16 ms·

> they do the bear minimum, they do enough to not get sued The bear minimum is all they have to do. That's why it's called the minimum. > they claim with a st

> they do the bear minimum, they do enough to not get sued The bear minimum is all they have to do. That's why it's called the minimum. > they claim with a straight face that they're supporting artists Correct me if I'm wrong, but "artists" is not a single entity or trade group. They are supporting artists that choose to use their service for distribution. They aren't supporting Rihanna, and I'm fairly certain that they don't have to. > "we comply with DMCA so it's okay" Well yeah. They do comply (as ruled here). So it is okay. Sites like reddit and HN and, yes, Grooveshark couldn't get off the ground if they had to proactively filter 100% of submitted content. We as a society have decided that we value that over stopping 100% of illegal copying so we're okay with laws that work to take the content down afterwards.

Locke1689 14y ago
Bare minimum, guys.
- ebrenes 14y ago
  This reminds me of that part in Office Space where the manager complains about the waitress' "15 pieces of flare". I can only imagine the comedy of having it apply to legal and other areas of life... IRS: It says here you only paid the bare minimum in taxes, what do you have to say for yourself? Fire marshall: It seems you only have the minimum fire protection requirements. Looks like you're haphazardly endangering people by not going above and beyond Building inspector: Hmm, it seems you only have the bare minimum of one access ramp. If you really cared to honor the disability act, you'd have 2, at least 3. There are other buildings that have all these special facilities you know?
  - Locke1689 14y ago
    I just had to say something before everyone was talking about the minimum number of bears that need to be around for someone to be guilty under the DMCA. Personally, I would be more worried about the bear maximum, but IANAL.
citricsquid 14y ago
How can you possibly compare HN, reddit and Grooveshark? The first 2 aggregate links to content, Grooveshark distributes content (often unlicensed). That's akin to comparing IMDB and iTunes, because both have movie related content? It's nonsensical. If you want to use reddit as an example we'd have to pretend that reddit downloads the content from any submitted link and serves it, so let's pretend that happens: if a company went to reddit and said please stop downloading our website content when it's submitted from the domain website.com, would you do that? Would you tell them to fuck off? While profiting from that content? Grooveshark could if they wanted without any effort comply with what companies like Universal want. They choose not to. It's not about whether or not they comply with the law. It's absolutely not unreasonable for any artist to expect their music not to be on Grooveshark, Grooveshark made a business decision to use the DMCA to their advantage. > They aren't supporting Rihanna, and I'm fairly certain that they don't have to. That's fine, they don't have to support Rihanna, but what they should not then do is take her content anyway. If they're not willing to comply with the wishes/expectations of the rights holder (which probably isn't Rihanna but let's pretend it is for simplicities sake) then they SHOULD NOT be making money from that content! Grooveshark is a business that takes other peoples content WITHOUT PERMISSION and then makes money from that content and uses the DMCA to get away with it, doing the bare minimum to be compliant. How can anyone defend that?
- Natsu 14y ago
  It is nowhere near as easy as you suppose to filter out all unlicensed content with a computer program. If you believe otherwise, feel free to create and market such a system so that we can judge for ourselves. Google, a company who has plenty of capable coders, wrote their own such system. It misidentified birdcalls as copyrighted music: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/guy-gets-bogus-youtube-copyright-claim-birds-singing-background.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/guy-ge...
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    if(artist.name == "Rihanna") error("You can't post Rihanna"); It doesn't need to be sophisticated to remove 99% cases of infringement. Sure people could upload Rihanna's music under the name "Johnny John Johnson" but then nobody would find it, so the problem would be solved. Grooveshark choose not to do this because they are driving revenue with unlicensed music.

Locke1689 14y ago

Bare minimum, guys.

ebrenes 14y ago
This reminds me of that part in Office Space where the manager complains about the waitress' "15 pieces of flare". I can only imagine the comedy of having it apply to legal and other areas of life... IRS: It says here you only paid the bare minimum in taxes, what do you have to say for yourself? Fire marshall: It seems you only have the minimum fire protection requirements. Looks like you're haphazardly endangering people by not going above and beyond Building inspector: Hmm, it seems you only have the bare minimum of one access ramp. If you really cared to honor the disability act, you'd have 2, at least 3. There are other buildings that have all these special facilities you know?
- Locke1689 14y ago
  I just had to say something before everyone was talking about the minimum number of bears that need to be around for someone to be guilty under the DMCA. Personally, I would be more worried about the bear maximum, but IANAL.

citricsquid 14y ago

How can you possibly compare HN, reddit and Grooveshark? The first 2 aggregate links to content, Grooveshark distributes content (often unlicensed). That's akin to comparing IMDB and iTunes, because both have movie related content? It's nonsensical. If you want to use reddit as an example we'd have to pretend that reddit downloads the content from any submitted link and serves it, so let's pretend that happens: if a company went to reddit and said please stop downloading our website content when it's submitted from the domain website.com, would you do that? Would you tell them to fuck off? While profiting from that content? Grooveshark could if they wanted without any effort comply with what companies like Universal want. They choose not to. It's not about whether or not they comply with the law. It's absolutely not unreasonable for any artist to expect their music not to be on Grooveshark, Grooveshark made a business decision to use the DMCA to their advantage. > They aren't supporting Rihanna, and I'm fairly certain that they don't have to. That's fine, they don't have to support Rihanna, but what they should not then do is take her content anyway. If they're not willing to comply with the wishes/expectations of the rights holder (which probably isn't Rihanna but let's pretend it is for simplicities sake) then they SHOULD NOT be making money from that content! Grooveshark is a business that takes other peoples content WITHOUT PERMISSION and then makes money from that content and uses the DMCA to get away with it, doing the bare minimum to be compliant. How can anyone defend that?

Natsu 14y ago
It is nowhere near as easy as you suppose to filter out all unlicensed content with a computer program. If you believe otherwise, feel free to create and market such a system so that we can judge for ourselves. Google, a company who has plenty of capable coders, wrote their own such system. It misidentified birdcalls as copyrighted music: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/guy-gets-bogus-youtube-copyright-claim-birds-singing-background.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/guy-ge...
- citricsquid 14y ago
  if(artist.name == "Rihanna") error("You can't post Rihanna"); It doesn't need to be sophisticated to remove 99% cases of infringement. Sure people could upload Rihanna's music under the name "Johnny John Johnson" but then nobody would find it, so the problem would be solved. Grooveshark choose not to do this because they are driving revenue with unlicensed music.