back to article Supreme Court says Genius' song lyric copying claim against Google wasn't smart

The US Supreme Court has refused to hear song lyric website Genius' web scraping claim against Google and LyricFind for copying its data in search results. Genius testified that it had caught the search giant out literally red-handed. When Google started showing song lyrics inside a search information box in 2014, the lyric …

  1. Groo The Wanderer

    Sounds to me like they were just fishing for money, same as every other copyright case I've ever read about involving media of any kind.

    Nice to see that they went home with their tail between their legs for the effort. I do hope the defendants court costs were awarded, too.

    1. localzuk

      Well, yeah, that's the entire point of copyright isn't it? To protect materials so the copyright holder can earn money from them?

      Except in this case, they aren't the copyright holder.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Well, yes. On the other hand, having lyrics available is nice (even if not necessary) and someone has to pay for the servers where those things are hosted. And it's hard to sympathize with Google when they're doing their usual obnoxious "steal content and show it directly rather than linking" thing.

        On the third hand, it's definitely for the best that the courts did not agree with the claim that visiting the website implied acceptance of the contract.

        1. localzuk

          Google aren't doing that though? They explicitly state they have agreements with 2 services to provide the lyrics for their results. The issue appears to be that one of those is getting them in some not quite above board way.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Prenda Law - a shakedown operation which eventually resulted in jailing of the principals - used copyright claims extensively

        the point of copyright and patents is to provide the creator with limited protection for a LIMITED amount of time. The USA used to be one of the biggest hotbeds of industrial-scale (and government sanctioned) copyright abuse until the likes of Disney found a way of taking public domain stories(*) and profiting heavily from them

        (*) In some cases not even public domain. The Lion King is almost a scene for scene ripoff of The White Lion, with song and dance numbers added

        1. veti Silver badge

          What do you mean, "used to be"?

      3. Mobster

        They could have claimed they were the copyright holder for the lyrics that included their watermark ... maybe ...

        1. veti Silver badge

          That would be, at best, a "derivative work" of the original lyric, and they'd need to license the right to publish that specifically from the owner of each of the original lyrics. That's a lot of paperwork, even if all the owners said yes without strings attached. And if they didn't, then Genius wouldn't have a leg to stand on in claiming the copyright.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            In that specific instance, if Genius had obtained the rights to use the lyrics, they would own the copyright on their specific rendering of the lyrics so I think the would have a case. The problem is they don't appear to have the rights to use those lyrics and are themselves IMHO breaching copyright by publishing them in the first place. I'm thinking here in particular of audiobooks. The author holds the rights to the story, the audiobook company purchases the rights to make the audiobook and in turn own the copyright on that performance recording. Others can also buy/lease other rights from the author, even to make their own audiobook so long as the first company wasn't sold exclusive rights, but no one has the right to just make a copy of an existing audiobook and publish it as their own.

            But, as I started out with, this is predicated on buy the rights or otherwise obtaining permission. If what you publish is someone else's copyrighted work, no matter how you obtained it, you can't publish without permission so I suspect the courts turned this case down because they REALLY didn't want to open that can of worms. User generated content in particular is a potential bubble that if looked at too closely could burst and affect enormous chunks of the internet if IP rights are fully and properly enforced.

            I can sit down and type out the lyrics of a song for my own use legally. But submitting that file to be published on a website specialising in publishing users transcriptions of copyright works is on very shaky legal ground for the publisher and, theoretically, for those submitting the works.

  2. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Coat

    Straight and Curlies

    Looks like Genius were trying to get Google by the Short[Straight] and Curlies

    "Genius set the 2nd, 5th, 13th, 14th, 16th, and 20th apostrophes in each watermarked song as curly apostrophes and all the other apostrophes as straight

  3. mark l 2 Silver badge

    How these Geniuses didn't realise that writing out the lyrics to popular songs doesn't give you the copyright on the lyrics is baffling. If went to the cinema and transcribed all the words to the latest Hollywood blockbuster film and published them online. I wouldn't then be able to claim copyright to it. So how did Genius think they were different just because its song lyrics they wrote down on songs they didn't write.

    1. localzuk

      Honestly, I'm surprised the copyright owners for the songs haven't actually turned round and gone after all these companies publishing the lyrics without licenses to do so.

      The music industry is not known for being quiet on any form of copying, so I wonder what changed?

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        The music industry (or parts thereof, and their legal representatives) have gone after lyrics sites in the past. They shut down one of the first, lyrics.ch, in 1999.

