Vote to amend the DMCA and help music apps like Grooveshark stay alive
blog.grooveshark.com
blog.grooveshark.com
haha, what? Grooveshark profit off streaming content they do not have the rights to stream and abuse the DMCA to get away with it. As much as the music industry is broken and as awesome as the DMCA is, Grooveshark is not in any way shape or form an example of its true (or proper) purpose.
Grooveshark suck, they wilfully let users upload pirated material (if they didn't want it to happen they could easily prevent it, how many labels just mosey along and upload an artists entire library to a service without as much as a phone call?) and then use the DMCA to justify it, "oh if you don't want it here you can remove it!". No thanks, not supporting them, if they want to be legit they can follow Spotify in their methods.
Edit: I'll find the grooveshark AMA from reddit where a bunch of employees basically said "we don't know how we get away with it, that's for the lawyers".
Edit: Here you go, here's the IAMA: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c2udg/iama_grooveshark... and a comment from an artist http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c2udg/iama_grooveshark... who happens to want his music there, but what if he hadn't? They have made money off it until he noticed, how on earth is that justifiable? Why didn't they do what Spotify did? Maybe that's the sort of thing ycombinator likes, just saying "whatever fuck you" to an industry that works differently to how you'd like, but doesn't seem ethical to me...
"As many of you know, we are involved in a major lawsuit with Universal Music over this exact issue." because you took their content and made money from it without permission. "We’ve worked hard to stay legal so that we can continue bringing you the music you love, and a few minutes of your time could go a long way." we've worked hard to abuse the rights we have to make money from stuff we really shouldn't be without permission. If someone came along and made a website (think themeforest) and took your website designs and sold them until you said "oh hey, uh, can you stop selling my work?" would you support that? So much contempt for the music industry makes easy for grooveshark to persuade people to support them, when if it were an industry people using grooveshark worked in they'd be super pissed.
"...respectfully submit this opinion in support of such adoption..." (from the letter they want users to send)
Edit: To further sate my curiosity: you have repeatedly said that Grooveshark "abuse" the law, which strikes me as a strange choice of word. Do you mean "break"? Or do you mean "they don't break the law, but I believe that what they do should be illegal"? Or something else entirely?
The way Grooveshark do it is by having users upload music, if they wanted to be legitimate they could easily require anyone uploading music to call and verify their identity (how many record labels are there out there?) but instead they have users upload and that covers them under the DMCA, so they can then make money off those uploads and when they're notified it's there (which they of course know it is, that's their entire business!) they say "oh hey, so sorry! We thought it was you uploading, sneaky users eh! We'll delete it now for you" when if they had wanted to make sure the rights owner was uploading in the first place, they could have done.
I have a copy of Rihannas latest album here, if I wanted to upload it to Grooveshark right now for other users to listen to I could, they could prevent that if they wanted but they don't, they use the DMCA to build their business off those uploads.
I hope that explains it, if not I guess I'll just have to give up :( I guess a simple way of explaining it is that without the DMCA, grooveshark could not exist.
Edit: Actually I thought of a better way to explain it, one that I think matches the idea of a hacker more. They had a problem: they needed to stream music to users and cover costs without having the rights to stream that music, they realised to be able to they'd need money and they didn't have it. So they found a solution: DMCA, that would cover what they wanted to do as long as they responded to labels who didn't want their music and they had deniabilty when it came to how the copyrighted content ended up on their service: users uploading.
So they had a problem ("how to stream music that requires rights to stream without those rights") and they found a solution ("dmca") and used the requirements of the dmca ("users uploading and removing when requested") to shape their service. Does that explain it better?
That makes what they've done sound entirely reasonable. They had a problem; they came up with a clever solution to it. It didn't even involve large monetary donations to congressmen.
But it does exist.
I don't see the difference in saying "without law X grooveshark couldn't exist" and "without law Y the RIAA lawsuits wouldn't exist", where law Y is current copyright law.
The copyright laws are what they are; there's nothing magical or sacred about them, so I'm failing to see how adhering to the DMCA is somehow crafty or slick or manipulative. (At least not any more so than current application of copyright law.)
Grooveshark is trying to build a business. To build a business on music you have to let people listen to music. Once they have working business-model (if they ever get there) they can get to paying the artists.
I agree it's somewhat twisted, but I think that's what is necessary.
I must be misunderstanding your argument because that makes no sense on earth to me... couldn't the same lines be used to justify the BP problems ("when we have enough money we'll follow safety regulations") or even drugs ("when we have enough money we'll start a florist")? If you intentions to build a legitimate business at the end, who cares what you do on the way?
Grooveshark is not doing anything illegal even if they might be "abusing the law".
