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Can anyone explain exactly why this is sinister? If the label is aware of the price they're selling the license at and buying the data, where is the unfair dece

Can anyone explain exactly why this is sinister? If the label is aware of the price they're selling the license at and buying the data, where is the unfair deception?

nathanb 15y ago
The second paragraph, if I'm reading it correctly, details how they don't report streaming data to the labels until they have enough data to guarantee that they can charge labels more than the cost of streaming the songs. I imagine the labels don't particularly care for this behavior, and history (specifically Grooveshark's history) seems to have borne this out.
- tantalor 15y ago
  > they don't report streaming data What do you mean? How did you arrive at this conclusion? Whether they are obligated to "report streaming data" is up to their contract, not ethics.
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    > Whether they are obligated to "report streaming data" is up to their contract, not ethics. There is no contract. Users upload the music the service is streaming to everyone. Most of that music is copyrighted and the company has no license (or any other contract) allowing them to stream it. They expected to eventually be sued by one or more labels for doing this. They also expected to have enough data by then to use it to negotiate a contract where they actually make money while legally licensing the music.
    - tantalor 15y ago
      > the company has no license Did I miss this part? Source, please.
      - dangrossman 15y ago
        > Source, please. Common sense, Wikipedia, previous lawsuits against the company, this lawsuit in question. Feel free to Google. It's not all unlicensed, but their catalog is built upon user uploads (and from previous court cases, from their own execs uploading music they have no license to), not just a database of music they licensed like a legal music store/service. The UMG lawsuit alone alleges Grooveshark employees uploaded over 100,000 files they had no license to. There was no contract then, they just expected to have enough listening data to make a profitable licensing deal on that music... which might've worked if it didn't come out in discovery of a year old lawsuit that it was Grooveshark employees and not users that uploaded so much of the music. No DMCA protection for that.
        ricardobeat 15y ago
        Well, that's what UMG alleges based on a comment in a blog. If you look at http://blog.grooveshark.com http://blog.grooveshark.com it's evident they have deals with plenty of labels. They already said Grooveshark intends to fight this battle before the Court, not in the press, so we are threading on thin assumptions here.
        redthrowaway 15y ago
        They have deals with lots of tiny independents. They do not have deals with the big boys. Guess whose music forms the bulk of their streams?
        ricardobeat 15y ago
        EMI is the world's 4th largest record label. Interestingly they are selling it to Universal, so now UMG has both a licensing deal and a lawsuit with GrooveShark...
hapless 15y ago
They weren't licensing anything. They were relying on DMCA safe harbor provisions to protect them from infringement suits. The problem is that the executive e-mail indicates plain as day that they were ineligible for that safe harbor in at least two ways: they knew of and were profiting from infringement. Who could have guessed that basing a business on copyright infringement might get you sued for copyright infringement?
- tantalor 15y ago
  The email says "we use the label’s songs", "the data we got from them", "we pay them". This suggests they were getting the label's data from the label and paying the label. That seems like a license to me.
  - hapless 15y ago
    The e-mail implies that their plan was to knowingly infringe for months/years before negotiating a license. They could then use the data gained from (infringing) streaming/uploads as a bargaining chip while negotiating the license.
    - tantalor 15y ago
      I think the email is ambiguously worded. I read it as, "we license their songs, and then we license the usage data back to them at a higher rate once it reaches some threshold." You apparently read it as, "we infringe until we have enough usage data, and then we negotiate a contract where they pay us." The few ambiguous parts are, 1. Whether "we use the label’s songs" means to license or to infringe. 2. Whether "the data we got from them" is licensed or infringement. 3. Whether "what we pay them" means what they had paid in license fees up to that point, or the terms of the negotiated license.
      - pyre 15y ago
        You're missing: > we are achieving all this growth without paying > a dime to any of the labels and > In our case, we use the label’s songs till > we get a 100 (million) uniques Combined these statements make it less ambiguous.

Can anyone explain exactly why this is sinister? If the label is aware of the price they're selling the license at and buying the data, where is the unfair deception?

nathanb 15y ago

The second paragraph, if I'm reading it correctly, details how they don't report streaming data to the labels until they have enough data to guarantee that they can charge labels more than the cost of streaming the songs. I imagine the labels don't particularly care for this behavior, and history (specifically Grooveshark's history) seems to have borne this out.

tantalor 15y ago
> they don't report streaming data What do you mean? How did you arrive at this conclusion? Whether they are obligated to "report streaming data" is up to their contract, not ethics.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  > Whether they are obligated to "report streaming data" is up to their contract, not ethics. There is no contract. Users upload the music the service is streaming to everyone. Most of that music is copyrighted and the company has no license (or any other contract) allowing them to stream it. They expected to eventually be sued by one or more labels for doing this. They also expected to have enough data by then to use it to negotiate a contract where they actually make money while legally licensing the music.
  - tantalor 15y ago
    > the company has no license Did I miss this part? Source, please.
    - dangrossman 15y ago
      > Source, please. Common sense, Wikipedia, previous lawsuits against the company, this lawsuit in question. Feel free to Google. It's not all unlicensed, but their catalog is built upon user uploads (and from previous court cases, from their own execs uploading music they have no license to), not just a database of music they licensed like a legal music store/service. The UMG lawsuit alone alleges Grooveshark employees uploaded over 100,000 files they had no license to. There was no contract then, they just expected to have enough listening data to make a profitable licensing deal on that music... which might've worked if it didn't come out in discovery of a year old lawsuit that it was Grooveshark employees and not users that uploaded so much of the music. No DMCA protection for that.
      - ricardobeat 15y ago
        Well, that's what UMG alleges based on a comment in a blog. If you look at http://blog.grooveshark.com http://blog.grooveshark.com it's evident they have deals with plenty of labels. They already said Grooveshark intends to fight this battle before the Court, not in the press, so we are threading on thin assumptions here.
        redthrowaway 15y ago
        They have deals with lots of tiny independents. They do not have deals with the big boys. Guess whose music forms the bulk of their streams?
        ricardobeat 15y ago
        EMI is the world's 4th largest record label. Interestingly they are selling it to Universal, so now UMG has both a licensing deal and a lawsuit with GrooveShark...

hapless 15y ago

They weren't licensing anything. They were relying on DMCA safe harbor provisions to protect them from infringement suits. The problem is that the executive e-mail indicates plain as day that they were ineligible for that safe harbor in at least two ways: they knew of and were profiting from infringement. Who could have guessed that basing a business on copyright infringement might get you sued for copyright infringement?

tantalor 15y ago
The email says "we use the label’s songs", "the data we got from them", "we pay them". This suggests they were getting the label's data from the label and paying the label. That seems like a license to me.
- hapless 15y ago
  The e-mail implies that their plan was to knowingly infringe for months/years before negotiating a license. They could then use the data gained from (infringing) streaming/uploads as a bargaining chip while negotiating the license.
  - tantalor 15y ago
    I think the email is ambiguously worded. I read it as, "we license their songs, and then we license the usage data back to them at a higher rate once it reaches some threshold." You apparently read it as, "we infringe until we have enough usage data, and then we negotiate a contract where they pay us." The few ambiguous parts are, 1. Whether "we use the label’s songs" means to license or to infringe. 2. Whether "the data we got from them" is licensed or infringement. 3. Whether "what we pay them" means what they had paid in license fees up to that point, or the terms of the negotiated license.
    - pyre 15y ago
      You're missing: > we are achieving all this growth without paying > a dime to any of the labels and > In our case, we use the label’s songs till > we get a 100 (million) uniques Combined these statements make it less ambiguous.