Universal Sues Grooveshark over 100,000 pirated songs no fair use

[fris]

Universal Music has filed a second lawsuit against Grooveshark, the music streaming service that has users upload tracks for others to listen to. According to the lawsuit, during their discovery in their first, still ongoing, lawsuit, they claim to have found evidence that points to Universal tracks being uploaded by employees of Escape Media Group, Grooveshark?s parent company. This includes Grooveshark?s CEO, Samuel Tarantino as well as Benjamin Westermann-Clark and Paul Geller, both VPs, who are accused of uploading 1,000s of tracks each.

Grooveshark, in the first lawsuit, claimed that it is not liable for infringement due to DMCA safe harbor protections, however, if the tracks were uploaded by their employees, those protections would disappear and open Grooveshark up to massive damages. Universal is seeking an injunction against Grooveshark which, if granted, would likely shut the service down.

fair use out the window.

sounds like a lesson for those have their employees uploading content to video sites

[Phoenix]

how long until this thread turns into the usual retards screaming at each other?

[FlexxAeon]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

how long until this thread turns into the usual retards screaming at each other?

Put me on the board for "7 posts"

[epitome]

Which came first? The content or the visitors?

Don't we all come across an empty content sharing site and spend days uploading to help them out?

[Fletch XXX]

imagine gfy without all that stolen youtube content.

what would people link? LOL

[_Richard_]

http://www.google.ca/search?gcx=c&so...paid+royalties - lawsuits against universal unpaid royalties

some amusing reading

[porno jew]

yup there were ex-employees on reddit? saying after they took something down via dmca an employee would reup.

[NaughtyVisions]

Originally Posted by Fletch XXX

imagine gfy without all that stolen youtube content.

what would people link? LOL

[Hentaikid]

I can't imagine under what perspective a site designed to share music wholesale could ever be considered to be fair use. It's not quotation for review, it's not partial use, it's not non commercial or for educational purposes.

Sites with user uploaded content where the users actually have created the content DO exist, it's not that hard.

[CaptainHowdy]

Oh, well ...

[Nautilus]

That site isn't even close to what could be considered a neutral service entitled to safe harbor protection.

[seeandsee]

user uploads, no way its not real?

[L-Pink]

Cut off their hands. Islamic copyright theft punishment.

[bronco67]

There's a lot of people in this world that have the definition of "fair use" twisted to meet their own cheap-ass needs.

[stocktrader23]

Originally Posted by Fletch XXX

imagine gfy without all that stolen youtube content.

what would people link? LOL

Not to mention sidebars, celebrity images and all of the other "borrowed" stuff that is posted here. GFY is not liable, duh.

Originally Posted by Hentaikid

I can't imagine under what perspective a site designed to share music wholesale could ever be considered to be fair use. It's not quotation for review, it's not partial use, it's not non commercial or for educational purposes.

Sites with user uploaded content where the users actually have created the content DO exist, it's not that hard.

Yeah, cause nobody that creates music would ever let you stream it for free. Are you even fucking trying? If you are using third party exemptions you don't have to be for educational purposes, exactly what are you talking about? They are in trouble because they themselves (allegedly) uploaded some content.

Originally Posted by Nautilus

That site isn't even close to what could be considered a neutral service entitled to safe harbor protection.

Yes, yes it is. It is exactly what is covered by safe harbor and exemptions. Ever seen a music video on YouTube? The whole problem is from them supposedly uploading content themselves. Where do you people come up with these off the wall ideas of how this all works?

[2MuchMark]

Originally Posted by fris

fair use out the window.

This is not fair use. This is content theft, pure and simple.

[Paul Markham]

Now if someone could only find out who some of the "users" are on Pornhub.

[backlinks.us]

User uploaded content, yeah right.. The dumbest thing is that those tracks would probably get uploaded anyways, just a bit later.. If you play with fire you get burned..

[fris]

Originally Posted by Paul Markham

Now if someone could only find out who some of the "users" are on Pornhub.

i would think the ips match the desktops of the brazzers office employees

[Nautilus]

Originally Posted by stocktrader23

Yes, yes it is. It is exactly what is covered by safe harbor and exemptions. Ever seen a music video on YouTube? The whole problem is from them supposedly uploading content themselves. Where do you people come up with these off the wall ideas of how this all works?

Youtube is different.

1. Grooveshark sorts content by artists/albums/genres, they even have album covers database, all built into their script, which is specifically designed to "share" music that way. No way you can argue them being a mere neutral storage of bandwidth provider when they build their site with such an obvious targeting.

Youtube has none of the above, aside from search by tags and titles, and some automatic "relevant" suggestions, they have no categorization tools. They're pretty much upload what you want and name and tag it however you want. They're not urging users to upload any title specifically because it is missing after it was taken down by copyright holder, which grooveshark does.

2. Youtube implements digital fingerprinting which is darn effective. They can fingerprint your video (and audio too) if you so wish after you sent them DMCA take down request, or you can fingerprint your whole content library instead of hunting down individual clips, which puts you in complete control of what's going on with your intellectual property at youtube. No reupload tricks will work, DFP would not let them through.

Grooveshark doesn't implement DFP, which is of itself outrageous nowadays when that technology is mature enough to provide practically meaningful results in preventing copyright infringment. They go way beyond that, they maintain meta descriptions library of almost all music in the world, where all entries remain in place even after they receive take down requests. It simply shows that some track is missing now and encourages users to reupload this specific track again, despite them knowing copyright holder does not want it there. How's that neutral, how's that not encouraging infringment? That of itself is enough to make them liable. If they go even further and upload some of the missing tracks themselves because they do not want to wait when their lazy users will do that, that makes matters worse for them of course, much worse, but even without that there's more than enough evidence of them willingly assisting and being an active part of copyright infringment.

