2 ms·
They're not Genius' efforts to begin with. Lyrics are transcribed by users or given to them by the artists themselves and then Genius adds the watermarks mentio
by nvrspyx 7y ago
They're not Genius' efforts to begin with. Lyrics are transcribed by users or given to them by the artists themselves and then Genius adds the watermarks mentioned in the lawsuit. Worst case scenario, Genius is saying "you can't benefit off the efforts of our users, only we can".
It seems that the only thing giving Genius any footing is their Terms of Service, which ToS tend to be unenforceable. Also consider the case involving LinkedIn which set precedence in being able to scrape public information.
Then again, IANAL so they may have more footing than I realize and/or they may do some transcription themselves, but it is largely their users.
- FireBeyond 7y ago> They're not Genius' efforts to begin with. Lyrics are transcribed by users Users who have consented to supply said efforts to Genius. Not to Google. Or LyricFind.
- nvrspyx 7y agoI get the logic, but I also think it's a bit of a stretch. They may unknowingly consent to that, but you have to go out of your way to read the Terms of Service to consent to that specifically and I would imagine most people are just trying to provide or fix lyrics so others can easily find them, not so Genius can have them exclusively as that's certainly not how most users think. It also brings up a good point on whether Genius should have exclusive rights to something in which they gained that exclusivity from uninformed "consent" of their users' efforts. If transcribed lyrics are copyrightable, why should Genius hold that right and not the users' when Genius are claiming that right by hiding their Terms of Use as a tiny link made to seem like it's part of the website's copyright/trademark notice[0]. I'm inclined to believe that Genius are purposefully being deceitful in how they link to their Terms of Use to avoid flack. [0]: https://imgur.com/DP5fmre https://imgur.com/DP5fmre