10 ms·

This is a bizarre take. The most substantial point is buried near the end of the article: Genius does not own the copyright to the lyrics. Yes, they may have ta

This is a bizarre take. The most substantial point is buried near the end of the article: Genius does not own the copyright to the lyrics. Yes, they may have taken billions of painstaking person-years to hand-transcribe them onto artisanal silks, but no matter how much effort you put into copying someone else's work, it doesn't make it your work, and you can't sue people over it. At best, you could claim your copy is a derivative work, but that only grants you protection for your additional creative contributions on top of the original work, which for a straight transcription is... well, nothing. Genius knows this, which is why they didn't file a copyright suit. Instead, they claimed other things like unfair competition and breach of contract. However, Title 17 Section 301 of the US Code says that "all legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright [...] are governed exclusively by this title". To avoid this, Genius needed to prove that their claims weren't "equivalent" – ie weren't just copyright claims dressed up as something else. They failed to do this, and so their case was thrown out.

Polylactic_acid 6y ago
Aren't collections of facts copyrightable? So google has copyright over google maps and I can not copy that but I can go out and record exactly the same data since I collected it myself.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  I would guess maps is a different case because those are their own works. There are decisions on design being made, how to show overlays. But that’s just my assumption.
  - alephu5 6y ago
    Why does it matter whether you're transcribing lyrics or transcribing geography? In both cases you're effectively just writing down something that exists already.
    - vasco 6y ago
      The equivalent would be to copy an existing map, not to create a map based on your observations of the world.
      - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        But what google did here was not listening to every song and writing down the lyrics. They just copied the text off another website.
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      Exactly. This should definitely be grounds for allowing copying google maps data as long as you render it in your own style. The usual trick here is trap data where map makers insert fake data to catch copies but thats exactly what happened here with the ' in the lyrics.
      - young_unixer 6y ago
        Just add some small, inconsequential error to all positional data.
        RichieAHB 6y ago
        Does this mean Genius can add a few non-breaking spaces to the lyrics, with a couple of odd unicode characters that look like periods and commas. I guess at some point it’d end up looking like a ReCaptcha and there’s enough of those already ...
        Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        Thats exactly what they did with commas. Didn't help them.
      - londons_explore 6y ago
        If the actual data isn't copyrightable, yet the 'fake/trap data' is, then presumably when one copies the map, a court will decide that the magnitude of the copying is very small - only a single apostrophe was copied - and therefore the damages negligible. If fake data is hidden amongst real data, wouldn't there also be the argument that the copier was unaware that they were copying a creative work rather than pure facts?
- laughinghan 6y ago
  No, in the US you cannot copyright facts, only expression. So you have control over word-for-word copies of your article about a bird; but you have no control over dissemination of the facts you discovered about the bird. SCOTUS decided this in 1991, Feist v. Rural: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R.... You might be thinking of sui generis database rights, which DOES cover collections of facts. The EU, Russia, and Brazil recognize this right, but the US doesn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right#United_States
  - nl 6y ago
    The US does recognise compilations as copyrightable though (but there must be decisions made about what to include). See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_Collaborative_Online_Maps_under_US_Copyright_Law.pdf https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_C...
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      It could be a system, oracle, or network, which computes weights or votes, just as soon as it could be an individual or group casting ballots or deliberating. The deciding is key, perhaps not who decides. Some aspects of law are slippery like that though, where one set of rules applies to human agents, and a different, perhaps mutually exclusive set, apply to everything else. For example, horse drawn carriages have the right of way even over pedestrians, because you’re pulling weight, or more accurately, a beast of burden is pulling the weight. It’s a living thing too, and it can’t stop on a dime when it’s got a load. It makes sense when you know the context and framing for why the law is so written today. I’m sure there are similar examples in others contexts. Court cases and judges look at the law like we do whitepapers. Some docs are better than others, and there are some devs, and other judges’ toes you’d be hesitant to tread on, especially if you have a habit of doing that kind of thing.
    - laughinghan 6y ago
      Right. "Expression" isn't restricted to specific wording, it can potentially mean specific choices of what is included and what is included in a compilation; I could hold a copyright to such a compilation even if I don't hold the copyright to any of the items in the copyright. For example, many artists publish playlists on Spotify to build their brand; it could plausibly be copyright infringement for one of them to verbatim copy a playlist I made and publish it as their own, even if I don't hold the copyright to any of the songs on my playlist, and even if one of the songs on the playlist was actually that artists' own song. The act of assembling a playlist is potentially copyrightable expression.
- nl 6y ago
