Grooveshark vs. Digital Music News In Los Angeles Court Today
Grooveshark owners Escape Media and Digital Music News will be facing off into L.A. court today. The outcome is important, not just to the handful of us who write about the new music industry, but to anyone who has ever commented on a story on any blog or web site.
In October, an anonymous commenter on Digital Music News claimed to be a Grooveshark employee. He described a pattern of institutionalized copyright infringement within the company, including paid staffers uploading copyrighted songs to fill in gaps in the Grooveshark offering.
A subpoena that's part of it's ongoing legal battles with EMI and rightsholders followed, with Grooveshark demanding the identity of the commenter. Digital Music News declined. "We simply cannot comply with this subpoena, because we do not retain IP address information related to commenters after a short period.," says Paul Resnikoff, the publisher of DMN. "Beyond that, we feel that Grooveshark is trampling on important First Amendment, Shield Law, and privacy protections with this action."
Thanks to an introduction by fellow blogger, Mike Masnick of Techdirt, Paul will be represented by Public Citizen attorney Paul Alan Levy. In explaining his motivation for taking the case, Levy said: "Somehow the prospect of letting a company search a journalist’s files… in the hopes of finding useful deleted information is a chilling one."
Ouch. That’s scary that someone commenting to blow the whistle will land a blogger in court. I hope Paul wins this case.
Grooveshark won the case today as expected. Digital Music is hiding something and is not being forthright.
Won the case? Deadly wrong. What happened today, was that the judge approved the subpoena, maybe because it’s a techinal problem and the judge needs to hear more about it, nothing more. As expected? Are you expecting a win from Grooveshark? You must be one of the stealers from GS
This Paul guy is starting to look like, well, a desperate blogger…how do you not retain IP data? Really?!
GL Grooveshark and thanks for evolving entertainment in the same way YouTube has. I <3, and look forward to, the future...
There’s probably dirt on both sides.
DMN’s comment about protecting people’s first amendment rights is very nice, but it’s kind of the go-to defense for keeping something hidden. Grooveshark is one of the slowest and most badly organized of the online playlist services, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were cutting corners in other ways. On the other hand, saying that grooveshark was engaging in legal action technically qualifies as slander if the accusations are untrue or unprovable. If there’s proof, it will come out. If that commenter was prepared to say those things and he’s regularly engaged in the online music fray, he’s probably also prepared for the eventuality that someone will track him down.
Good luck guys.