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> ...help awesome music apps like Grooveshark stay alive... haha, what? Grooveshark profit off streaming content they do not have the rights to stream and abus

> ...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?
ique 16y 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.
- citricsquid 16y 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?
  - ique 16y ago
    It's just the same old piracy arguments as always. Using a legal loophole is not the same as selling drugs or not follow safety regulations. Grooveshark is not doing anything illegal even if they might be "abusing the law". The fact remains that people want to consume music in a way that the music industry does not allow. If it werent for legal loopholes we wouldn't have YouTube and we wouldn't have tourism in eastern Europe. The world isn't as black and white as you portray it and Grooveshark provides an amazing service of much higher quality than Spotify. We can't all sit on our hands and do nothing because someone in the world thinks we shouldn't. Innovation sometimes requires using loopholes.
    - tptacek 16y ago
redthrowaway 16y 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.
- tptacek 16y 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.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    Sure they did. I have many friends who would play music through Youtube or watch music videos on there. A lot of them discovered new music on Youtube, then bought it off iTunes. Mind you, that's not an argument for piracy, it's an argument for the free, easy distribution of music.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      I don't know what your comment has to do with my comment. My point is that Grooveshark is a closer substitute for the sanctioned product it overlaps with than Youtube was with the product it overlapped --- especially in the early days, when copyright was an issue for Youtube.
      - redthrowaway 16y ago
        And I agree. I was just saying that people did, in fact, use youtube as a substitute for licensed distribution channels.
      - res0nat0r 16y ago
        I'd have to agree with this also. It's called YOUtube for a reason, it was created for YOU to upload videos of YOUR content. If Grooveshark was called YOUshark or something in the beginning, and stated: Upload YOUR bands recordings and get exposure! This would be a different thing. Back when Grooveshark was starting out they could assume that James Taylor and U2 were not uploading their content to get exposure and could have deleted that manually at the beginning to try and enforce their point that it is unsigned content only. But that's not what they are going for.
tptacek 16y 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).
- steveklabnik 16y 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_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca#Title_II:_Online_Copyright...
  - tptacek 16y ago
    You've oversimplified the DMCA. The "safe harbor" you're referring to includes the requirement that the provider "does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing; [or] in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent". You have to be able to say with a straight face that you couldn't reasonably have known the material was infringing a priori to be eligible.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Yes, sorry. I just assumed that knowledge of infringement would obviously not be okay.
    - mnutt 16y ago
      It's an interesting point because knowing/not knowing is not always black and white. While it's almost impossible to determine 100% whether or not something is infringing, not collecting enough data to tell does NOT work. The courts aren't that interested in the specifics, it's "are you the Pirate Bay or are you Facebook?"
rhn 16y 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.
- citricsquid 16y 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.
  - rhn 16y ago
    You didn't reply to the main point of my post. Have you ever been to a bar that played music you don't own? Did the bar steal from the artist by letting you and others hear something you don't own? Should the DJ call the artist first to get permission? Please explain why it is not incumbent upon the artist to request that someone stop playing a copy of their music in public. Or why - if no digital/physical copies are being distributed - the label should have the right to make such a request. Also, Grooveshark is in fact operating "legitimately" according to EMI, all of their other partners and legal precedent. Is Universal's approval the arbiter of legitimacy?
kenjackson 16y 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 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.
cookiecaper 16y 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.

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?

ique 16y 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.

citricsquid 16y 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?
- ique 16y ago
  It's just the same old piracy arguments as always. Using a legal loophole is not the same as selling drugs or not follow safety regulations. Grooveshark is not doing anything illegal even if they might be "abusing the law". The fact remains that people want to consume music in a way that the music industry does not allow. If it werent for legal loopholes we wouldn't have YouTube and we wouldn't have tourism in eastern Europe. The world isn't as black and white as you portray it and Grooveshark provides an amazing service of much higher quality than Spotify. We can't all sit on our hands and do nothing because someone in the world thinks we shouldn't. Innovation sometimes requires using loopholes.
  - tptacek 16y ago

redthrowaway 16y 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.

tptacek 16y 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.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Sure they did. I have many friends who would play music through Youtube or watch music videos on there. A lot of them discovered new music on Youtube, then bought it off iTunes. Mind you, that's not an argument for piracy, it's an argument for the free, easy distribution of music.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I don't know what your comment has to do with my comment. My point is that Grooveshark is a closer substitute for the sanctioned product it overlaps with than Youtube was with the product it overlapped --- especially in the early days, when copyright was an issue for Youtube.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      And I agree. I was just saying that people did, in fact, use youtube as a substitute for licensed distribution channels.
    - res0nat0r 16y ago
      I'd have to agree with this also. It's called YOUtube for a reason, it was created for YOU to upload videos of YOUR content. If Grooveshark was called YOUshark or something in the beginning, and stated: Upload YOUR bands recordings and get exposure! This would be a different thing. Back when Grooveshark was starting out they could assume that James Taylor and U2 were not uploading their content to get exposure and could have deleted that manually at the beginning to try and enforce their point that it is unsigned content only. But that's not what they are going for.

tptacek 16y 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).

steveklabnik 16y 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_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca#Title_II:_Online_Copyright...
- tptacek 16y ago
  You've oversimplified the DMCA. The "safe harbor" you're referring to includes the requirement that the provider "does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing; [or] in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent". You have to be able to say with a straight face that you couldn't reasonably have known the material was infringing a priori to be eligible.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Yes, sorry. I just assumed that knowledge of infringement would obviously not be okay.
  - mnutt 16y ago
    It's an interesting point because knowing/not knowing is not always black and white. While it's almost impossible to determine 100% whether or not something is infringing, not collecting enough data to tell does NOT work. The courts aren't that interested in the specifics, it's "are you the Pirate Bay or are you Facebook?"

rhn 16y 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.

citricsquid 16y 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.
- rhn 16y ago
  You didn't reply to the main point of my post. Have you ever been to a bar that played music you don't own? Did the bar steal from the artist by letting you and others hear something you don't own? Should the DJ call the artist first to get permission? Please explain why it is not incumbent upon the artist to request that someone stop playing a copy of their music in public. Or why - if no digital/physical copies are being distributed - the label should have the right to make such a request. Also, Grooveshark is in fact operating "legitimately" according to EMI, all of their other partners and legal precedent. Is Universal's approval the arbiter of legitimacy?

kenjackson 16y 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 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.

cookiecaper 16y 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.