  Compilations of facts are copyrightable in the US, but they can't be just raw collections - there has to be a choice made what to include. > The Act also provides copyright protection to compilations, but only to the extent that there has been a contribution of originality in assembling that compilation. Map copyright is based on the idea there are decisions made around what to include and how to display it. You can't photocopy a map and claim copyright. However, a human can trace the same map and claim copyright. See City of New York v. GeoData Plus, and the discussion in https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_Collaborative_Online_Maps_under_US_Copyright_Law.pdf https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_C...
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Regarding compilations of facts, the general doctrine is that copyright would protect the semi-arbitary choices of what to include in that compilation (e.g. judgement of relevance - which words to put in dictionary, what detail to include/exclude in a map) and disallows copying that compilation; but it explicitly does not protect "work and sweat" required to gather that data, and allows people to copy particular facts out of that compilation, for example, if they are making their own selection with different criteria, as the underlying facts are not protected no matter how much effort it took to obtain them. In this regard, copying lyrics of some particular song does not violate the rights of Genius - they don't have copyright to that particular song and the compilation-of-facts rights don't apply for that particular single item.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
laughinghan 6y ago
You seem focused on whether this case was the legally correct decision, which it sure seems to be. This article, like many readers, is more focused on whether this was a fair result. Nothing bizarre about that. The judge may have done the correct thing, but readers may feel that Congress didn't. This case will doubtless be used in the future to argue for sui generis database rights like the EU has. (My view is that in principle, some form of sui generis database rights makes sense, but for the things that US copyright law already covers it is currently far, FAR too restrictive and lasts too long, so I would vehemently oppose expansion of existing US copyright law to cover sui generis database rights. However, if US copyright law were reformed such that it mandated blanket licensing (see [the EFF proposal]), strengthened fair use protections, and shortened copyright duration, then I would totally support similar rights for sui generis databases.) [EFF proposal for blanket licensing]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/plan-pay-artists-encourage-competition-and-promote-free-expression https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/plan-pay-artists-encou...
- mav3rick 6y ago
  The law decides fair. It's not subjective.
  - zo1 6y ago
    I guess that's why progressive taxation is fair! /s
  - blackbrokkoli 6y ago
    But the law can be unfair, and can even be made more fair, and for that, you need discussion.
  - intelleak 6y ago
    Law also says that erratic criminals can be restrained by kneeling on them, one of the reasons which hastened George Floyd's death. I don't think law is always right.
    - zarathustreal 6y ago
dastx 6y ago
> Yes, they may have taken billions of painstaking person-years to hand-transcribe them onto artisanal silks, but no matter how much effort you put into copying someone else's work, it doesn't make it your work, and you can't sue people over it. Not really all true though. Genius started out by stealing lyrics from other sites. In the early days many of the lyrics had the exact same errors as other more establish sites. That may have changed since.
- icebraining 6y ago
  Yes, they did, because they got a takedown from the actual copyright holders: https://www.billboard.com/articles//5785701/nmpa-targets-unlicensed-lyric-sites-rap-genius-among https://www.billboard.com/articles//5785701/nmpa-targets-unl...
- ratww 6y ago
  You are correct about Genius also scrapping in the beginning. It's much better now, but that's only because of unpaid volunteer editors who do most of the corrections and annotations in their site.
gnicholas 6y ago
> Genius does not own the copyright to the lyrics. Yes, they may have taken billions of painstaking person-years to hand-transcribe them onto artisanal silks, but no matter how much effort you put into copying someone else's work, it doesn't make it your work, and you can't sue people over it. Apparently they license the lyrics now: > Genius isn’t the copyright holder for these lyrics, it just licenses them itself. It's not a case of someone copying without permission and then suing another person who copied them. It's a valid licensee suing someone who is copying them. Imagine if a McDonald's franchisee sued someone running a rogue/unlicensed McDonald's around the corner. Would we have no sympathy for them also? Legally speaking, it appears the right to sue requires at least some exclusive copyright rights, [1] which Genius surely didn't have (and a McDonald's franchisee also would not have). This is presumably why they didn't bring a copyright suit. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7d4ea127-0fb0-4a6a-837d-aef453a95ae9 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7d4ea127-0fb0...
- icebraining 6y ago
  Google says they also license: https://blog.google/products/search/how-we-help-you-find-lyrics-google-search/ https://blog.google/products/search/how-we-help-you-find-lyr...
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    True, though that blog post also says "We do not crawl or scrape websites to source these lyrics.", which was definitely not true (though may be now).
    - dontblink 6y ago
      I think it was true then. I believe their claim was usage via third party?
    - alwaysdoit 6y ago
      Google licenses the lyrics through a third party, LyricFind, which in turn hired people to transcribe them. In a small percentage of cases, those transcribers did not do their own work and instead copied lyrics from Genius.
learnstats2 6y ago
Where I live, there is a database right. The fact that Genius collated those works is meaningful work in its own right.
Wandfarbe 6y ago
I'm not sure what your background is but your analysis sounds quite strong opiniated. There are examples in law that 'work' can be protected; Just because you don't have the copyright doesn't mean that someone else is just allowed to use your work results. Apparently in this specific case its not protected.

