9 ms·

The Grooveshark Settlement [pdf]

69 points by hxn 11y ago

therobot24 11y ago
50 mil...ouch
- psykovsky 11y ago
  From what I understand those 50 millions will only be paid with assets from grooveshark. If groovershark the company doesn't have assets to cover the 50 million they will not get paid and also can't get paid from the individuals.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  There have been large settlements in the past that turned out to be false. They want a high number for shock value, but nobody's actually paying it. (There was something to that effect in the sony docs iirc.) See: Hotfile, Isohunt, etc.
  - idyllicshine 11y ago
    Sounds like a player getting eliminated at the end of a Monopoly game when one owes a lot of money and goes bankrupt.
- radley 11y ago
  Keep in mind that the founders were also sued personally (it's a common tactic by the labels). The leverage of the settlement was to keep the entirety of the 50M due within the company and not be personally liable as individuals for the amount (for life).
Osaka 11y ago
I'm curious to know what will happen with all the user data on their systems. There was a site floating around which allowed you to access your playlist information just by entering your account email. I assume that was old public data. And with services like this, is there any threat to users who access 'illegal' material?
- detaro 11y ago
  I thought I read that the site pulled the info from the browser's local storage. EDIT: which they obviously shouldn't be able to do. So they probably scraped it, right.
  - rawnlq 11y ago
    A different domain can't possibly access the local storage for grooveshark.com right?
    - Jgrubb 11y ago
      You are correct.
    - detaro 11y ago
      Good point. People discussed different ways to get to the parts stored in localstorage, but that obviously only should work locally. Since Groovebackup got shutdown as well we can't check what they did.
      - forthefuture 11y ago
        You can still go to grooveshark.com and see your localStorage.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Vintila 11y ago
I find it interesting that by virtue of point 5, they are not allowed to open source anything related to Grooveshark. Unless I'm interpreting it wrong.
- radley 11y ago
  You're not. It's to prevent Grooveshark from becoming the next Popcorn Time.
legutierr 11y ago
Two thoughts on this. First: I was an occasional user of Grooveshark, and whenever I used the service (which had a brilliant UI, by the way) I found myself wondering how they could still be operating, given that they weren't licensed by the major labels. It felt like Napster in a web app, only more centralized (and thus, easier to take down, one would think). Well, the answer seems to be that they have been fighting the major labels in the court this whole time (~5 years). Unlike maybe everyone else who has faced up against the major labels, Grooveshark forced them to fight. When the labels didn't give them a licensing deal, and told them to stop operating, Grooveshark responded, "Make us." They created their tech, built a loyal following, grew their business, all the while fighting this lawsuit. In the end, the only thing that stopped them from pursuing their vision was a judges' order. This settlement seems to be a judge-mediated settlement of only the damages portion of the trial after liability had been established. It seems that the judge ruled against Grooveshark by summary judgement in September, which means they have known for more than 7 months that this was inevitable. They shut down their service 2 days ago. People have called Grooveshark "shady", and many people believe that their business model was "illegal". Both adjectives may be accurate descriptions. I think the best adjective to describe these guys, however, is "gutsy". Second: The front-end system that Grooveshark built, which is the best that I have used for music playback and discovery, is now jointly owned by the major labels. They cannot possibly be short-sighted enough just to throw that away. Will we see Grooveshark resurrected as a label-owed alternative to Spotify, et al? Will they try to maintain any portion of the Grooveshark organization, especially the engineering team? Again, they would be foolish not to try, although maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
- Confusion 11y ago
  Spotify is effectively label-owned.
- Lazare 11y ago
  > The front-end system that Grooveshark built [...] is now jointly owned by the major labels. They cannot possibly be short-sighted enough just to throw that away. Uhhh. I'm honestly confused. Is this sarcasm? Because if there's one thing that major labels have demonstrated, it's a willingness to be short-sighted.
arihant 11y ago
The message they posted a day before this settlement - http://grooveshark.com/ http://grooveshark.com/ I'm confused, didn't Grooveshark just provided aggregation and a streaming player with playlist management? The music was not hosted by Grooveshark right?
- LiquidFlux 11y ago
  I thought you could upload to Grooveshark.
  - JensenDied 11y ago
    You could, I've uploaded stuff from some bands home burned demo discs before. I probably don't have access to any of that stuff anywhere now.
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  I remember reading that after rights-owners requested certain songs taken down, Grooveshark employees would re-upload them to the service. This made them lose safe-harbor provisions for hosting third-party content.
FreakyT 11y ago
It's really unfortunate that they were taken down. Sure, there exist paid services like Spotify, but when there's only licensable content you miss out on all weird obscure stuff that Grooveshark had, like video game soundtracks, chiptunes, and international music not licensed abroad. If only every one of these large record labels could just instantly go out of business, simultaneously. That would be wonderful...
- whichfawkes 11y ago
  I'd be perfectly happy to pay for music streaming like I pay for Netflix: unlimited access for a flat monthly fee. However, I'm not willing to pay for a monthly service from every individual record label I want to listen to, and still miss out on content I want. Unfortunately, I don't think it's very likely that a paid service which behaves in a more legitimate way than Grooveshark can really have all of the content in one place, because of all of the agreements necessary. For some reason I don't mind Netflix having only a subset of TV shows and movies, but I would mind a music service that doesn't have a nearly-complete catalog of everything I might want. I don't want to have to care what label owns the tracks. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by having Grooveshark for so long.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Isn't that a weird thing to say? You pay for Netflix. Far more so than for Spotify or Rdio, you miss tons of content, so much so that there are regular columns on Slate about what good movies are coming and going from the service every month. Netflix has extraordinarily spotty coverage; it's like a version of Spotify where they have Pixies albums, but only every other song from the albums. The difference in entitlement (I don't mean that as a loaded term) between music and video services is interesting to me.
    - whichfawkes 11y ago
      I know exactly what you mean. Perhaps it has something to do with decades of TV being available over the air, and over different varying cable packages. People are used to the idea that if you don't pay for cable you can watch a subset of TV shows, and if you do pay for cable, you're only buying a subset of the channels. Music has always been free on the radio, but it works differently. Multiple radio stations might play the same song if it's within their genre. This is in contrast to multiple TV stations which own non-overlapping programming. You can't find ABC programming on CBS, but you can hear the Pixies on multiple radio stations. To rephrase a little: Television content distribution has always been linked to the owner of the content. The networks that buy the programs distribute them exclusively. Music distribution is often separate from the ownership, and is based on royalties. Anyone can play any music, as long as they pay the royalties. As such, nobody is used to having to think about who owns the work of a certain artist they want to listen to.
darylyu 11y ago
Is there a tl;dr version in simple English?
acaloiar 11y ago
Can anyone comment on the potential implications for Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, and Amazon Prime Music? Each of these services allow users to upload content from their personal libraries. As far as I know, these services make no technological effort to assert the users' ownership of the content. Rather, I assume their Terms of Service mandate content ownership prior to uploading. Do their TOSs protect them from the complaint levied by the Plaintiffs in the Groovershark case stating that Groovershark was: "liable for direct and secondary infringement of certain of the Plaintiffs' copyrighted works;". Was Grooveshark's TOS materially different than that of the services mentioned above? If I were to illegally upload a copyrighted work to Prime, iTunes, or Play; would I expose the parent companies to any liability or is the legal onus entirely on me as the user infringing on the TOS?

