Genius used watermarks to catch Google stealing its content

Discussed five months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194952

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201139

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20204625

The Twitter thread states that Google has blamed unspecified "data partners" for stealing the content. This is about the "knowledge-graph"-powered infoboxes that sometimes appear on a SERP page. But which "data partner" would be providing Google with lyrics data, and why didn't Google ban them from the platform after they were caught stealing 3rd-party content previously? (Wikidata is one example of a well-known source for Google's KG, but obviously they don't provide any copywritten lyrics. There was a fun instance though where Google would say someone who lived in Ancient Rome is still alive and thousands-of-years old, because Wikidata had no indication that they were dead. It was fixed there by putting in an "unknown value" death date.)

I find it a bit disingenuous to call song lyrics Genius' "content." If anything the content here belongs to the artists who actually wrote these songs, not some website that puts a text version of songs other people wrote on the internet.

Also likely indefensible from any kind of legal standpoint as Genius' can't possibly claim any kind of copyright on song lyrics unless they've licensed these lyrics from their original authors.

Unbelievable! I've always held Google in high regard but this is beyond slimy.