The fact remains that people want to consume music in a way that the music industry does not allow.
If it werent for legal loopholes we wouldn't have YouTube and we wouldn't have tourism in eastern Europe. The world isn't as black and white as you portray it and Grooveshark provides an amazing service of much higher quality than Spotify.
We can't all sit on our hands and do nothing because someone in the world thinks we shouldn't. Innovation sometimes requires using loopholes.
It's not even a legal loophole; it's straight-up, conscious infringement complete with a wink and nudge.
Yeah, we might be a lot better off if people hadn't run to Hollywood to escape enforcement of Edison's patents. Without that city of pirates, things might have turned out very differently.
Indeed.
The record industry's business model for the internet seems to be this: bleed dry any startup (or any company for that matter) who tries to innovate in this space by making them bleed through the nose in legal fees and lose money on ridiculous royalties until they run out of money.
I disagree completely. Grooveshark is trying to build a business, and to do so without paying the artists is unconscionable. They need to have that in place before launching, and if they can't do that, they shouldn't have a business.
Cf Spotify, who did it the right (and difficult) way.
I'm sure Grooveshark responds to DMCA requests, and that's all they're obliged to do.
(I don't doubt you, for what it's worth; I'm not at all sympathetic to arguments that there should be a "startup exemption" to copyright law).
criticalsquid is claiming that they're willfully ignoring pirated content that's being uploaded in order to turn a profit, and that this is an 'abuse' of the DMCA.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca#Title_II:_Online_Copyright...
You have to be able to say with a straight face that you couldn't reasonably have known the material was infringing a priori to be eligible.
Copyright infringement is a matter of permission. I'm not sure that it's even possible, a priori, to say that certain material is infringing, unless you have personal knowledge of who uploaded it and who is authorized to. You can usually make a good guess; but it's just a guess.
This even more complicated thanks to the fact that the record labels have authorized marketing agents to release "unauthorized" releases, even ones marked as leaks, via independent channels. They've even have had to un-DMCA them when their own legal departments took them down.
Proof of that statement can be found in the court filings for the Viacom v. YouTube case, incidentally. Lest you think that this was just the assertion of YouTube's lawyers, I will point you further to the fact that Viacom's own lawyers were forced to agree to remove their claims of infringement after it was proven that Viacom itself had uploaded those particular files.
And that? That happened twice. That's after Viacom's own expensive lawyers (allegedly) performed due diligence.
In short, I would like to point out that while you can have a pretty good idea what content is and is not authorized, there are many good reasons, based on actual events, that could give a person a reasonable doubt about whether something might be authorized, especially if there's no DMCA complaint. I can give you a long list incidents if you like, just from memory.
My point is that even the rights holder might not know if they've authorized it, and they're the only people who can be expected to know who all they've authorized.
I use the service to stream music that is completely paid for and legal. Allowing other users to stream the music I uploaded seems to be no different in principle than playing it on a loudspeaker in a public space. Do I have the right to let other people listen to my music? This doesn't seem to be a copyright issue because no media has been actually copied. Grooveshark allows multiple users to listen to a single, legally owned copy. Grooveshark not only removes copyrighted material upon request, but also blocks uploading privileges for users who have violated the rules.
It is also not the case that they are acting selfishly and without regard for the industry. They are constantly taking steps to work with the major labels and have already closed a deal with EMI. Only Universal is suing them. They also have a profit sharing program with artists and do seem to care about finding new revenue streams for the music industry.
Also I would eat my hat if you have a license that allows you to redistribute music you "purchased", I'd be even more surprised if that license allowed you to grant streaming rights to a third party. The license terms for an itunes purchase are extremely limited.
Please explain why it is not incumbent upon the artist to request that someone stop playing a copy of their music in public. Or why - if no digital/physical copies are being distributed - the label should have the right to make such a request.
Also, Grooveshark is in fact operating "legitimately" according to EMI, all of their other partners and legal precedent. Is Universal's approval the arbiter of legitimacy?
It's the fact that streaming digital audio consists of making multiple copies of the same bits that allows them to call it (recording) copyright infringement.
Purchasing music under a personal license doesn't allow one to broadcast or perform the work, so the justification is off.
And it's actually considered the same thing for web streaming — it doesn't have all that much to do with copies. By law webcasting falls under a performance so webcasters are on the hook for both publishing and performance royalties. (Radio gets a waiver on performance royalties and only pays publishing. So the composers get paid, but not necessarily the performers.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_radio#US_royalty_contr...
Actually, yes. Bar do get sued when they haven't licensed the music properly, and I recall hearing of instances of them being sued successfully merely for having music played over the radio to a large audience, because it wasn't licensed correctly. Of course, it's only the large labels who actually have the resources to do this; bands would probably generally be okay with it (exposure, increasing the chance of people buying their records or going to their shows).