        I'm not sure why the industry eventually gave up on these tactics. Possibly §230's growing influence in US jurisprudence made it infeasible to shut down sites entirely, while shotgunning DMCA takedown notices became too expensive. Possibly the cretins in the music industry finally realized that lyrics sites are likely to help people identify songs they've heard and so more likely to purchase them or play them on streaming services.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          "I'm not sure why the industry eventually gave up on these tactics"

          simple: For every one they shut down, 5 sprang up to replace it

    2. Adibudeen

      Let's also not forget that Genius staff doesn't even write out the lyrics or get them from official sources. People visit the site and contribute to it, which is why I've noticed they sometimes get lyrics wrong (in my totally not expert opinion). If they really cared about fairness and rights, they'd pay their contributors and not claim the community's work as their own.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "I wouldn't then be able to claim copyright to it."

      Not to the transcript, no, but you do own the copyright to that specific representation of the transcript. Others can make their own transcripts, but can't just take and publish your transcript without permission. But the content of transcript itself is probably already a copyright breach anyway once published :-) I can take a photo of red London double decker bus and own the copyright in that work. But I don't own the copyright to the design of the bus or any other objects in the photo and at least in that case, the owner of the design copyright can't claim I'm stealing their works unlike the copyright owner of the movie script you just copied.

  4. Gene Cash Silver badge

    lyrics.ch

    Remember when lyrics.ch was shut down in 1999 for just hosting song lyrics?

    How come this is legal at all?

    1. Cuddles

      Re: lyrics.ch

      Copying someone else's work and publishing it yourself, regardless of whether you make money or not, is illegal. Obtaining a license to publish someone else's work from the person who owns it is perfectly legal. LyricFind and Musixmatch, and presumably Genius, have licenses with various record labels to publish lyrics to which they own the copyright. Google presumably also has some sort of deal. lyrics.ch did not. However much various people might disagree with how intellectual property should be treated, the laws regarding how it actually is treated right now really aren't that complicated.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Copyright is the wrong claim

    Genius added some value, and Google, by virtue of being the medium, leveraged that position and used it to (barely) enrich themselves. The traditional (past ~40 years) anti-trust criteria is "does that harm the consumer"? Suppose Genius went away or stopped trying. Google couldn't or wouldn't replace that value because it is too small a niche (proof being Genius' published text was directly copied). Therefore the value for the consumer would vanish and that's a loss for the consumer.

    However, AFAIK Google doesn't do this very much - I'm guessing lyrics were judged to be a special case because the copyright belongs to the artists owner-lords. And bringing an anti-trust case is far more difficult than attempting a simple copyright case.

    1. eug

      Re: Copyright is the wrong claim

      Is it really a loss for the consumer? Wouldn't Google just get it from other services like Musixmatch, which they already do? Genius doesn't have a monopoly on song lyrics (that they don't own) after all.

      1. Kimo

        Re: Copyright is the wrong claim

        At this point they already have a good source of lyrics from YouTube auto captions.

  6. v13

    I guess that those geniuses (Genius Holdings LLC, great name) hadn't heard of robots.txt.

    1. GruntyMcPugh

      The 'you are bound by our conditions if you visit the web site' and lack of robots.txt makes it sound like a trap tbh. Albeit really clumsy one.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Google might respect robots.txt. There's no reason to believe other intermediaries would.

      More importantly, I'd bet Google search results drive a majority of Genius traffic.

    3. Phones Sheridan Silver badge

      "I guess that those geniuses (Genius Holdings LLC, great name) hadn't heard of robots.txt."

      Out of interest, could you give me a couple of examples of the robots.txt contents to stop google crawling my site? Just 2 max that you know work, not a cut and past of someone elses suggestions of 1000 ways to stop google crawling your site.

      1. Dinanziame Silver badge

        You just create a robots.txt file at the root of your website, containing these two lines:

        ------------------

        User-agent: *

        Disallow: /

  7. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

    Um, they were the lyric, right ?

    The words don't change simply because someone else posts them.

    And it's not because you are trying to get money out of other people's work that you have any copyright claim worth a damn.

    I must admit that this Supreme Court baffles me. On the one hand, it does make a lot of right decisions, like here. On the other, Roe vs Wade.

    I don't get it.

    1. MiguelC Silver badge

      Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

      Many singers and bands don't publish their lyrics so someone has to transcribe them, and not every singer is perfectly intelligible :)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

        "Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Moray and Lady Mondegreen."

        1. David 132 Silver badge

          Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

          Jimi Hendrix with his “Scuse me while I kiss this guy”

          And CCR with “There’s a bathroom on the right”

          And my own favorite, Enya singing “Save a whale, save a whale, save a whale…”

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

            No, no, no :( The Police song "Sue Lawley"

            1. MrZoolook

              Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

              Eiffel 65 : "I'm blue, apple pie, Aberdeen, apple pie, Aberdeen, apple pie, Aberdeen, apple pie, Aberdeen, apple pie...."

              1. Someone Else Silver badge

                Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

                Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams are made of Cheese!

                1. Alan Brown Silver badge

                  Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

                  who am I to diss a Brie?

