14 ms·

Ministry of Sound sues Spotify for copyright infringement

55 points by ollysb 13y ago

ollysb 13y ago
I can't really see how you can copyright a list of tracks. It's been a while since I bought a Ministry of Sound compilation but aren't they normally mixed? I can see a mix having copyright protection but if they are then aren't they comparing apples to oranges?
- suhailpatel 13y ago
  They are nearly always mixed. It's a bit silly because usually I get a compilation for the fluid mixing and originality/bootlegs/mashups (Spotify almost always has full versions of songs at different BPMs and keys so it's not fluid when recreating in a playlist). It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this.
rob_mccann 13y ago
What if someone has a list of tracks that's the same as a Ministry compilation CD, then adds one track - does that make it a different playlist? I would add this track (silence) to the end of my playlist https://play.spotify.com/track/3gCqAxfnSNxflYodkSOiFd https://play.spotify.com/track/3gCqAxfnSNxflYodkSOiFd
- mseebach 13y ago
  I think a judge (if they find merit in the MoS argument) would consider that to be equivalent to adding a blank page to the end of you book you copied. It seems their main complaint is that the playlists are named "Ministry of Sound" and made searchable by Spotify.
mbesto 13y ago
"Everyone is talking about curation, but curation has been the cornerstone of our business for the last 20 years," said Presencer. "If we don't step up and take some action against a service and users that are dismissing our curation skills as just a list, that opens up the floodgates to anybody who wants to copy what a curator is doing." This is amazing. Finally someone admitting, very clearly in plain english that their curation business has been disrupted. I don't see how this can hold up in court, otherwise this will set a legal precedent for an untold amount of businesses in similar content curation industries.
mvanvoorden 13y ago
I wonder what their legal department was thinking when they decided to take this action. Something like: "Oh my god, we have fans! Quick, make their life miserable by suing the company that we uploaded our music to so our fans will be happy to buy the original album!"?
antihero 13y ago
But they have all of their track lists here: http://www.ministryofsound.com/shop/product/music/41356/hed-kandi-fit-and-fabulous-summer/ http://www.ministryofsound.com/shop/product/music/41356/hed-... Are we supposed to forget anything about them as soon as we close the page?
- mseebach 13y ago
  Their argument is weak, but yours is weaker, since "I can see it online" was never a valid copyright defense.
  - alipang 13y ago
    Well surely it must be legal to create your own Spotify playlist with the same tracks? If you can see them online then all one of these playlists do is save you five minutes of searching...?
    - mseebach 13y ago
      I'm not criticizing the conclusion, it's the argument I'm after. The fact that the tracks are listed on a website doesn't anymore inform your right to replicated it than the fact that words are arranged into an article on a website does it. Copying the latter is clearly not any more or less legal because it's on the web (as opposed to printed), so why would that argument apply to listing of tracks?
      - antihero 13y ago
        Ok, so say you see the tracklist on that site, then listen to the tracks in that order. Is that copyright infringement?
        mseebach 13y ago
        No, just like reading an article isn't. Look, I'm being pedantic. We don't appear to have any real difference of opinion. But the fact that something is published on a website doesn't give you any more copy-rights than if it was published in any other way (say, on the sleeve on a CD you bought). I don't see how that is a controversial observation.
onion2k 13y ago
If there's no value to curation then people wouldn't bother copying the lists - they'd just make their own. There's a reason why "MoS Compilation X" is worth more than "Random User Compilation X" - they're adding value to Spotify by expertly choosing songs that go together well presumably. And their business is selling that expertise. Should they be able to protect that business through the use of copyright is an interesting problem. Is what they do valuable enough to warrant protection? Is it "art"? I don't think that's as straightforward a question as some people (on both sides of the argument) seem to think.
- svckr 13y ago