Read the licence on your cd's. You're NOT allowed to do this without explicit permission.
Also, I wasn't talking about playing a CD: I was talking about streaming Grooveshark in public. This has different implications due to the DMCA.
The courts didn't seem to think much of license stickers on CDs.
https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2011/01/04-0
That said, there are provisions in copyright law that govern public public performance that they can rely upon, without needing their license stickers to be valid.
http://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later
"The organization also targeted a fully disabled widow and veteran for downloading over 500 songs she already owned. The veteran’s mobility was limited; by downloading the songs onto her computer, she was able to access the music in the room in which she primarily resides. The RIAA offered to settle for $2,000, but only if the veteran provided a wealth of private information regarding her disability and her finances"
If Grooveshark has found a legal loophole that will let this disabled widow listen to her music in comfort, which she already purchased once, more power to them. Sign me up for as many petitions as I can legally sign.
1. Content owners are stifling innovation in the industry as they try and bolster dying business models. This applies to content including music, TV, movies and books; and
2. Intellectual property, particularly in the US, is a complete mess (which this is but a part of).
(2) is important but let's not lose sight of the fact that if the industries themselves were forward thinking, this wouldn't even be a problem. (2) simply allows them to be somewhat more of a problem than they would be otherwise.
The state allows IP so that creators can be rewarded for their efforts in the hopes that this will allow various industries to flourish.
But such IP has limits. Patents can't be granted on certain things. For example, India does not allow patents on certain (all?) pharmaceuticals because it views low-cost health care for its citizens as being more in the national interest.
The US does not allow the patenting of nuclear technology.
Copyright has term limits, typically being X years after the death of the creator, although lobbying has steadily increased this limit (the so-called "Mickey Mouse" law).
The idea is that at some point copyrighted works will pass into the public domain because that's in the public's interest without needlessly enriching countless descendants of the creators.
Copyright has other limits: fair use, use by nonprofits, education use and so on.
You may not even be aware that there is such a thing as compulsory licensing [1], which allows you to pay statutory royalties and use something without permission for certain enumerated purposes.
Basically, copyright (or any IP for that matter) is not absolute. So we're simply haggling over what those limits are.
As an aside, the content creators themselves, apart from a very few, don't derive significant economic benefit from their works (particularly in the music industry). What you're really doing is simply protecting the intermediaries (being the record companies).
So arguing that they have the right is not only incorrect but it misses the point entirely: those rights exist by the grace of the state for the perceived (alleged?) national interest.
"Stifling innovation" is not really something worth arguing about (in the sense of having a right to do so). Any protected industry fighting the tide still loses in the end. The genie never goes back in the bottle.
Look at the millions spent on lobbying Congress to pass crazy laws, abuse of the judicial system for mass lawsuits, PR campaigns and so on. Have they stamped out piracy? No. Have they killed the idea of and the desire to download content over the Internet so we can all go back to buying CDs from the corner record store? Hardly.
The writing is on the wall. So legislation is important too obviously but here it's only an issue because the various industries are so intransigent to the inevitability of change.
Also I'm not arguing for or against the whole RIAA thing, I think it's moronic how they refuse to innovate and (in my opinion) make more money, however my own opinion of how stupid they're being shouldn't over-ride the (moral/ethical) "rights" of a content creator. If I make something I sure as hell want to decide what happens with it.
I think there's a huge moral difference between your right to your shoes and your right to some idea. Here are some things that make it hard to believe IP is a good fundamental right (in the sense of Locke):
* Bob and Joe on opposite sides of the world have no problem with each owning a pair of shoes. But if Bob invents a device on Tuesday, and Joe independently invents in on Wednesday, why should Bob get everything and Joe nothing? Yes, from a practical standpoint it's necessary to give patents solely to the first-mover; otherwise people would pretend to invent existing things. But why should time-of-invention matter morally...at all?
* Should Shakespeare's heirs (or, more realistically, a copyright-holding corporation) really be able to dictate how his plays are used today? And forever? If not, what moral principle would we use to choose a time limit?
* Why, if IP is a moral right, are mathematical theorems not ownable?
* It's not to hard to distinguish things which are physically ownable, but where does one draw the line with IP? How detailed must my graphic design be for it to be mine forever? Can I own all green squares, or only green squares inside of blue hexagons? Legally, the threshold for copyright is set to try to maximize societal benefit. But if copyrights are moral rights existing independent of any legal framework, on what moral principle could one decide what's copyright-able?
This is your axiom that others don't necessarily hold to be true, and the root of most IP disagreements.
If they ever did -- which they didn't -- they don't now. Deal with it, and get over it.