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

                  I've always wondered why Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders says she's cleaning the bathroom in "Brass in Pocket"

                  # Got motion, restrained emotion / Been driving, Dettoling [Detroit leaning] / No reason, just seems so pleasing

                  I also hear "Gonna use my sidestep" as "Gonna use my sassy" in the chorus, which to me sounds logical and better

                  1. Andy Law

                    Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

                    "Gonna use my sausage"

          2. GruntyMcPugh
            Coat

            Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

            .. me ears are alight,......

          3. EnviableOne

            Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

            Elton John's: "Hold me closer Tony Danza"

            The Beegees' "One Legged Woman"

            Kids these days that can just google the lyrics, have been robbed of the fun...

            it took me hours to work out the lyrics to "Gangsta's Paradise" by the late Coolio, and I'll never forget them now...

            1. Phones Sheridan Silver badge

              Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

              Billy Ocean: "Go and get stuffed!"

              Nik Kershaw: "Wouldn't it be good to pee in your shoes"

              Bananarama: "I'm your penis"

              Peter Kay did quite a few good ones, worth a watch https://youtu.be/7my5baoCVv8

              1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

                Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

                Mamas and the Papas, California Dreaming.

                'Ello Lisa Brown...

                (All the leaves are brown)

                My excuse is a knew someone called Lisa Brown :-)

      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

        And not every transcriber is particularly attentive to spelling and punctuation.

        More importantly, per the article, Genius steganographically watermarked the lyrics to a number of songs.

    2. Someone Else Silver badge

      @Pascal Monett -- Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

      All you have to understand is that this Supreme Court is nothing but politicians in robes. If the case at hand has to do with the current "culture wars", then expect a political finding. For those that are run of the mill legal imbroglios, they fall back to their (often secondary) legal backgrounds, and provide a reasonable ruling...sometimes.

      Now, if the run of the mill case can be converted, via some form of pretzel logic, into a culture wars issue, count on at least three of the so-called Justices to revert to their political selves. (I think you can figure out which 3...)

    3. veti Silver badge

      Re: "the results were often character-for-character copies of song texts it hosts"

      There are areas where the law is reasonably clear, and areas where it isn't.

      Roe v Wade was one of the latter. Democrats have spent 50 years using Roe v Wade as a definitive answer to the abortion question and pretending there could be no further discussion about it, rather than going through the painful and inevitably compromised process of passing a clear law. And for those 50 years, that one issue has been poisoning and polarising political discourse and pushing Republicans steadily further to the right. (Which, of course, suited the Dems just fine as long as those Republicans didn't get control of their party.)

      It ain't coming back. And if you're wise, you wouldn't want it back. This is a question for politicians to settle, not judges. That's what politicians are for. And if they won't - if they refuse to sit down and talk it out and reach a settlement that a majority on both sides can live with, then vote the bums out - both sets of them - and get in some new ones who will.

      And then just maybe, the country will gradually start to look sane again.

  8. ExampleOne

    While I completely accept they should not be allowed to enforce copyright they don't own, surely they have a copyright on their presentation of the lyrics: In this case, surely there is a "spark of creativity" to the "REDHANDED" morse code message which would be potentially worthy of copyright protection.

    I mean, if a dictionary (or API!) is copyrightable because the presentation of the content has a "spark of creativity" to it, I'm failing to see how a hidden message in a bit stream is not.

    In this case, that could probably be dismissed as insufficient to be protected.

    1. veti Silver badge

      Possibly because nobody, as in literally not one person among the millions who google song lyrics daily, values that particular information?

  9. aks

    I wonder why the owners of the original copyright weren't part of the suit, alongside Genius.

    My first assumption is that they don't have deep enough pockets to go up against Google.

    As it is, Genius have copyright over REDHANDED, being their modifications to the original lyrics.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "My first assumption is that they don't have deep enough pockets to go up against Google"

      The entire entertainment industry is only worth some $100 billion.

      When the studios started going after Youtube I speculated that Google could simply purchase them with change from down the back of the sofa

      However we should bear in mind that Sony purchased BMG and several movie studios to head off lawsuits relating to their hardware - and swallowed a poison pill in the process

      As people have been pointing out for 30 years, the heyday of music profits was the late 1960s/early 1970s. When CDs hit the market, album sales were already down ~50% on 1970 and single sales about 90%. Media refreshing sustained the industry for a long time but by 1990 it was in terminal decline again - which is why "piracy" became the BBEG target

      The movie industry went through something similar

      In reality both of them are like the sheet music industry going after player pianos (which happened)

      The biggest abuses of copyright (and most lucrative acts of outright piracy) are performed by major companies - I think they went after hobby sites because they couldn't stand the competition (Note that Mega became a target only after it announced music deals signed directly with artists and the process turned a pretty awful human being into a folk hero)

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