Google and Microsoft Sued By Mini Music Label 105
carre4 writes "Blue Destiny Records has sued both Google and Microsoft for allegedly 'facilitating and enabling' distribution of copyrighted songs illegally. The suit alleges that RapidShare runs 'a distribution center for unlawful copies of copyrighted works.' RapidShare is helped by Google and Microsoft, which benefit from the ad relationships, according to the suit. Blue Destiny has attempted to link to pages with RapidShare links to their music via DMCA takedown notices, and Google has, apparently, not complied, while Microsoft's Bing site has removed the links. RapidShare, for its part, is based outside of the US and does not accept DMCA notices."
Remove the Internet. (Score:1, Insightful)
Changing the order around a little here...
So, what lesson should we take away from this?
Sue Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Sue the White Pages (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sue Microsoft (Score:1, Insightful)
While it does have non-infringing uses I'd also say 90%+ of all illegal file-sharing is done with electricity from power companies.
They can afford to bail out the RIAA too.
US Jurisdiction (Score:1, Insightful)
"....RapidShare, for its part, is based outside of the US and does not accept DMCA notices."
This is an important concept regarding the internet that most politicians still don't get.
Re:Sue the White Pages (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course not.
He should sue the paper company that makes the paper of the White Pages.
Or the one that makes the ink, whichever has more money.
Re:US Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they DO get it.
Why do you think ACTA is getting pushed?
Re:Remove the Internet. (Score:3, Insightful)
99.999% of the time a lawyer's ethic is entirely "If I'm being paid by the client it is ethical to act in his self described best interests".
Re:Remove the Internet. (Score:4, Insightful)
Only a lawyer would claim that.
Anyone else would point out that in the real world, clients defer to the advice of lawyers when deciding what is in their best interest, and lawyers ensure that whatever the client *thinks* is in their best interest, is in fact the course of action that yields the highest number of billable hours.
Business plan (Score:3, Insightful)
What could go wrong?
Re:Google never posted the links in the first plac (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line is google harvests, formats and makes available this data, which makes them directly liable.
Wow. You read like an RIAA playbook. Google makes no data available, they just link to it. That's what a search engine does. Google doesn't host any copyrighted music, and I'm sure you know that.
You're making excuses for google.
No more than you or anyone else makes for your ISP, when the media conglomerates try to turn them into a private police organization with enforcement powers. Google may "facilitate" infringement (which is the same weak argument that the RIAA has used over and over) but that doesn't mean that what Google does is or should be automatically actionable. Furthermore, copyright is not just about absolute powers granted to rightsholders (although that is their interpretation of copyright's function in society): it's supposed to be about a balance of rights, with We the People intended to be the ultimate beneficiaries.
... don't publish it in the first place.
... nobody has any right to complain that a major search engine is indexing their works without authorization. So, what you're ultimately saying is that Google should be held responsible for other people publishing information on the Web without the rightsholders permission. Let the copyright holders go after those people, since they are the ones who are illegally distributing copyrighted works. What? There's hundreds of thousands of them and we can't afford to go after them all? Well ... that's just too goddamn bad. These people think they see a cheap way out by suing the search engine (in the same way the MPAA has gone after Torrent indexers.) The difference here is that a. major search engines offer a lot more than just links to copyrighted material and b. tend to have billions of dollars in the bank.
... well, that's not really the case. Smaller music businesses (ones that see modern telecommunications technology as a competitive edge and not a liability) are doing quite well. Even musicians who have bypassed the conventional route to getting their music out have found t
Google and similar organizations offer society tremendous benefits: should those be tossed by the wayside in order to preserve a legal fiction that serves to benefit wealthy corporations that only wish one thing: to become even more wealthy? At our expense? I don't think so. Personally, I think Google and all search engines should be completely immunized from any lawsuits resulting from their Web-crawling and indexing activities. Put it like this: if you don't want something to get noticed by a search engine
Google (and all the other big boys) respect the Robot Exclusion Protocol anyway, so nothing will get indexed directly from your site if you don't wish it to be. That's been the case for a long, long time
The world has moved on: the music business is not what it used to be and in fact will never be the same again. If you're a traditional music publisher, take note: attempting to turn back the clock will only hurt lots of people, and won't save you anyway. You need to accept a few facts, and then replace your upper management with people who can think and operate rationally in a radically changed business environment.
Keep in mind that the bloodsuckers who have run our publishing businesses for the past hundred years or so would cheerfully run Google, Yahoo, Bing, Apple and any other major technology corporation out of business if they could, if they perceive even the slightest threat from said companies. That's because they operate criminal organizations who only see their own needs as being of any concern, who wish to continue exploiting their captive creative minds while simultaneously extracting our wallets.
And before you come back and point out that if the big copyright cartels are allowed suffer from infringement, then the little ones will too
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Aside from the fact that I never heard of them before... $25 per album?! I think we already know why their sales might be down, eh??