  > If there's no value to curation then people wouldn't bother copying the lists Yes. And since they (MoS) are obviously earning _something_ from selling their compilations there must be _some_ value in there. (I assume there are tracks from different labels on said compilations, otherwise they should just be happy about their Spotify revenue.) > Is what they do valuable enough to warrant protection? Is it "art"? It is a tough question, but answering with "yes" gets you on a slippery slope. Are MoS going to pay up if (by chance) a Spotify user made a playlist a month ago that exactly matches their next release?
- warfangle 13y ago
  The reason a MoS Compilation is worth more than Joe Sixpack Compilation isn't necessarily the curation, but the skill at which the curation is mixed -- which cannot be reproduced with a simple Spotify playlist. These aren't just curated compilations; they're curated, edited/mixed, and mastered compilations.
  - gizzlon 13y ago
    I think the mixing is another topic, what they're suing over is simple playlists.
    - warfangle 13y ago
      Indeed. Which makes about as much sense as one encyclopedia publisher suing another for having the same table of contents, except the defendant encyclopedia doesn't have anything but the table of contents and is given away for free with little signs next to each topic saying "hey, you can read about this topic over -> here." In other words: not at all.
TheAnimus 13y ago
Surely this is more of a trademark / branding issue. They can't lay claim to non-mixed tracks in the same order. But they surely can protect their brand being used by someone else.
- ctz 13y ago
  They could be arguing they are protected under database rights, but its probably just plain copyright.
- Kerrick 13y ago
  I am not a lawyer, but I suspect the same. After all, it has been established that you cannot copyright a recipe (a list of ingredients in a specific order), and I find this quite similar.
gizzlon 13y ago
I can actually see their point, curation is very valuable in world with this much accessible content. But I'm getting tired of "old school" media companies trying to solve all their business problems by suing those who actually innovate the slightest. Why not, for a change, try to embrace technology and see new opportunities? The music industry have been collaborating on their own grave since napster, and very much deserve to fall in it.
- gizzlon 13y ago
  Here's an idea: Mix the tracks together, re-release it to spotify and pay the artists x% of what you earn on the stream. Good for me as a user since I can get curated & mixed content from a "trusted" source. Good for MoS since they get something for their effort. Good for the artist that can get exposure they otherwise would not get. (that might not be perfect, but it took me 1 minute.. Old media, are you listening? You should hire me as a consultant since you obviously can't do this on your own ;)
  - justincormack 13y ago
    Its funny that the Ministry of Sound is old media already...
    - cyphax 13y ago
      If I'd start a business like theirs and behaved the same way, it'd probably be considered old media as well. What bothers me about their attitude is that this is not something Spotify wants, it obviously is something the _listeners_ want, and it seems like they don't give a damn about that. If they fail as a business, they well deserve it for refusing to adapt to their listeners' wishes. Instead, they want to force their listeners to adapt to _them_.
- ollysb 13y ago
  A big part of the problem seems to be that these organisations are filled with employees that, while probably very good at what they do, don't have the skills to find a product that will fit the current market.
GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
Does this mean they would need to black list certain orders of songs from the random radio app?
- brokenparser 13y ago
  Does this mean that at some point the calculation of pi digits is halted because they construe a form of copyright infringement?
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    Only if you carefully curated the digits you selected
itchitawa 13y ago
The funniest part is Spotify's home page: "Your music is everywhere. Not yet available in your country." I wish my country was somewhere!
- spindritf 13y ago
  If you register in one of the approved countries and then travel to a country where it's not officially available, it will still work. At least for two weeks or so[1]. It really is everywhere just not for everyone. [1] https://support.spotify.com/fi/learn-more/guides/#!/article/Travel-with-Spotify-2 https://support.spotify.com/fi/learn-more/guides/#!/article/...
DigitalSea 13y ago