[Paul Markham]

Originally Posted by fris

i would think the ips match the desktops of the brazzers office employees

Well someone needs to get a fund going to buy some informants.

[blackmonsters]

Originally Posted by epitome

Which came first? The content or the visitors?

Don't we all come across an empty content sharing site and spend days uploading to help them out?

[Nautilus]

And that "stolen videos from youtube at GFY" argument, is bullshit too. Youtube has DFP which is free and available at any moment to any copyright holder, and they also respond to DMCAs quickly if you're too lazy to fingerprint your whole library, and at least that specific clip will be added to the DFP database so nobody will be able to upload it again.

They also ban repeat infringer accounts, and they warn users not to upload stolen shit at many occasions, which helps too.

Because of that, when you embed from youtube, you know that copyright holders either want their stuff there, or do not care. Or at least you know that they can quickly take care of that infringment if it struck them only yesterday that maybe there's some of their stolen stuff at posted youtube.

Youtube is the SAFEST place on earth to embed from copyright infringment wise. If somebody will attempt to make GFY liable for youtube videos posted there, they can simply state what is written above and walk free. Youtube policies are enough for safe harbor protection, and any site that embeds from youtube can enjoy safe harbor too because of that.

[porno jew]

the point is employees were uploading songs. ex-employees admitted they did so.

[RycEric]

Originally Posted by Nautilus

And that "stolen videos from youtube at GFY" argument, is bullshit too. Youtube has DFP which is free and available at any moment to any copyright holder, and they also respond to DMCAs quickly if you're too lazy to fingerprint your whole library, and at least that specific clip will be added to the DFP database so nobody will be able to upload it again.

They also ban repeat infringer accounts, and they warn users not to upload stolen shit at many occasions, which helps too.

Because of that, when you embed from youtube, you know that copyright holders either want their stuff there, or do not care. Or at least you know that they can quickly take care of that infringment if it struck them only yesterday that maybe there's some of their stolen stuff at posted youtube.

Youtube is the SAFEST place on earth to embed from copyright infringment wise. If somebody will attempt to make GFY liable for youtube videos posted there, they can simply state what is written above and walk free. Youtube policies are enough for safe harbor protection, and any site that embeds from youtube can enjoy safe harbor too because of that.

Quoted for truth. The only real vaible solution to video infringement, on tubes, is content identification taking place on the site itself... ie.. no third parties or CDNs involved. I've being saying this for a long time. Youtube/Myspace video are good examples of this and no charge or hidden 'upsell ad' agendas. In fact they actually contacted some mainstream clients of ours and were literally begging them to upload clips. You'll never see that in porn.

[Nautilus]

Originally Posted by RycEric

You'll never see that in porn.

Well actually that's happening in porn too recently. When they cannot get your content through "user uploads", no matter why, be it because of fingerprinting or simply because you take down your stuff with DMCAs regularly, they start to ask for legal uploads. That was never the case up until maybe several months ago, but thanks to you guys our content is way harder to find on tubes now, and yes, most of them do ask for legal uploads through various forms of "content sharing" programs.

Porn is not THAT different from mainstream in that regard I guess. They also need fresh quality stuff to keep visitors coming, guess older videos are getting, well, old and recycling them doesn't work that great as it once did anymore.

[RycEric]

Originally Posted by Nautilus

Well actually that's happening in porn too recently. When they cannot get your content through "user uploads", no matter why, be it because of fingerprinting or simply because you take down your stuff with DMCAs regularly, they start to ask for legal uploads. That was never the case up until maybe several months ago, but thanks to you guys our content is way harder to find on tubes now, and yes, most of them do ask for legal uploads through various forms of "content sharing" programs.

Porn is not THAT different from mainstream in that regard I guess. They also need fresh quality stuff to keep visitors coming, guess older videos are getting, well, old and recycling them doesn't work that great as it once did anymore.

That's interesting as I was not aware that was occurring on adult tubes. We're certainly going to be the last to know there. Good to hear. As for the recycling, I am seeing that on forums, as well, with bumping of old threads to harvest older content. When you see easy-share coming in as a new link... you know something is up since they already switched to crocko.

[Nautilus]

Originally Posted by RycEric

That's interesting as I was not aware that was occurring on adult tubes. We're certainly going to be the last to know there. Good to hear. As for the recycling, I am seeing that on forums, as well, with bumping of old threads to harvest older content. When you see easy-share coming in as a new link... you know something is up since they already switched to crocko.

Yep

And it is also funny as hell when surfers bitch about not enough new content being posted, and blame it all on "greedy shitposters" who recycle instead of posting new. They got so accustomed to their twisted pirate view of the world during several recent years of rampant piracy it seems they really do not understand that content appears on their hard drives not because some "original poster" posted it, but because it was actually produced in the real world by real producers.

And now that piracy has hit the industrial scale and really affected production, meaning way less of new content is being produced, they're still entrapped in that pirate mentality and expect some "quality posters" will magically appear to cure the problem of not enough new content being posted. Reality check is coming, let's see if the whole army of posters that we have now will be able to actually produce at least ONE new movie. Well, we all know the answer But for pro-piracy surfers it isn't obvious yet.