69 points by hxn 11y ago

therobot24 11y ago

50 mil...ouch

psykovsky 11y ago
From what I understand those 50 millions will only be paid with assets from grooveshark. If groovershark the company doesn't have assets to cover the 50 million they will not get paid and also can't get paid from the individuals.
ikeboy 11y ago
There have been large settlements in the past that turned out to be false. They want a high number for shock value, but nobody's actually paying it. (There was something to that effect in the sony docs iirc.) See: Hotfile, Isohunt, etc.
- idyllicshine 11y ago
  Sounds like a player getting eliminated at the end of a Monopoly game when one owes a lot of money and goes bankrupt.
radley 11y ago
Keep in mind that the founders were also sued personally (it's a common tactic by the labels). The leverage of the settlement was to keep the entirety of the 50M due within the company and not be personally liable as individuals for the amount (for life).

Osaka 11y ago

I'm curious to know what will happen with all the user data on their systems. There was a site floating around which allowed you to access your playlist information just by entering your account email. I assume that was old public data. And with services like this, is there any threat to users who access 'illegal' material?

detaro 11y ago
I thought I read that the site pulled the info from the browser's local storage. EDIT: which they obviously shouldn't be able to do. So they probably scraped it, right.
- rawnlq 11y ago
  A different domain can't possibly access the local storage for grooveshark.com right?
  - Jgrubb 11y ago
    You are correct.
  - detaro 11y ago
    Good point. People discussed different ways to get to the parts stored in localstorage, but that obviously only should work locally. Since Groovebackup got shutdown as well we can't check what they did.
    - forthefuture 11y ago
      You can still go to grooveshark.com and see your localStorage.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Vintila 11y ago

I find it interesting that by virtue of point 5, they are not allowed to open source anything related to Grooveshark. Unless I'm interpreting it wrong.

radley 11y ago
You're not. It's to prevent Grooveshark from becoming the next Popcorn Time.