Lets face it, Ministry of Sound compilations are merely CD's with the hottest club tracks of whatever year they're released in with scantily clad women on the album artwork. Anyone with an IQ who listens to the radio could pick the tracks on a MoS compilation, make no mistake. I can see why they would see they have a case, but all they're doing is taking other artists songs, putting them on the CD and leveraging their well-known brand to sell copies. It's an old way of thinking, everyone is a content curator nowadays as this court case has proven. Having said that a Ministry of Sound CD is usually always mixed. I doubt they have a case because you're not getting the tracks that have been mixed by MoS DJ's, they're suing based on track order and not so much the content which Spotify have legally paid for to stream.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- moondowner 13y ago
  Not related to the actual lawsuit.. There are some pretty good MoS compilations, even epic. They release also chillout, lounge and other electronica compilations, not only with club music. The fact is that they are releasing a ton of compilations, so at the end of the day there's more quantity than quality, but I would't say that they are bad. Plus I bet the artists get more royalties - in percentage - from MoS compilations they were featured on rather than from Spotify.
  - andyhmltn 13y ago
    Every MoS compilation I've had is pretty good. It kind of is just a bunch of songs that you can already get, but a lot of their stuff is mixed/remixed (on an individual song basis) and you get the entire album mixes at the end (usually 2-3 different ones) that are quite good.
  - DigitalSea 13y ago
    No doubt the mixing part of a MoS compilation is definitely the highlight. If they were tracks you could just listen to elsewhere then there would be no reason to buy one of their compilations. What I said was maybe a bit harsh as I used to religiously buy their CD's in my early teens. Some of their compilations are creative, but lets face it, you don't buy a Ministry of Sound CD for the sake of the track order. You get it for the wonderful expert mixing and complimenting choices of song.
warfangle 13y ago
Who is the performer in this situation, who is the recording artist, and who owns the copyright? This debate has been raging for over a century. And this is UK law, so I'm not even going to speculate. But this reeks of the Oracle v Google Java API copyright infringement suite.
- sneak 13y ago
  You seem to have missed the part where Spotify has licenses to stream all the music in question. MoS is suing over user-generated (and shared) playlists of these songs on Spotify, claiming copyright on the act of assembling a compilation.
  - warfangle 13y ago
    I'm still not from the UK, have no experience (even reading) about UK copyright law (other than some historical tidbits in one of Lawrence Lessig's books). I completely understand what they're suing over and what spotify has copyrighted vs. what MoS is claiming. Of course, what they're claiming, the track listing on Wikipedia is probably infringing as well.. (ed. also: Spotify may have the permissions to stream the original, unmodified tracks - but when MoS puts together their compilations there is significant mixing and mastering that happens to modify the tracks from their original; so these aren't even the tracks from the MoS albums - just lists of the original tracks used to compile the MoS albums)
paul_f 13y ago
This is absurd. When your value add is what order to play songs, you clearly deserve to be disrupted. Thanks for the great laugh MoS.
moondowner 13y ago
Let's see what MoS does: they explore which songs to choose for a compilation and their order. When that's done the result, the compilation, comes in a form of a mix CD. This curation needs talent and creates it's 'vibe'. Sometimes they have their guys to do this, and sometimes some famous DJ does it. That's why I love 8tracks, you can find some really good playlists. But those playlists are not copies of some already made compilation (playlists shamelessly named the same as the ones from MoS). There's no artistic value in doing that. And at the end of the day, a lot of people will be satisfied to listen to these compilations unmixed - instead of buying them from MoS.
acjohnson55 13y ago
I think we've got to decide whether everything that has value should be protectable. To me, this case just highlights the fact that we can't have our cake and eat it too, at least in all cases. Personally, I land on the side of simply acknowledging that there are intellectual products that require plenty effort to produce and provide plenty of value but just simply shouldn't be protectable in every aspect. Sometimes, like it or not, the product of your hard work is a public good and the rest of us are just free riders. Accept it, be proud of what you did, enjoy your own opportunities to free ride, and find a different way to monetize. In this case, it's track listings, but I think the same should apply to software and UI paradigms. I, for one, don't want to live in a Balkanized world where every conceivable idea and work is someone's property.

