The reality is more and more services will switch to the 'client-side-encrypted' model and then you're left trying to stomp out easily replicated and anonymously sharable lists of pointers to legally stored encrypted blobs. Good luck with that.<p>From an ideological point it seems hard to rationalize. We pretty much have an obligation to fix copyright law, build a digital Alexandria, and give it to the world. For Free. All art, movies, music, books, educational materials, everything. Free. We can figure out another way to reward creators without creating artificial marketplaces that demand most go without so the few left have reason to spend.<p>If we're going to fuck up the climate for later generations - I think we can manage to at least figure this out. It's pretty low hanging fruit from a technical perspective.
It's interesting (at least to me) to think that without the likes of Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, Grooveshark, Pandora, etc. we would not have gotten to a place where the music industry is willing to play ball at Spotify's level. It's too bad that there was a lot of collateral damage in the process.
WARNING - the Grooveshark founders were <i></i>Personally<i></i> liable for the copyright infringement. This means its not just the Grooveshark company that has to pay the fine, but cofounders Tarantino and Greenberg will need to pay out of their own pockets.<p>From Pages 54-56 of the decision:<p>> Here, defendants Tarantino and Greenberg satisfy the criteria for corporate officer liability. Tarantino and Greenberg are the co-founders of Escape. Tarantino is the Chief Executive Officer and Greenberg is the Chief Technology Officer. Together, Tarantino and Greenberg manage all aspects of Escape’s business. They both directed the infringements at issue in the present litigation by: (1) creating a business model that was based upon the unlicensed sharing of copyright protected material; (2) sending written instructions to the entire company requiring employees to operate “seeding points” so that they could launch the Grooveshark P2P Network; (3) creating the Central Music Library and directing employees to upload files to the Library; (4) deciding to launch the Grooveshark Lite streaming service and instructing Escape employees to upload files for that service; and (5) personally uploading copyrighted protected material, Moreover, they both have a substantial equity interest in Groovershark and thus, directly benefit from the infringing activity.
I never really agreed with the whole "ignore copyright law" approach. I think tech companies in our increasingly examined world need to stand for righteousness and integrity.<p>The power of tech and ramping up of robotics is going to bring the pressure of public opinion on us all very soon -- we need to be on the right side of the fence, and so, although I enjoyed the technical capabilities and innovation from Grooveshark, I'm glad they've lost the war.<p>The founders are still smart and will be able to continue to do great things. They've proven their ability to build/design a functioning, beautiful product and amass an very large audience. Excited to see what is next...
Whelp, time to export my playlist-metadata so I can find the songs again:<p><a href="http://groovebackup.com/" rel="nofollow">http://groovebackup.com/</a>
Content, like code, should be free!<p>We also need a judge somewhere to rule against the shark who hijacked the Groovy codebase and turned it all into something it wasn't originally intended to be - surely that's a copyright infringement. Instead of a specified language with many open source implementations and much documentation as per its creator's vision, it's all being controlled by one corporate with hardly anyone contributing. The project person who makes the announcements is now using his own personal blog instead of the public mailing list to announce new versions, and is trying to replace the open communication channels by soliciting for subscribers to a personal mailout that mostly contains links to tweets.
I don't see how the judge could rule against Grooveshark. How is Grooveshark any different from Youtube, for instance?<p>The only difference is that the users, on their own, upload much less of their own content on Grooveshark than they do on Youtube. The users are more prone to upload illegal work.<p>But that seems like an arbitrary reason to make this ruling. It's unfortunate that the law can be so vague and ill-defined, and arbitrarily interpreted, usually to the benefit of larger corporations.
When will we stop hobbling ourselves with copyright? It's used to harass people or guarantee profits (or both; the evidence that copyright infringement has an effect on profits is debatable).
The failed business models of publishers is not my problem.
Awww, I loved their Programming broadcast. I originally went to groovshark after turntable.fm shut down. Now where should I go for a programmer radio stream?
Digital Music News has a copy of the decision. Fascinating stuff:
<a href="http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/umg_escape_140929Decision.pdf?638cab" rel="nofollow">http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/u...</a><p>Also, Paul Resnikoff's take on the story:
<a href="http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/29/breaking-grooveshark-found-guilty-massive-copyright-infringement" rel="nofollow">http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/29/breakin...</a>