legutierr 11y ago

Two thoughts on this. First: I was an occasional user of Grooveshark, and whenever I used the service (which had a brilliant UI, by the way) I found myself wondering how they could still be operating, given that they weren't licensed by the major labels. It felt like Napster in a web app, only more centralized (and thus, easier to take down, one would think). Well, the answer seems to be that they have been fighting the major labels in the court this whole time (~5 years). Unlike maybe everyone else who has faced up against the major labels, Grooveshark forced them to fight. When the labels didn't give them a licensing deal, and told them to stop operating, Grooveshark responded, "Make us." They created their tech, built a loyal following, grew their business, all the while fighting this lawsuit. In the end, the only thing that stopped them from pursuing their vision was a judges' order. This settlement seems to be a judge-mediated settlement of only the damages portion of the trial after liability had been established. It seems that the judge ruled against Grooveshark by summary judgement in September, which means they have known for more than 7 months that this was inevitable. They shut down their service 2 days ago. People have called Grooveshark "shady", and many people believe that their business model was "illegal". Both adjectives may be accurate descriptions. I think the best adjective to describe these guys, however, is "gutsy". Second: The front-end system that Grooveshark built, which is the best that I have used for music playback and discovery, is now jointly owned by the major labels. They cannot possibly be short-sighted enough just to throw that away. Will we see Grooveshark resurrected as a label-owed alternative to Spotify, et al? Will they try to maintain any portion of the Grooveshark organization, especially the engineering team? Again, they would be foolish not to try, although maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

Confusion 11y ago
Spotify is effectively label-owned.
Lazare 11y ago
> The front-end system that Grooveshark built [...] is now jointly owned by the major labels. They cannot possibly be short-sighted enough just to throw that away. Uhhh. I'm honestly confused. Is this sarcasm? Because if there's one thing that major labels have demonstrated, it's a willingness to be short-sighted.

arihant 11y ago

The message they posted a day before this settlement - http://grooveshark.com/ http://grooveshark.com/ I'm confused, didn't Grooveshark just provided aggregation and a streaming player with playlist management? The music was not hosted by Grooveshark right?

LiquidFlux 11y ago
I thought you could upload to Grooveshark.
- JensenDied 11y ago
  You could, I've uploaded stuff from some bands home burned demo discs before. I probably don't have access to any of that stuff anywhere now.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
I remember reading that after rights-owners requested certain songs taken down, Grooveshark employees would re-upload them to the service. This made them lose safe-harbor provisions for hosting third-party content.

FreakyT 11y ago

It's really unfortunate that they were taken down. Sure, there exist paid services like Spotify, but when there's only licensable content you miss out on all weird obscure stuff that Grooveshark had, like video game soundtracks, chiptunes, and international music not licensed abroad. If only every one of these large record labels could just instantly go out of business, simultaneously. That would be wonderful...

whichfawkes 11y ago
I'd be perfectly happy to pay for music streaming like I pay for Netflix: unlimited access for a flat monthly fee. However, I'm not willing to pay for a monthly service from every individual record label I want to listen to, and still miss out on content I want. Unfortunately, I don't think it's very likely that a paid service which behaves in a more legitimate way than Grooveshark can really have all of the content in one place, because of all of the agreements necessary. For some reason I don't mind Netflix having only a subset of TV shows and movies, but I would mind a music service that doesn't have a nearly-complete catalog of everything I might want. I don't want to have to care what label owns the tracks. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by having Grooveshark for so long.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Isn't that a weird thing to say? You pay for Netflix. Far more so than for Spotify or Rdio, you miss tons of content, so much so that there are regular columns on Slate about what good movies are coming and going from the service every month. Netflix has extraordinarily spotty coverage; it's like a version of Spotify where they have Pixies albums, but only every other song from the albums. The difference in entitlement (I don't mean that as a loaded term) between music and video services is interesting to me.
  - whichfawkes 11y ago
    I know exactly what you mean. Perhaps it has something to do with decades of TV being available over the air, and over different varying cable packages. People are used to the idea that if you don't pay for cable you can watch a subset of TV shows, and if you do pay for cable, you're only buying a subset of the channels. Music has always been free on the radio, but it works differently. Multiple radio stations might play the same song if it's within their genre. This is in contrast to multiple TV stations which own non-overlapping programming. You can't find ABC programming on CBS, but you can hear the Pixies on multiple radio stations. To rephrase a little: Television content distribution has always been linked to the owner of the content. The networks that buy the programs distribute them exclusively. Music distribution is often separate from the ownership, and is based on royalties. Anyone can play any music, as long as they pay the royalties. As such, nobody is used to having to think about who owns the work of a certain artist they want to listen to.

darylyu 11y ago

Is there a tl;dr version in simple English?

acaloiar 11y ago

Can anyone comment on the potential implications for Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, and Amazon Prime Music? Each of these services allow users to upload content from their personal libraries. As far as I know, these services make no technological effort to assert the users' ownership of the content. Rather, I assume their Terms of Service mandate content ownership prior to uploading. Do their TOSs protect them from the complaint levied by the Plaintiffs in the Groovershark case stating that Groovershark was: "liable for direct and secondary infringement of certain of the Plaintiffs' copyrighted works;". Was Grooveshark's TOS materially different than that of the services mentioned above? If I were to illegally upload a copyrighted work to Prime, iTunes, or Play; would I expose the parent companies to any liability or is the legal onus entirely on me as the user infringing on the TOS?