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Google Allegedly Caught Stealing Song Lyrics … Because of Punctuation

posted by chromas on Monday June 17 2019, @07:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the great-artists-steal dept.

upstart writes for SoyCow1944:

Google Allegedly Caught Stealing Song Lyrics ... Because of Punctuation

Lyrics site Genius has reported dropping traffic since Google introduced its information panel feature for song words in 2014. However, the Wall Street Journal (via The Verge) has today reported that Genius is accusing Google of not only stealing its market share but directly copying content from its pages.

[...] The evidence Genius gives to show that Google is scraping its lyrics is in the form of apostrophes. In 2016 it introduced a system of alternating apostrophes (‘, or U+0027 in Unicode, the dominant form of text processing on the Internet ) with single quotation marks (’, or U+2019). Every song features the same sequence of swapping between the two subtly different marks, which spells out ‘red handed’ when you translate it into Morse code.

[...] Google said in a statement to the WSJ that it didn’t make the lyrics panels itself, but rather licensed the content from other companies, such as LyricFind, who it partnered with in 2016. LyricFind also claims not to have stolen content from Genius, instead using its own team to source song lyrics.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by urza9814 on Monday June 17 2019, @08:04PM (4 children)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Monday June 17 2019, @08:04PM (#856766) Journal

    Ah, the old Contractor Defense -- "We didn't steal anything! The independent contractors we hired to be thieves did! The actions of those we employ are totally independent from our company."

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @08:12PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @08:12PM (#856768)

    Funny how when you get caught with stolen goods it's a trafficking charge even if you didn't steal it but when a corporation does it they're not liable.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @08:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @08:14PM (#856769)

      Yes, for some definitions of "funny."

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 18 2019, @11:35AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18 2019, @11:35AM (#856936) Journal
      Mens rea and the two crimes aren't equivalent. On the first, any defendant whether a corporation or an individual can use the defense that they didn't know that a crime was committed. You thought that the criminal was selling a TV they no longer use, not something stolen from a house.

      On the second, I still don't buy that plagiarism is equivalent to stealing physical property. And yes, I saw those video clips that equate copying movies to breaking a window of a car and stealing stuff.

  • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday June 18 2019, @04:03PM

    by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Tuesday June 18 2019, @04:03PM (#857030)

    Poor tech companies, between their contractors and their algorithms it seems everyone associated with them is out to hurt others. It's such a shame that pure and innocent megacorps consistently yet wholly accidentally create such foul cesspits of corruption, greed, and malice.