5 ms·

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that only the copyright holder can sue for copyright infringement. I am pretty certain Genius does not hold the copyr

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that only the copyright holder can sue for copyright infringement. I am pretty certain Genius does not hold the copyright to those lyrics. It's odd Genius brought this case at all. This is briefly noted at the end of the original article, but it seems like the whole point. Did I miss something?

luma 6y ago
They are going to have a problem with standing for the exact reason you suggest. This case was one company who was scraping other people’s copyrighted works suing another company for doing the same.
- SilkRoadie 6y ago
  Isn’t their main argument unfair competition? Google, the starting point of the internet, decided to undermine their business by taking their collated content and publishing it at the top of results? Google appears to do this for other things, asking questions often shows answers without needing to visit the website. Perhaps these are all licensed and there is a kick back for these sites... Google appear to be serving ads on content other people have collated while eliminating the source of traffic to the original site.. If that isn’t unfair business practice and taking advantage of their monopoly on search I don’t know what is.
  - qtplatypus 6y ago
    The problem is because the form of unfair competition is copying the copyright act takes charge and the claim must be made under copyright law.
  - dwheeler 6y ago
    But companies are absolutely allowed to do things that cause other companies to go out of business. It happens all the time. Think of the buggy whip manufacturers. "Unfair competetion" has a specific legal meaning. As I understand primarily in the US it's under state law. Here's a summary: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unfair_competition https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unfair_competition I agree that this Google practice looks dodgy to me. But the question is, what law specifically is being broken? This looks like a copyright case, and if that's the issue, then the copyright holder is the generally the one who has to bring the case in. (I believe there are exceptions such as when exclusive rights are granted, but I haven't seen a justification that they apply here.) That's what the law requires; otherwise the courts would be even more swamped. Again, I'm not a lawyer.
TAForObvReasons 6y ago
Genius claims that Google’s actions caused a decline in traffic to its site. The lawsuit was probably a way to assuage nervous investors (who have poured >70M into the company)
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Surely the investors are nervous now?
  - vmception 6y ago
    yeah but they can't blame Genius founders, whoop whoop!
- rrdharan 6y ago
  They're gonna annotate the web though! Any day now...
- echelon 6y ago
  $70M for lyrics not even owned seems absurd. Still, Google is being very fucking evil here. It's as if they stole that $70M for themselves.
  - isoskeles 6y ago
    > very fucking evil Your abuse of words is a heinous crime against humanity.
SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
Does Google hold the copyright on its search results? Why can't I scrape Google?
- tanilama 6y ago
  Here is the question: Does Google has a right to block you? I believe they do, it is their API afterall. In Genius's case, does it disallow Google for scraping? From their robots.txt, I can't tell: https://genius.com/robots.txt https://genius.com/robots.txt
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    You shouldn’t need a law degree to interpret a robots.txt though. If that’s where we’re at then we as a society need to re-evaluate.
    - tanilama 6y ago
      Why? Genius is given a way out to prevent itself from being scrapped. But it doesn't. Mean they probably value traffic from Google. Which means they are only not OK with scraping when Google uses the scrapped for purpose they deemed reduced their traffic
      - DangitBobby 6y ago
        > Which means they are only not OK with scraping when Google uses the scrapped for purpose they deemed reduced their traffic Obviously. The way the profit model for the internet works right now, for sites to coexist with Google, they must actually receive some of the traffic that is generated from searches matching their content. Who would be okay with having all of their content scraped with the result being that they get none of the traffic and thus the monetary benefit from the work they do?
        icebraining 6y ago
        It's not Genius' content, though. It's the artists'. If it was their content, they could simply sue for copyright infringement.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
From genius.com: "Genius Media Group, Inc. (GMG) is fully licensed to display lyrics across all of its properties. In 2013, GMG entered into licenses with every major music publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, and Warner/Chappell Music. In addition, GMG developed a form license with the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) which today covers more than 96% of the independent publisher market." Original copyright holder could give someone else authorisation to sue on their behalf, e.g., through an assignment. Doubtful Genius got an assignment in the agreements they have with publishers. Also, Google claimed it is sub-licensed to re-publish through a third party, LyricFind, which has licenses with "over 4000" music publishers.
- sls 6y ago
  >Copyright holder could give someone else authorisation to sue on their behalf, e.g., through a license. They can't assign the bare right to sue. To have standing the plaintiff will need to hold at least one of the exclusive rights in 17 U.S. Code § 106 aiui. Cf Righthaven cases, Silvers v Sony Pictures
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    Not a "bare right to sue", but an exclusive license, or an assignment, could grant some of those rights that give rise to standing.
    - nappy 6y ago
      This is clearly not an exclusive license though, right?
      - dwheeler 6y ago
        I am almost certain you are correct, I would be shocked if genius was granted an exclusive right to lyrics. If nothing else, how could you sell the songs without rights to the lyrics? So I don't think genius ever had standing to pursue this case. Again, not a lawyer. But you'd think the actual lawyers would have checked this more carefully.
noncoml 6y ago
It should be legal then for someone to run a meta engine on top of Google?
- judge2020 6y ago
  You very well can, but that doesn't mean Google can't block you (CFAA protection). Genius here was reliant on Google for a large portion of their regular traffic so they couldn't just block Google without suffering revenue losses.
  - Miner49er 6y ago
    Wasn't it ruled not long ago that CFAA can't be applied like that? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-linkedin-protects-scraping-public-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-l...
bogomipz 6y ago
That's correct however the publishing company that administers an artists royalties is generally the one to bring the suit. This is the same type of royalty as sheet music. I feel like this is a forgotten bit of history but for years Genius didn't pay royalties for reproducing lyrics instead choosing to claim that their own reprinting of lyrics fell under "fair use" guidelines: >"David Lowery, frontman and songwriter for Cracker and Camper van Beethoven, is waging war on the sites he believes make money off song lyrics but don't pay the songwriter. Once he took a closer look at where his music was making money on the Internet, he realized: There were more people searching to find lyrics to his songs than searching to illegally download mp3s of his music. And he wasn't making money off those searches. Last November, after months of exhaustive and systematic Googling, he released something called The Undesirable Lyric Website List. >"The National Music Publishers Association seized upon this list, and announced that it would be sending take-down notices to every single name. At the top of that list was the very popular Rap Genius." >"Rap Genius has been around for a few years, and it's extremely popular. No ads, lots of traffic and, just recently, a major investment from one of the hottest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. The founder of Rap Genius, Ilan Zechory, says the site doesn't belong on Lowery's list. Because it's way more than just transcribed lyrics. He says the site is more like a social network: a discussion board for music geeks and even some of the musicians themselves — prominent rappers like Nas and Rick Ross — to comment on their own lyrics. Artists, the founders say, love the site." >"Just this week, Rap Genius announced that, despite its opinion that the site falls under the criteria for fair use, it's going to pay songwriters for posting their lyrics. It's just easier than fighting with music publishers, who've been very successful at going after other lyric sites in the past few years. ..."[1] [1] "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/09/310462951/when-lyrics-get-posted-online-who-gets-paid https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/09/310462951/when...