55 points by ollysb 13y ago

I can't really see how you can copyright a list of tracks. It's been a while since I bought a Ministry of Sound compilation but aren't they normally mixed? I can see a mix having copyright protection but if they are then aren't they comparing apples to oranges?

suhailpatel 13y ago
They are nearly always mixed. It's a bit silly because usually I get a compilation for the fluid mixing and originality/bootlegs/mashups (Spotify almost always has full versions of songs at different BPMs and keys so it's not fluid when recreating in a playlist). It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this.

rob_mccann 13y ago

What if someone has a list of tracks that's the same as a Ministry compilation CD, then adds one track - does that make it a different playlist? I would add this track (silence) to the end of my playlist https://play.spotify.com/track/3gCqAxfnSNxflYodkSOiFd https://play.spotify.com/track/3gCqAxfnSNxflYodkSOiFd

mseebach 13y ago
I think a judge (if they find merit in the MoS argument) would consider that to be equivalent to adding a blank page to the end of you book you copied. It seems their main complaint is that the playlists are named "Ministry of Sound" and made searchable by Spotify.

mbesto 13y ago

"Everyone is talking about curation, but curation has been the cornerstone of our business for the last 20 years," said Presencer. "If we don't step up and take some action against a service and users that are dismissing our curation skills as just a list, that opens up the floodgates to anybody who wants to copy what a curator is doing." This is amazing. Finally someone admitting, very clearly in plain english that their curation business has been disrupted. I don't see how this can hold up in court, otherwise this will set a legal precedent for an untold amount of businesses in similar content curation industries.

mvanvoorden 13y ago

I wonder what their legal department was thinking when they decided to take this action. Something like: "Oh my god, we have fans! Quick, make their life miserable by suing the company that we uploaded our music to so our fans will be happy to buy the original album!"?

antihero 13y ago

But they have all of their track lists here: http://www.ministryofsound.com/shop/product/music/41356/hed-kandi-fit-and-fabulous-summer/ http://www.ministryofsound.com/shop/product/music/41356/hed-... Are we supposed to forget anything about them as soon as we close the page?

mseebach 13y ago
Their argument is weak, but yours is weaker, since "I can see it online" was never a valid copyright defense.
- alipang 13y ago
  Well surely it must be legal to create your own Spotify playlist with the same tracks? If you can see them online then all one of these playlists do is save you five minutes of searching...?
  - mseebach 13y ago
    I'm not criticizing the conclusion, it's the argument I'm after. The fact that the tracks are listed on a website doesn't anymore inform your right to replicated it than the fact that words are arranged into an article on a website does it. Copying the latter is clearly not any more or less legal because it's on the web (as opposed to printed), so why would that argument apply to listing of tracks?
    - antihero 13y ago
      Ok, so say you see the tracklist on that site, then listen to the tracks in that order. Is that copyright infringement?
      - mseebach 13y ago
        No, just like reading an article isn't. Look, I'm being pedantic. We don't appear to have any real difference of opinion. But the fact that something is published on a website doesn't give you any more copy-rights than if it was published in any other way (say, on the sleeve on a CD you bought). I don't see how that is a controversial observation.

onion2k 13y ago

If there's no value to curation then people wouldn't bother copying the lists - they'd just make their own. There's a reason why "MoS Compilation X" is worth more than "Random User Compilation X" - they're adding value to Spotify by expertly choosing songs that go together well presumably. And their business is selling that expertise. Should they be able to protect that business through the use of copyright is an interesting problem. Is what they do valuable enough to warrant protection? Is it "art"? I don't think that's as straightforward a question as some people (on both sides of the argument) seem to think.

