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Google Explains How It Licenses Song Lyrics For Search, Will Add Attribution (9to5google.com) 72

Posted by BeauHD from the caught-red-handed dept.
Over the weekend, Google Search was caught allegedly copying song lyrics from Genius.com. In response, Google published a long explanation of how lyrics in Search work and said that they will add attribution to note which third-party service is supplying the lyrics. 9to5Google reports: When you look up a song in Search, Google often returns a YouTube video with the Knowledge Panel featuring lyrics, links to streaming services, and other artist/album/release/genre info. A query that explicitly asks for "lyrics" will display the full text as the first item at the top of Google.com. The Wall Street Journal over the weekend reported on an accusation that Search was taking content from Genius. According to Google today, it does "not crawl or scrape websites to source these lyrics." When available, Google will pay music publishers for the right to display lyrics. However, in most cases, publishers do not have digital transcripts, with the search engine instead turning to third-party "lyrics content providers."

Google today reiterated that it's asking partners to "investigate the issue," with the third-party -- and not Google directly -- likely at fault for scraping Genius content. Meanwhile, Knowledge Panels in Search will soon gain attribution to note who is supplying digital lyrics text. "Google today reiterated that it's asking partners to 'investigate the issue,' with the third-party -- and not Google directly -- likely at fault for scraping Genius content," Google said in a blog post. "Meanwhile, Knowledge Panels in Search will soon gain attribution to note who is supplying digital lyrics text."
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Google Explains How It Licenses Song Lyrics For Search, Will Add Attribution More

Google Explains How It Licenses Song Lyrics For Search, Will Add Attribution

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  • Just admit it you chiselers. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "According to Google today, it does "not crawl or scrape websites to source these lyrics"

    EXCEPT YOU WERE FUCKING CAUGHT DOING THAT, DERP, and paying some contractor to do it IS THE SAME.

    Who the fuck trusts these companies not to lie to your face when they're constantly doing just that?

    Fuck your failed damage control, TELL THE TRUTH FOR A CHANGE IDIOTS. Yes, we fucked up and scraped genius content. SO EASY!

    • So basically, they're saying "we didn't do it, it was somebody else" when caught doing it.

      • "We aren't distributing copyrighted work without a license, we have a license from X, its not our fault that license isn't valid for that specific copyrighted work - take it up with them" - that isn't going to fly. Google has two problems here - firstly, they are distributing copyrighted work without a license, and secondly they have a partner that is fleecing them for a license they are not entitled to sell.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

          "We aren't distributing copyrighted work without a license, we have a license from X, its not our fault that license isn't valid for that specific copyrighted work - take it up with them" - that isn't going to fly. Google has two problems here - firstly, they are distributing copyrighted work without a license,

          What copyrighted work? The lyrics? They have a license for that.

          The punctuation? You think that that is independently copyrightable? And, assuming for the sake of argument that it is, you think th

        • It's worth noting that Genius (formerly RapGenius) were also distributing those same copyrighted works without a licence [thewrap.com] - but with the defence of fair use, for the crowdsourced annotations they added, which are not being copied here. However it's pretty doubtful that they have any rights at all over the original lyrics, unless they want to claim that rearranging apostrophes is a "transformative work".

          Google must indeed ensure their lyrics come from an authorised licenser. LyricFind claims [lyricfind.com] licence deals wit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      EXCEPT YOU WERE FUCKING CAUGHT DOING THAT, DERP, and paying some contractor to do it IS THE SAME.

      Paying a contractor to provide you with digital versions of lyrics is the same as directing a contractor to scrape a website to source those lyrics, or doing that yourself?

      Nope.

      TELL THE TRUTH FOR A CHANGE IDIOTS. Yes, we fucked up and scraped genius content. SO EASY!

      I'm surprised that an anonymous coward who will not even take pseudononymous responsibility for his or her own posts is advocating that others take

    • I need a web search engine that uses google to do the searching but removes all google ads and anonymizes the search for google. Does Dogpile or something do that.
      they can now do this legally as long as they put up an attribution that it got the search results from google. Not need to obey any of google's terms of service.

    • For completeness, LyricFind's statement [lyricfind.com]:

      Some time ago, Ben Gross from Genius notified LyricFind that they believed they were seeing Genius lyrics in LyricFind’s database. As a courtesy to Genius, our content team was instructed not to consult Genius as a source. Recently, Genius raised the issue again and provided a few examples. All of those examples were also available on many other lyric sites and services, raising the possibility that our team unknowingly sourced Genius lyrics from another location.

    • But as every "so easy" answer also plain wrong.

  • Google should sue their contractor. I can't imagine Google would have a deal where the contractor didn't assert that they had the legal right to supply the data, and by violating that provision, they have defamed Google, making the problem much worse.

  • When in doubt (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @06:01PM (#58784846) Journal

    "Google today reiterated that it's asking partners to 'investigate the issue,' with the third-party -- and not Google directly -- likely at fault for scraping Genius content,"

    When in doubt, blame someone else. "Don't be evil" version 2.

  • ... and then promise to write an explanation of where I got all the money from, and giving proper attribution to the bank's branch, everything's OK?

  • Did the company that claims to own the lyrics issue a DMCA Takedown notice to Google? I would think that would be the first step.

    Of course, the problem here is that the lyrics are owned by the artists who wrote them, not various web sites that publish them. I suspect few to none of them are paying a licensing fee to the authors, and it's just one set of freeloaders complaining to another. (If anyone has real information instead of random speculation, it would be great to hear.)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      I suspect few to none of them are paying a licensing fee to the authors, and it's just one set of freeloaders complaining to another. (If anyone has real information instead of random speculation, it would be great to hear.)

      *sigh* You couldn't suspect your way through a 5 second Google search, but you want to hear enough to ask others to do it for you [digitaltrends.com].

    • Google violated the terms of service, they didn't violate copyright.

      "No, we just paid someone to" they say now.

      They certainly didn't bother to check.

    • This isn't about copyright. It's about unauthorized computer access to do the scraping. Legally, just like if I were to break into your bank account and publish the details. Your routing numbers and SSN aren't covered by copyright, and I don't even think there's any law against publishing them (maybe aiding and abetting whoever steals your identity?). There's definitely a law broken when I obtain them.

      • Which law? The lyrics were published on a publicly-accessible website - there was no "breaking into" anything, nor was the content in any way private. No access controls were circumvented. Even their robots.txt file permitted it, as far as I can tell.

        Genius are complaining that their website's Terms of Service was violated, which is not a crime [eff.org]. They are entitled to refuse service of course, to whom? Since it wasn't Google or LyricFind, but apparently one of LyricFind's sources that did the scraping, we st

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