luma 6y ago

They are going to have a problem with standing for the exact reason you suggest. This case was one company who was scraping other people’s copyrighted works suing another company for doing the same.

SilkRoadie 6y ago
Isn’t their main argument unfair competition? Google, the starting point of the internet, decided to undermine their business by taking their collated content and publishing it at the top of results? Google appears to do this for other things, asking questions often shows answers without needing to visit the website. Perhaps these are all licensed and there is a kick back for these sites... Google appear to be serving ads on content other people have collated while eliminating the source of traffic to the original site.. If that isn’t unfair business practice and taking advantage of their monopoly on search I don’t know what is.
- qtplatypus 6y ago
  The problem is because the form of unfair competition is copying the copyright act takes charge and the claim must be made under copyright law.
- dwheeler 6y ago
  But companies are absolutely allowed to do things that cause other companies to go out of business. It happens all the time. Think of the buggy whip manufacturers. "Unfair competetion" has a specific legal meaning. As I understand primarily in the US it's under state law. Here's a summary: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unfair_competition https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unfair_competition I agree that this Google practice looks dodgy to me. But the question is, what law specifically is being broken? This looks like a copyright case, and if that's the issue, then the copyright holder is the generally the one who has to bring the case in. (I believe there are exceptions such as when exclusive rights are granted, but I haven't seen a justification that they apply here.) That's what the law requires; otherwise the courts would be even more swamped. Again, I'm not a lawyer.

TAForObvReasons 6y ago

Genius claims that Google’s actions caused a decline in traffic to its site. The lawsuit was probably a way to assuage nervous investors (who have poured >70M into the company)

saagarjha 6y ago
Surely the investors are nervous now?
- vmception 6y ago
  yeah but they can't blame Genius founders, whoop whoop!
rrdharan 6y ago
They're gonna annotate the web though! Any day now...
echelon 6y ago
$70M for lyrics not even owned seems absurd. Still, Google is being very fucking evil here. It's as if they stole that $70M for themselves.
- isoskeles 6y ago
  > very fucking evil Your abuse of words is a heinous crime against humanity.