svckr 13y ago
> If there's no value to curation then people wouldn't bother copying the lists Yes. And since they (MoS) are obviously earning _something_ from selling their compilations there must be _some_ value in there. (I assume there are tracks from different labels on said compilations, otherwise they should just be happy about their Spotify revenue.) > Is what they do valuable enough to warrant protection? Is it "art"? It is a tough question, but answering with "yes" gets you on a slippery slope. Are MoS going to pay up if (by chance) a Spotify user made a playlist a month ago that exactly matches their next release?
warfangle 13y ago
The reason a MoS Compilation is worth more than Joe Sixpack Compilation isn't necessarily the curation, but the skill at which the curation is mixed -- which cannot be reproduced with a simple Spotify playlist. These aren't just curated compilations; they're curated, edited/mixed, and mastered compilations.
- gizzlon 13y ago
  I think the mixing is another topic, what they're suing over is simple playlists.
  - warfangle 13y ago
    Indeed. Which makes about as much sense as one encyclopedia publisher suing another for having the same table of contents, except the defendant encyclopedia doesn't have anything but the table of contents and is given away for free with little signs next to each topic saying "hey, you can read about this topic over -> here." In other words: not at all.

TheAnimus 13y ago

Surely this is more of a trademark / branding issue. They can't lay claim to non-mixed tracks in the same order. But they surely can protect their brand being used by someone else.

ctz 13y ago
They could be arguing they are protected under database rights, but its probably just plain copyright.
Kerrick 13y ago
I am not a lawyer, but I suspect the same. After all, it has been established that you cannot copyright a recipe (a list of ingredients in a specific order), and I find this quite similar.

gizzlon 13y ago

I can actually see their point, curation is very valuable in world with this much accessible content. But I'm getting tired of "old school" media companies trying to solve all their business problems by suing those who actually innovate the slightest. Why not, for a change, try to embrace technology and see new opportunities? The music industry have been collaborating on their own grave since napster, and very much deserve to fall in it.

gizzlon 13y ago
Here's an idea: Mix the tracks together, re-release it to spotify and pay the artists x% of what you earn on the stream. Good for me as a user since I can get curated & mixed content from a "trusted" source. Good for MoS since they get something for their effort. Good for the artist that can get exposure they otherwise would not get. (that might not be perfect, but it took me 1 minute.. Old media, are you listening? You should hire me as a consultant since you obviously can't do this on your own ;)
- justincormack 13y ago
  Its funny that the Ministry of Sound is old media already...
  - cyphax 13y ago
    If I'd start a business like theirs and behaved the same way, it'd probably be considered old media as well. What bothers me about their attitude is that this is not something Spotify wants, it obviously is something the _listeners_ want, and it seems like they don't give a damn about that. If they fail as a business, they well deserve it for refusing to adapt to their listeners' wishes. Instead, they want to force their listeners to adapt to _them_.
ollysb 13y ago
A big part of the problem seems to be that these organisations are filled with employees that, while probably very good at what they do, don't have the skills to find a product that will fit the current market.

GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago

Does this mean they would need to black list certain orders of songs from the random radio app?

brokenparser 13y ago
Does this mean that at some point the calculation of pi digits is halted because they construe a form of copyright infringement?
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  Only if you carefully curated the digits you selected

itchitawa 13y ago

The funniest part is Spotify's home page: "Your music is everywhere. Not yet available in your country." I wish my country was somewhere!

spindritf 13y ago
If you register in one of the approved countries and then travel to a country where it's not officially available, it will still work. At least for two weeks or so[1]. It really is everywhere just not for everyone. [1] https://support.spotify.com/fi/learn-more/guides/#!/article/Travel-with-Spotify-2 https://support.spotify.com/fi/learn-more/guides/#!/article/...