Polylactic_acid 6y ago

Aren't collections of facts copyrightable? So google has copyright over google maps and I can not copy that but I can go out and record exactly the same data since I collected it myself.

Semaphor 6y ago
I would guess maps is a different case because those are their own works. There are decisions on design being made, how to show overlays. But that’s just my assumption.
- alephu5 6y ago
  Why does it matter whether you're transcribing lyrics or transcribing geography? In both cases you're effectively just writing down something that exists already.
  - vasco 6y ago
    The equivalent would be to copy an existing map, not to create a map based on your observations of the world.
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      But what google did here was not listening to every song and writing down the lyrics. They just copied the text off another website.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    Exactly. This should definitely be grounds for allowing copying google maps data as long as you render it in your own style. The usual trick here is trap data where map makers insert fake data to catch copies but thats exactly what happened here with the ' in the lyrics.
    - young_unixer 6y ago
      Just add some small, inconsequential error to all positional data.
      - RichieAHB 6y ago
        Does this mean Genius can add a few non-breaking spaces to the lyrics, with a couple of odd unicode characters that look like periods and commas. I guess at some point it’d end up looking like a ReCaptcha and there’s enough of those already ...
        Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        Thats exactly what they did with commas. Didn't help them.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      If the actual data isn't copyrightable, yet the 'fake/trap data' is, then presumably when one copies the map, a court will decide that the magnitude of the copying is very small - only a single apostrophe was copied - and therefore the damages negligible. If fake data is hidden amongst real data, wouldn't there also be the argument that the copier was unaware that they were copying a creative work rather than pure facts?
laughinghan 6y ago
No, in the US you cannot copyright facts, only expression. So you have control over word-for-word copies of your article about a bird; but you have no control over dissemination of the facts you discovered about the bird. SCOTUS decided this in 1991, Feist v. Rural: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R.... You might be thinking of sui generis database rights, which DOES cover collections of facts. The EU, Russia, and Brazil recognize this right, but the US doesn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right#United_States
- nl 6y ago
  The US does recognise compilations as copyrightable though (but there must be decisions made about what to include). See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_Collaborative_Online_Maps_under_US_Copyright_Law.pdf https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_C...
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    It could be a system, oracle, or network, which computes weights or votes, just as soon as it could be an individual or group casting ballots or deliberating. The deciding is key, perhaps not who decides. Some aspects of law are slippery like that though, where one set of rules applies to human agents, and a different, perhaps mutually exclusive set, apply to everything else. For example, horse drawn carriages have the right of way even over pedestrians, because you’re pulling weight, or more accurately, a beast of burden is pulling the weight. It’s a living thing too, and it can’t stop on a dime when it’s got a load. It makes sense when you know the context and framing for why the law is so written today. I’m sure there are similar examples in others contexts. Court cases and judges look at the law like we do whitepapers. Some docs are better than others, and there are some devs, and other judges’ toes you’d be hesitant to tread on, especially if you have a habit of doing that kind of thing.
  - laughinghan 6y ago
    Right. "Expression" isn't restricted to specific wording, it can potentially mean specific choices of what is included and what is included in a compilation; I could hold a copyright to such a compilation even if I don't hold the copyright to any of the items in the copyright. For example, many artists publish playlists on Spotify to build their brand; it could plausibly be copyright infringement for one of them to verbatim copy a playlist I made and publish it as their own, even if I don't hold the copyright to any of the songs on my playlist, and even if one of the songs on the playlist was actually that artists' own song. The act of assembling a playlist is potentially copyrightable expression.
nl 6y ago
Compilations of facts are copyrightable in the US, but they can't be just raw collections - there has to be a choice made what to include. > The Act also provides copyright protection to compilations, but only to the extent that there has been a contribution of originality in assembling that compilation. Map copyright is based on the idea there are decisions made around what to include and how to display it. You can't photocopy a map and claim copyright. However, a human can trace the same map and claim copyright. See City of New York v. GeoData Plus, and the discussion in https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_Collaborative_Online_Maps_under_US_Copyright_Law.pdf https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/6/6f/Protection_of_C...
PeterisP 6y ago
Regarding compilations of facts, the general doctrine is that copyright would protect the semi-arbitary choices of what to include in that compilation (e.g. judgement of relevance - which words to put in dictionary, what detail to include/exclude in a map) and disallows copying that compilation; but it explicitly does not protect "work and sweat" required to gather that data, and allows people to copy particular facts out of that compilation, for example, if they are making their own selection with different criteria, as the underlying facts are not protected no matter how much effort it took to obtain them. In this regard, copying lyrics of some particular song does not violate the rights of Genius - they don't have copyright to that particular song and the compilation-of-facts rights don't apply for that particular single item.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