SpaceRaccoon 6y ago

Does Google hold the copyright on its search results? Why can't I scrape Google?

tanilama 6y ago
Here is the question: Does Google has a right to block you? I believe they do, it is their API afterall. In Genius's case, does it disallow Google for scraping? From their robots.txt, I can't tell: https://genius.com/robots.txt https://genius.com/robots.txt
- elliekelly 6y ago
  You shouldn’t need a law degree to interpret a robots.txt though. If that’s where we’re at then we as a society need to re-evaluate.
  - tanilama 6y ago
    Why? Genius is given a way out to prevent itself from being scrapped. But it doesn't. Mean they probably value traffic from Google. Which means they are only not OK with scraping when Google uses the scrapped for purpose they deemed reduced their traffic
    - DangitBobby 6y ago
      > Which means they are only not OK with scraping when Google uses the scrapped for purpose they deemed reduced their traffic Obviously. The way the profit model for the internet works right now, for sites to coexist with Google, they must actually receive some of the traffic that is generated from searches matching their content. Who would be okay with having all of their content scraped with the result being that they get none of the traffic and thus the monetary benefit from the work they do?
      - icebraining 6y ago
        It's not Genius' content, though. It's the artists'. If it was their content, they could simply sue for copyright infringement.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

From genius.com: "Genius Media Group, Inc. (GMG) is fully licensed to display lyrics across all of its properties. In 2013, GMG entered into licenses with every major music publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, and Warner/Chappell Music. In addition, GMG developed a form license with the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) which today covers more than 96% of the independent publisher market." Original copyright holder could give someone else authorisation to sue on their behalf, e.g., through an assignment. Doubtful Genius got an assignment in the agreements they have with publishers. Also, Google claimed it is sub-licensed to re-publish through a third party, LyricFind, which has licenses with "over 4000" music publishers.

sls 6y ago
>Copyright holder could give someone else authorisation to sue on their behalf, e.g., through a license. They can't assign the bare right to sue. To have standing the plaintiff will need to hold at least one of the exclusive rights in 17 U.S. Code § 106 aiui. Cf Righthaven cases, Silvers v Sony Pictures
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  Not a "bare right to sue", but an exclusive license, or an assignment, could grant some of those rights that give rise to standing.
  - nappy 6y ago
    This is clearly not an exclusive license though, right?
    - dwheeler 6y ago
      I am almost certain you are correct, I would be shocked if genius was granted an exclusive right to lyrics. If nothing else, how could you sell the songs without rights to the lyrics? So I don't think genius ever had standing to pursue this case. Again, not a lawyer. But you'd think the actual lawyers would have checked this more carefully.

noncoml 6y ago

It should be legal then for someone to run a meta engine on top of Google?

judge2020 6y ago
You very well can, but that doesn't mean Google can't block you (CFAA protection). Genius here was reliant on Google for a large portion of their regular traffic so they couldn't just block Google without suffering revenue losses.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  Wasn't it ruled not long ago that CFAA can't be applied like that? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-linkedin-protects-scraping-public-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-l...

bogomipz 6y ago

That's correct however the publishing company that administers an artists royalties is generally the one to bring the suit. This is the same type of royalty as sheet music. I feel like this is a forgotten bit of history but for years Genius didn't pay royalties for reproducing lyrics instead choosing to claim that their own reprinting of lyrics fell under "fair use" guidelines: >"David Lowery, frontman and songwriter for Cracker and Camper van Beethoven, is waging war on the sites he believes make money off song lyrics but don't pay the songwriter. Once he took a closer look at where his music was making money on the Internet, he realized: There were more people searching to find lyrics to his songs than searching to illegally download mp3s of his music. And he wasn't making money off those searches. Last November, after months of exhaustive and systematic Googling, he released something called The Undesirable Lyric Website List. >"The National Music Publishers Association seized upon this list, and announced that it would be sending take-down notices to every single name. At the top of that list was the very popular Rap Genius." >"Rap Genius has been around for a few years, and it's extremely popular. No ads, lots of traffic and, just recently, a major investment from one of the hottest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. The founder of Rap Genius, Ilan Zechory, says the site doesn't belong on Lowery's list. Because it's way more than just transcribed lyrics. He says the site is more like a social network: a discussion board for music geeks and even some of the musicians themselves — prominent rappers like Nas and Rick Ross — to comment on their own lyrics. Artists, the founders say, love the site." >"Just this week, Rap Genius announced that, despite its opinion that the site falls under the criteria for fair use, it's going to pay songwriters for posting their lyrics. It's just easier than fighting with music publishers, who've been very successful at going after other lyric sites in the past few years. ..."[1] [1] "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/09/310462951/when-lyrics-get-posted-online-who-gets-paid https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/09/310462951/when...