ago
Yeah, and I'd be willing to bet their lawyers don't even know how the back-end software works. Idiots.
cont4gious 16y 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.
- citricsquid 16y 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)
  - gloob 16y ago
    Your complaint against them, in your original post, is a legal one. They are advising that action be taken such that they are no longer in such a precarious legal position, which would seem to appease the complaint you made. Absent other reasons to support your position (a few of the many potential reasons: "Copyright is a moral right", "I support the status quo against all comers"), I'm not certain what your argument is. Edit: To further sate my curiosity: you have repeatedly said that Grooveshark "abuse" the law, which strikes me as a strange choice of word. Do you mean "break"? Or do you mean "they don't break the law, but I believe that what they do should be illegal"? Or something else entirely?
    - citricsquid 16y ago
      by abuse I mean they take a piece of law (DMCA) and then manipulate it. I absolutely suck at explaining things, so forgive me if it makes no sense, but imagine your parents said to you when you're a child "You can't watch TV after 9PM on a school night" and then at 1am you watch TV and say "but mom, it's not a school night, it's the morning!". The way Grooveshark do it is by having users upload music, if they wanted to be legitimate they could easily require anyone uploading music to call and verify their identity (how many record labels are there out there?) but instead they have users upload and that covers them under the DMCA, so they can then make money off those uploads and when they're notified it's there (which they of course know it is, that's their entire business!) they say "oh hey, so sorry! We thought it was you uploading, sneaky users eh! We'll delete it now for you" when if they had wanted to make sure the rights owner was uploading in the first place, they could have done. I have a copy of Rihannas latest album here, if I wanted to upload it to Grooveshark right now for other users to listen to I could, they could prevent that if they wanted but they don't, they use the DMCA to build their business off those uploads. I hope that explains it, if not I guess I'll just have to give up :( I guess a simple way of explaining it is that without the DMCA, grooveshark could not exist. Edit: Actually I thought of a better way to explain it, one that I think matches the idea of a hacker more. They had a problem: they needed to stream music to users and cover costs without having the rights to stream that music, they realised to be able to they'd need money and they didn't have it. So they found a solution: DMCA, that would cover what they wanted to do as long as they responded to labels who didn't want their music and they had deniabilty when it came to how the copyrighted content ended up on their service: users uploading. So they had a problem ("how to stream music that requires rights to stream without those rights") and they found a solution ("dmca") and used the requirements of the dmca ("users uploading and removing when requested") to shape their service. Does that explain it better?

cletus 16y 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.

citricsquid 16y 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.
- cma 16y 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?
  - qq66 16y ago
    So having a site like Grooveshark host whole datacenters of illegal content for anyone in the world to play at will is the same as quoting short snippets of an article?
    - cma 16y ago
      I replied to a specific comment, not to the article in general.

endlessvoid94 16y ago

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

omouse 16y ago

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

steveklabnik 16y 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.
cookiecaper 16y 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.