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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by urza9814 on Monday June 17 2019, @08:04PM (4 children)
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."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @08:12PM (2 children)
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
Yes, for some definitions of "funny."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 18 2019, @11:35AM
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
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.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday June 17 2019, @08:41PM (6 children)
Genius owns the copyright on all of these songs?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @09:17PM (3 children)
Indeed, unless Genius has a copyright interest in the lyrics themselves it seems unlikely they are entitled to any damages under the law, which means they have no case. Copyright has a creative component: while the bar is pretty low, writing down the words from an existing song does not, in general, produce a new copyright interest because no creativity is involved in this process.
Using different unicode code points with similar presentation to identify the source of the text, neat as it may be, is unlikely to meet the creative threshold required for copyright protection on its own.
Only the actual copyright holders for the lyrics involved have standing to bring an infringement case against Google. That may or may not be Genius, details matter...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @10:32PM
i think you're subtly yet dangerously wrong here as, in the us at least, you can publish public domain works and get copyright on the page-headers and footers -- both far less creative than the morse-code message woven into the works that found their way into the song-panels.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 18 2019, @11:41AM
It doesn't need to be. The text itself is the copyrighted material. The unicode trick is to spot those who merely plagiarized Genius's efforts, not to establish copyright.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 18 2019, @01:28PM
It's not a verbatim transcription, particularly with Genius. Firstly they have pretty strict guidelines about formatting and punctuation and everything in order to keep a uniform appearance across their website (to the point that their website has dozens, possibly hundreds, of pages explaining proper style and formatting). Apparently that level of appearance is more important to them than raw accuracy, so it's definitely more than just a flat transcription of the song lyrics.
They also have exclusivity agreements with some artists -- if you read TFA, that's how they found the problem in the first place. An artist had agreed to only post their lyrics on Genius, then the exact same lyrics with the exact same formatting showed up on Google a few days later. That's a bit different than a transcription created by a fan. The artist surely has copyright over those lyrics, and they authorized Genius to publish it but not Google.
There's also a lot more than the raw lyric transcription on Genius, although I can't really tell how much of that may have been copied. From simple metadata mentioning which member sang/wrote particular parts, to annotations explaining the precise meaning of certain phrases. I'd assume the former was likely included in the copies and the latter was not, but I don't see any details to see how much of a factor that could be.
Of course, none of this may actually matter, as it's likely a contract issue rather than a copyright issue. According to the Genius website, they have negotiated a license with most major record labels in order to have permission to display those lyrics. So they seem to acknowledge that they do not own the text itself. However, this kind of use does very clearly violate their Terms of Service:
So this appears to be very solid evidence that Google, or one of Google's contractors, violated those terms. Now we get to see if that's actually enforceable. (And if it's not, then that would seem to invalidate all of the Creative Commons -NC licenses, along with the licenses for most "community edition" projects...if 'noncommercial use' is not an enforceable term, that's going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of people)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @10:42PM (1 child)
No, and they don't need to. They may or may not have licensing deals with the MAFIAA that covers the actual lyric content, but the aggregation, rendering and typesetting can be independently copyrighted by Genius.
Some civilized parts of the world also have the more generic database copyright [wikipedia.org] -- any collection of publicly-available information may be copyrighted, even if the material itself cannot:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 18 2019, @02:47AM
But as far as I can see nobody is accusing Google of copying the "selection or arrangements of [the database] contents".
And you wouldn't need hidden watermarks to determine that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday June 17 2019, @08:45PM (5 children)
That will be quickly dropped, either because Google settles for an "undisclosed sum" or, more likely, just buys Genius.
They can still pretend, even if it was removed as their motto last year [gizmodo.com].
Then again, if your lawyers (or your "contractors") do it, is it still evil?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @09:31PM (1 child)
Even more likely will be that Genius has no case and the case will be dropped for that reason. This is one of the first things that happens in basically every civil action. Google will file a motion to dismiss: this basically says "so what if I did?" The court will take Genius' claims as true, and determine whether they are entitled to any protection under the law. If the answer is "no", then the case ends right there.
As discussed elsethread, unless Geinus has copyright interest in the lyrics that is probably where it ends.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 18 2019, @01:32PM
Copyright is not the only issue here. Genius has a 'non-commercial use only' clause in their Terms of Service, meaning that this would still be a contract violation even if there's no copyright interest.
Not sure if such clauses have ever been tested in court, but between the Creative Commons -NC licenses and all the various "community edition" projects, it's going to be a pretty big problem for a LOT of people and organizations if that is deemed unenforceable.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday June 17 2019, @10:53PM (1 child)
I would guess the main point of this is to shame google into playing fair.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Monday June 17 2019, @11:40PM
Playing fair? You mean running a script on the scrapped Genius data to hide the evidence?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 18 2019, @05:41PM
Evil done with your approval or apathy towards it, is definitely evil.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @09:55PM
I guess that's why they call it the blues ...
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday June 18 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
A fine example of computer steganography https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography [wikipedia.org]
Did you know typical household printers use steganography to uniquely identify the individual machine that a particular hard copy came from?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 18 2019, @01:36PM
Yes, [soylentnews.org] we [soylentnews.org] did [soylentnews.org]. ;)
(On a more serious note though, thanks for trying to keep that in public awareness; the links above include some mechanisms for detecting/defeating that tracking for anyone else reading this)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 18 2019, @11:53PM
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190617/13335342414/dumbest-gotcha-story-week-google-genius-copying-licensed-lyrics.shtml [techdirt.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]