Epic Fail: The War On Piracy
The final chapter in the long, sordid story of the pirate site, Grooveshark, finally played out in a New York Courtroom last week. The principals, after years of litigation, have finally shut down their website and signed an agreement stating they will never own or operate a pirate site again or face millions of dollars in fines.
Guest Post by Will Buckley on Fare Play
“An RIAA statement issued on Thursday (April 30) goes on to say under terms of the settlement, Grooveshark founders Josh Greenberg and Sam Tarantino admit to creating and operating an infringing music service.”
An admission of guilt? That’s it?
The fact that no one connected with Grooveshark will pay any fines or serve any jail time, after operating an illegal enterprise for nearly a decade, is a testament to how ineffective and broken our legal system is when it comes to protecting American artists and their work.
We’ve just sent a message to anyone who wants to start a pirate site that even if you’re caught the consequences are basically an apology.
It gets worse. Grooveshark was shut down, not because our legal system had the necessary laws in place to effectively protect copyright holders, but rather, on a technicality. In their desire to grow their illegal enterprise faster, two of the principals from Grooveshark had instructed their employees to perform illegal activities, leaving a paper trail behind that led to their admission of guilt.
In the don’t ask, don’t tell world of copyright enforcement they had committed the crime of asking their own employees to upload copyrighted songs.
“The company, Grooveshark, has fended off past lawsuits by citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which holds websites blameless for material uploaded by third-party users if the websites respond to takedown requests by copyright owners.”
Like thousands of other pirate sites, Grooveshark had created a multi-million dollar business using the Safe Harbor loophole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA, to make money and avoid prosecution. A law that allows third parties, but not employees, to upload copyrighted work over and over again without legal consequence to the website operators and owners. An out of control policy, where last year alone over 345 million take down notices were filed, with little or no impact on the number of copyrighted works available on infringing sites.
It was reported that one author filed 541 take down notices with a single infringing website to have one of his books removed without success. Instead of stipulating the permanent removal of a specific copyrighted work, the DMCA’s Section 512 dealing with take down notices only requires websites to remove a specific file.
How many years and how many songs have been streamed by Grooveshark as musicians and songwriters stood by unable to do anything to permanently remove their work from the website?
Online piracy is an epidemic that knows no boundaries, impacting film, television, music, books, photography, software, video games and all works that can be copied, digitized and distributed over the internet. A crime wave that has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions in lost revenue in this country alone.
When laws intended to protect people fail on such a catastrophic level why do we wait for years to change them? When do people give up on their dreams because the game’s fixed and they can’t possibly win?
Congress needs to revise Section 512 of the DMCA and do away with a Safe Harbor that shelters criminals from prosecution. Protect creators whose work has been so easily co-opted and devalued by others who refuse to pay for it.
Photo credit: Stock vector © A-Digit
This is a piece of hysterical, disinformative propaganda, and I’m appalled that Hypebot would reprint it.
The claim that digital “piracy” has “cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions in lost revenue in this country alone” is spurious and has been thoroughly debunked by multiple sources including Congress’s Government Accountability Office. In my book The Piracy Crusade, I review and debunk these claims in detail. You can read this section of the book for free here: http://j.mp/1eboZM7
Furthermore, the suggestion that free music sharing via Grooveshark or any other internet service is largely or solely responsible for any measurable downturn in music sales revenues is highly debatable, and the real economic story is far more nuanced and interesting — a “perfect bubble” in the 1990s followed by a “perfect storm” in the 2000s, having little to do with free online distribution as a causal factor. My analysis is freely available here: http://j.mp/1ebppSI
Incidentally, the entirety of my book “The Piracy Crusade,” which I wrote specifically in order to combat disinformation such as this article, can be downloaded freely from the internet here: http://j.mp/TPC-scribd, or if you feel so inclined, purchased from Amazon here: j.mp/TPC-AMZ
Actually, I hope anyone who reads my post takes a look at what aram has to say about internet piracy and the free model in general. However Mr Sinnreich wants to slice it, internet sites like Grooveshark, profit from using the work of others without compensation creators for their work.
When laws intended to protect people fail on such a catastrophic level why do we wait for years to change them? When do people give up on their dreams because the game’s fixed and they can’t possibly win?
Congress needs to revise Section 512 of the DMCA and do away with a Safe Harbor that shelters criminals from prosecution. Protect creators whose work has been so easily co-opted and devalued by others who refuse paying for it.
This whole free file sharing, free speech diatribe is a hoax to justify criminal activity. Educate the user, prosecute the profiteer. It’s that simple, Aram.
Mr. Sinnreich:
• According to Nashville Songwriters Association International, the number of full-time songwriters in Nashville has dropped 80% since 2000. This was a new low point since data tracking began in 1991.
• According to the WGA West, screenwriters’ earnings were down nearly 25 percent in 2013 from 2009.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 39,260 people in the United States classified as “Musicians and Singers” in 2013. This is down 27% from 53,940 in 2002. ,
• According to Carnegie Mellon, twenty-eight studies have found that piracy damages revenues to creative workers.
the Carnegie Mellon findings are hardly credible considering that the Motion Picture Association of America gave them the money to conduct that research.
I always enjoy seeing the pro-piracy playbook, although it has become somewhat warn over the past decade. Number one is always the source or the affiliations; don’t forget it’s usually either about the labels or rich rock stars. The reality: it is about the creator of the work, now the label may abuse them also, but piracy just makes the situation worse. As far as rich rock stars, unfortunately they are always the ones that get quoted. I hear from plenty of unknowns who are upset.
Caveat. I agree it is difficult to asses the real damage in revenue from piracy. It would be unrealistic to draw a 1 to 1 correlation, but out of the hundreds of millions of just game of thrones, which just set a 2.2 million illegal downloads in the first 12 hours, you begin to see the scope of the problem. Are you following me Bob?
But even more basic than that. It’s somebody else’s work, so why does a stranger get to decide what happens to it. Besides, everyone knows it’s a scam, even the people who use it everyday. Nobody gets in trouble, really, so why not?
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