Data with lyrical scraping against Google released.
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Google on Monday filed a lawsuit alleging that it stole text from Genius Media, a lyrical database operator. The lawsuit alleges that displaying the texts in search results was anti-competitive.
Reports of the expected text theft appeared last year, with Genius claiming that it could prove that texts mentioned in Google search results are their own by looking at the apostrophes. Once the apostrophes have been rewritten in Morse Code, they spell “red handed”, it stood in a lawsuit filed last December.
U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie of the Eastern District of New York on Monday denied Genius’ case, finding that although the texts are copyrighted, Genius is not the copyright holder. Those rights remain with the artists who wrote them.
“The infringement of the claimant’s contract is nothing more than claims which seek to protect the exclusive rights of the copyright holders against protection against unauthorized reproduction of the texts and are therefore denied,” Brodie wrote at the dismissal. of the complaint by Genuis, which also provides annotated lyrics and song facts for songs across platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music en YouTube.
The judge goes on to say that Genius’ accusation is preceded by copyright law, and points out that it claims that Google “made an unauthorized reproduction [Genius’] derivative work, which is itself conduct that obtains an exclusive right from the owner of copyright under federal copyright. “
Google declined to comment on the dismissal, but said in a blog post last year that it strives to get songwriters paid for their lyrics by working with music publishers who manage those rights. However, the tech giant added that publishers often do not have texts in digital text copies, so it is working with third parties to gain access to these.
Genius Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
