Google wins lawsuit over lyrics being stolen from a song writer's website.

[wall03]

Summary

 

Last year, the song lyrics web service Genius sued Google alleging that the tech giant has been ripping off its transcriptions for display in its own lucrative search results. It seemed like an open-and-shut case. Thanks to some crafty watermarking, it appeared that Google was caught dead to rights in the lyric thievery. But on Monday, the Copyright Act got in the way of Genius’s litigation dreams.

 

Quotes

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After it began to suspect that Google was circumventing the need for anyone to visit its website, Genius decided to insert some digital watermarks in its lyrics including one that spelled out “redhanded” in Morse code. Those watermarks showed up in Google’s search results, and Genius Media Group proceeded to filed a complaint citing numerous examples of Google stealing its transcriptions. For its part, Google denied engaging in any scraping practices and pointed to the fact that it uses third parties to gather lyrics when they aren’t provided directly by the publisher. One of those third parties, LyricFind, was a co-defendant in Genius’s complaint, and it admitted in a blog post that it may have “unknowingly sourced Genius lyrics from another location.”

Months later, the decision is in, and U.S. District Court Judge Margo Brodie has decided to dismiss the case altogether.

Judge Brodie’s order doesn’t claim that Google isn’t guilty of pilfering Genius’s transcriptions; instead, it exposes the shaky legal ground of the lawsuit itself. The primary problem is that because Genius licenses the publishing rights to song lyrics, it can’t really claim that Google is violating its copyright. The issue that Genius is raising is that it spends a lot of money transcribing lyrics after it goes through the proper licensing channels. It believes that Google is stealing that money and labor through scraping.

 

This is where a bunch of legal and jurisdictional crap came into play, and the bottom line is that Genius had to go with a claim that Google violated its terms of service.

 

My thoughts

I think that Google should not take people's revenue away by taking away the need to go to a website, let alone a monetized one. I wish Google has lost this one, except legally they win.

 

Sources

https://gizmodo.com/google-was-caught-redhanded-in-genius-lyrics-theft-b-1844689319

[Skipple]

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The primary problem is that because Genius licenses the publishing rights to song lyrics, it can’t really claim that Google is violating its copyright. 

So if I am understanding this correctly... It's the record labels that need to go after Google here for infringing copy-write? That sounds like a much more serious issue for Google than simply C&Ping some data. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

OMG WTAF?

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, wall03 said:

 

My thoughts

I think that Google should not take people's revenue away by taking away the need to go to a website, let alone a monetized one. I wish Google has lost this one.

 

Sources

https://gizmodo.com/google-was-caught-redhanded-in-genius-lyrics-theft-b-1844689319

Whilst I wish they had been held to account for their practice, the decision was right, copyright law is written to protect the owner of the content only.  We can't have precedent set where people who only hold a license can start suing. 

[yolosnail]

Google's lyrics are useless anyway, whenever I've tried to find lyrics to a song it's never been the full song listed, there's always at least one verse missing at the end