Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how Genius has any chance if winning this lawsuit.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is this:

1) Genius does not hold a copyright on any of these lyrics

2) Genius licenses these lyrics, and that license is not an exclusive one.

3) Google does not hold a copyright on these lyrics

4) Google licenses these lyrics, and that license is not an exclusive one.

5) "Watermarking" lyrics is not enough to get a derivative work copyright

As both parties have non-exclusive licenses and neither own the copyright, I really don't see how Genius has any chance of winning this case. As best as I can tell, it would be perfectly legal for Google to purposefully and specifically copy the lyrics from Genius.

Edit: Reading through the filing, they seem to basically be suing them for violating their website's TOS and some 'unfair practices' laws local to California and New York. I am unsure of how legally binding TOS are for websites in general, and whether or not being able to view lyrics without ever viewing the TOS effects things, etc.

> Genius does not hold a copyright on any of these lyrics

It's worse. They started out by stealing and scraping these lyrics from other websites.

This lawsuit isn't about copyright. It's about violating Genius' TOS and anticompetitive behavior.

Google never signed a contract with Genius? How would violating a terms of use they were never subject to be illegal?

Would it be ok to scrape google's results and distribute them, while saying you don't accept their TOS? It's a bit like not paying taxes and saying you didn't sign up for that. Who knows, maybe that's the way forward

I am not a lawyer. But I think this was settled with the LinkedIn lawsuit. Yes, it's perfectly fine to scrape public facing information.

Yes, it's been well established that accessing a site is not the same as accepting it's TOS. And That's why Google and any competent site know it's their responsibility to detect scraping and suspicious behavior and block it themselves.

You mean like Startpage.com does?

> Would it be ok to scrape google's results and distribute them, while saying you don't accept their TOS? It's a bit like not paying taxes and saying you didn't sign up for that.

When Google has the ability to levy taxes, things will be very different all over.

That's an amusing example.

You are aware that Google scrapes almost every page on the internet, without having any agreement with most of them, right?

Yes, you can add noindex and robots.txt to tell them you'd like to opt-out, but:

a) That only works so well, and b) they're default is to use your page without your permission.

The lawsuit is about Genius having failed to live up to the valuation it raised money at and the expectations for future potential. They've contracted back to being an annotated lyric site and there is nowhere near enough business there to prop up a multi hundred million dollar valuation (much less higher). The conquer the world through annotations plan didn't pan out, at all.

They're lucky if they're worth 1/10th their peak valuation currently. So now they're going to stretch in any direction they can for a couple bucks before the lights go out or they're force-sold by the VCs to whatever company will buy it for spare change. Maybe they're hoping Google will open up their pockets and take care of that problem.

Either way, this is the last gasp of a failed (entirely worthy) experiment at getting the masses to annotate everything.

If you ever need to sue somebody for stealing your work, I hope the judge doesn't have the same attitude as you're having right now.

Are you implying that Genius wrote all those songs?

They didn't write the songs, they transcribed the lyrics though.

Source? They likely licensed the lyrics from someone else, which is very different from being "your work"

When you license lyrics, you don't necessarily get the actual written words to use (the lyrics).

You simply get permission to use the lyrics.

Genius volunteers listen to music and write down their interpretation (punctuation, spelling, spacing etc.)

Genius has a TOS to prevent republication of their content.

Genius started the lawsuit because they claim Google violates this TOS by duplicating Genius's unique transcriptions.

Google specifically claims they are NOT scraping Genius, but Genius claims they have proven that they do with watermarks.

Genius is taking them to court.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYqV5aReGjE

>When you license lyrics, you don't necessarily get the actual written words to use (the lyrics).

Yep

>You simply get permission to use the lyrics.

Also yep.

>Genius volunteers listen to music and write down their interpretation (punctuation, spelling, spacing etc.)

This does not give the volunteers or Genius ownership of the transcribed lyrics.

>Genius has a TOS to prevent republication of their content.

The recent LinkedIn lawsuit seems to set precedent that you cannot enforce a TOS on publicly accessible content like this.

>Genius started the lawsuit because they claim Google violates this TOS by duplicating Genius's unique transcriptions.

Sure. Doesn't mean they have any chance of winning it.

>Google specifically claims they are NOT scraping Genius, but Genius claims they have proven that they do with watermarks.

My understanding is Google is claiming they get their lyrics from a 3rd party. If that's the case, they can certainly say that they aren't scraping Genius themselves.

#5 is disputable.

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