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Better source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/genius-media-sues-google-claiming-anticompetitive-use-of-song-lyrics-11575391257 https://www.wsj.com/articles/genius

Better source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/genius-media-sues-google-claiming-anticompetitive-use-of-song-lyrics-11575391257 https://www.wsj.com/articles/genius-media-sues-google-claimi... 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?docIndex=3E0o8kQz4X3cWcbbid67wQ==&mod=article_inline https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docInde...

deleted 7y ago
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neonate 7y ago
That WSJ article is at http://archive.is/ZC39Y http://archive.is/ZC39Y.
FireBeyond 7y ago
> 1. There’s a new watermark. After the first watermark got exposed, Google said they’d investigate, but Genius has caught them again. After that first watermark, either Google, Lyricfind or both took steps to 'un-watermark' the lyrics (once they knew what to look for), but kept doing it unabated, as Genius showed when they used another watermark that they didn't reveal (pretty sneaky, with Unicode space characters in certain locations only).
crazypyro 7y ago
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...
- jszymborski 7y ago
  Scraping is one thing, redistributing and republishing is another. In a world where scraping is legally protected, displaying Genius lyrics in a Google infobox could still be illegal without a prior agreement on the basis of copyright. There's an argument for "curation of facts", etc...
  - dennnis 7y ago
    Seems all moot since it's not their intellectual property in the first place... as in the artist would own the lyrics?
- unreal37 7y ago
  Genius actually licenses the lyrics from the music publishers. The first line of your comment is accusing them of something that they don't do.
  - criddell 7y ago
    And didn't LyricFind claim that the lyrics they licensed were scraped from Genius by the publisher?
  - crazypyro 7y ago
    I didn't accuse them of anything. I was re-stating what they themselves wrote in their complaint. Yes, Genius licenses the lyrics, but they often aren't provided the lyrics when they purchase a license. This is where the community comes in... FWIW, Google and the other target of the complaint have the same license from these music publishers. This is all spelled out clearly in Genius' complaint.
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  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.
function_seven 7y ago
For the first watermark mechanism, it's described in the complaint in paragraph #60: > This watermark (“Watermark #1”) involved replacing the apostrophes in a selection of newly released songs with a distinctive pattern of curly (’) and straight apostrophes (').6 Genius set the 2nd, 5th, 13th, 14th, 16th and 20th apostrophes of each watermarked song as curly apostrophes, and all the other apostrophes straight. If the straight apostrophes are interpreted as dots and the curly apostrophes are interpreted as dashes, the pattern spells out “REDHANDED” in Morse code, as shown below. Genius designed Watermark #1 to be woven into the text of the lyrics of the watermarked songs so that, if the apostrophe pattern were to be found outside of Genius’s website, there would be no explanation other than that the lyrics were copied from Genius’s website, e.g., by using the copy/paste functionality or a computer program.
- katzgrau 7y ago
  Ah, pretty clever. The REDHANDED phrase seems much more likely to convince a jury
- alexcnwy 7y ago
  That's so clever - it's like an intellectual property honeypot. It reminds me of "trap streets" mapmakers add to their maps to "trap" potential copyright violators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
blondin 7y ago
funny how these things are. while they are suing google, genius is out there pushing their presence on youtube. if they end up winning, curious how this is going to play out.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

neonate 7y ago

That WSJ article is at http://archive.is/ZC39Y http://archive.is/ZC39Y.

FireBeyond 7y ago

> 1. There’s a new watermark. After the first watermark got exposed, Google said they’d investigate, but Genius has caught them again. After that first watermark, either Google, Lyricfind or both took steps to 'un-watermark' the lyrics (once they knew what to look for), but kept doing it unabated, as Genius showed when they used another watermark that they didn't reveal (pretty sneaky, with Unicode space characters in certain locations only).

crazypyro 7y ago

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...

jszymborski 7y ago
Scraping is one thing, redistributing and republishing is another. In a world where scraping is legally protected, displaying Genius lyrics in a Google infobox could still be illegal without a prior agreement on the basis of copyright. There's an argument for "curation of facts", etc...
- dennnis 7y ago
  Seems all moot since it's not their intellectual property in the first place... as in the artist would own the lyrics?
unreal37 7y ago
Genius actually licenses the lyrics from the music publishers. The first line of your comment is accusing them of something that they don't do.
- criddell 7y ago
  And didn't LyricFind claim that the lyrics they licensed were scraped from Genius by the publisher?
- crazypyro 7y ago
  I didn't accuse them of anything. I was re-stating what they themselves wrote in their complaint. Yes, Genius licenses the lyrics, but they often aren't provided the lyrics when they purchase a license. This is where the community comes in... FWIW, Google and the other target of the complaint have the same license from these music publishers. This is all spelled out clearly in Genius' complaint.
edmundsauto 7y ago
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.

function_seven 7y ago

For the first watermark mechanism, it's described in the complaint in paragraph #60: > This watermark (“Watermark #1”) involved replacing the apostrophes in a selection of newly released songs with a distinctive pattern of curly (’) and straight apostrophes (').6 Genius set the 2nd, 5th, 13th, 14th, 16th and 20th apostrophes of each watermarked song as curly apostrophes, and all the other apostrophes straight. If the straight apostrophes are interpreted as dots and the curly apostrophes are interpreted as dashes, the pattern spells out “REDHANDED” in Morse code, as shown below. Genius designed Watermark #1 to be woven into the text of the lyrics of the watermarked songs so that, if the apostrophe pattern were to be found outside of Genius’s website, there would be no explanation other than that the lyrics were copied from Genius’s website, e.g., by using the copy/paste functionality or a computer program.

katzgrau 7y ago
Ah, pretty clever. The REDHANDED phrase seems much more likely to convince a jury
alexcnwy 7y ago
That's so clever - it's like an intellectual property honeypot. It reminds me of "trap streets" mapmakers add to their maps to "trap" potential copyright violators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

blondin 7y ago

funny how these things are. while they are suing google, genius is out there pushing their presence on youtube. if they end up winning, curious how this is going to play out.