DigitalSea 13y ago

Lets face it, Ministry of Sound compilations are merely CD's with the hottest club tracks of whatever year they're released in with scantily clad women on the album artwork. Anyone with an IQ who listens to the radio could pick the tracks on a MoS compilation, make no mistake. I can see why they would see they have a case, but all they're doing is taking other artists songs, putting them on the CD and leveraging their well-known brand to sell copies. It's an old way of thinking, everyone is a content curator nowadays as this court case has proven. Having said that a Ministry of Sound CD is usually always mixed. I doubt they have a case because you're not getting the tracks that have been mixed by MoS DJ's, they're suing based on track order and not so much the content which Spotify have legally paid for to stream.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
moondowner 13y ago
Not related to the actual lawsuit.. There are some pretty good MoS compilations, even epic. They release also chillout, lounge and other electronica compilations, not only with club music. The fact is that they are releasing a ton of compilations, so at the end of the day there's more quantity than quality, but I would't say that they are bad. Plus I bet the artists get more royalties - in percentage - from MoS compilations they were featured on rather than from Spotify.
- andyhmltn 13y ago
  Every MoS compilation I've had is pretty good. It kind of is just a bunch of songs that you can already get, but a lot of their stuff is mixed/remixed (on an individual song basis) and you get the entire album mixes at the end (usually 2-3 different ones) that are quite good.
- DigitalSea 13y ago
  No doubt the mixing part of a MoS compilation is definitely the highlight. If they were tracks you could just listen to elsewhere then there would be no reason to buy one of their compilations. What I said was maybe a bit harsh as I used to religiously buy their CD's in my early teens. Some of their compilations are creative, but lets face it, you don't buy a Ministry of Sound CD for the sake of the track order. You get it for the wonderful expert mixing and complimenting choices of song.

warfangle 13y ago

Who is the performer in this situation, who is the recording artist, and who owns the copyright? This debate has been raging for over a century. And this is UK law, so I'm not even going to speculate. But this reeks of the Oracle v Google Java API copyright infringement suite.

sneak 13y ago
You seem to have missed the part where Spotify has licenses to stream all the music in question. MoS is suing over user-generated (and shared) playlists of these songs on Spotify, claiming copyright on the act of assembling a compilation.
- warfangle 13y ago
  I'm still not from the UK, have no experience (even reading) about UK copyright law (other than some historical tidbits in one of Lawrence Lessig's books). I completely understand what they're suing over and what spotify has copyrighted vs. what MoS is claiming. Of course, what they're claiming, the track listing on Wikipedia is probably infringing as well.. (ed. also: Spotify may have the permissions to stream the original, unmodified tracks - but when MoS puts together their compilations there is significant mixing and mastering that happens to modify the tracks from their original; so these aren't even the tracks from the MoS albums - just lists of the original tracks used to compile the MoS albums)

paul_f 13y ago

This is absurd. When your value add is what order to play songs, you clearly deserve to be disrupted. Thanks for the great laugh MoS.

moondowner 13y ago

Let's see what MoS does: they explore which songs to choose for a compilation and their order. When that's done the result, the compilation, comes in a form of a mix CD. This curation needs talent and creates it's 'vibe'. Sometimes they have their guys to do this, and sometimes some famous DJ does it. That's why I love 8tracks, you can find some really good playlists. But those playlists are not copies of some already made compilation (playlists shamelessly named the same as the ones from MoS). There's no artistic value in doing that. And at the end of the day, a lot of people will be satisfied to listen to these compilations unmixed - instead of buying them from MoS.

acjohnson55 13y ago

I think we've got to decide whether everything that has value should be protectable. To me, this case just highlights the fact that we can't have our cake and eat it too, at least in all cases. Personally, I land on the side of simply acknowledging that there are intellectual products that require plenty effort to produce and provide plenty of value but just simply shouldn't be protectable in every aspect. Sometimes, like it or not, the product of your hard work is a public good and the rest of us are just free riders. Accept it, be proud of what you did, enjoy your own opportunities to free ride, and find a different way to monetize. In this case, it's track listings, but I think the same should apply to software and UI paradigms. I, for one, don't want to live in a Balkanized world where every conceivable idea and work is someone's property.