laughinghan 6y ago

You seem focused on whether this case was the legally correct decision, which it sure seems to be. This article, like many readers, is more focused on whether this was a fair result. Nothing bizarre about that. The judge may have done the correct thing, but readers may feel that Congress didn't. This case will doubtless be used in the future to argue for sui generis database rights like the EU has. (My view is that in principle, some form of sui generis database rights makes sense, but for the things that US copyright law already covers it is currently far, FAR too restrictive and lasts too long, so I would vehemently oppose expansion of existing US copyright law to cover sui generis database rights. However, if US copyright law were reformed such that it mandated blanket licensing (see [the EFF proposal]), strengthened fair use protections, and shortened copyright duration, then I would totally support similar rights for sui generis databases.) [EFF proposal for blanket licensing]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/plan-pay-artists-encourage-competition-and-promote-free-expression https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/plan-pay-artists-encou...

mav3rick 6y ago
The law decides fair. It's not subjective.
- zo1 6y ago
  I guess that's why progressive taxation is fair! /s
- blackbrokkoli 6y ago
  But the law can be unfair, and can even be made more fair, and for that, you need discussion.
- intelleak 6y ago
  Law also says that erratic criminals can be restrained by kneeling on them, one of the reasons which hastened George Floyd's death. I don't think law is always right.
  - zarathustreal 6y ago

dastx 6y ago

> Yes, they may have taken billions of painstaking person-years to hand-transcribe them onto artisanal silks, but no matter how much effort you put into copying someone else's work, it doesn't make it your work, and you can't sue people over it. Not really all true though. Genius started out by stealing lyrics from other sites. In the early days many of the lyrics had the exact same errors as other more establish sites. That may have changed since.

icebraining 6y ago
Yes, they did, because they got a takedown from the actual copyright holders: https://www.billboard.com/articles//5785701/nmpa-targets-unlicensed-lyric-sites-rap-genius-among https://www.billboard.com/articles//5785701/nmpa-targets-unl...
ratww 6y ago
You are correct about Genius also scrapping in the beginning. It's much better now, but that's only because of unpaid volunteer editors who do most of the corrections and annotations in their site.

gnicholas 6y ago

> Genius does not own the copyright to the lyrics. Yes, they may have taken billions of painstaking person-years to hand-transcribe them onto artisanal silks, but no matter how much effort you put into copying someone else's work, it doesn't make it your work, and you can't sue people over it. Apparently they license the lyrics now: > Genius isn’t the copyright holder for these lyrics, it just licenses them itself. It's not a case of someone copying without permission and then suing another person who copied them. It's a valid licensee suing someone who is copying them. Imagine if a McDonald's franchisee sued someone running a rogue/unlicensed McDonald's around the corner. Would we have no sympathy for them also? Legally speaking, it appears the right to sue requires at least some exclusive copyright rights, [1] which Genius surely didn't have (and a McDonald's franchisee also would not have). This is presumably why they didn't bring a copyright suit. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7d4ea127-0fb0-4a6a-837d-aef453a95ae9 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7d4ea127-0fb0...

icebraining 6y ago
Google says they also license: https://blog.google/products/search/how-we-help-you-find-lyrics-google-search/ https://blog.google/products/search/how-we-help-you-find-lyr...
- gnicholas 6y ago
  True, though that blog post also says "We do not crawl or scrape websites to source these lyrics.", which was definitely not true (though may be now).
  - dontblink 6y ago
    I think it was true then. I believe their claim was usage via third party?
  - alwaysdoit 6y ago
    Google licenses the lyrics through a third party, LyricFind, which in turn hired people to transcribe them. In a small percentage of cases, those transcribers did not do their own work and instead copied lyrics from Genius.

learnstats2 6y ago

Where I live, there is a database right. The fact that Genius collated those works is meaningful work in its own right.

Wandfarbe 6y ago

I'm not sure what your background is but your analysis sounds quite strong opiniated. There are examples in law that 'work' can be protected; Just because you don't have the copyright doesn't mean that someone else is just allowed to use your work results. Apparently in this specific case its not protected.