> "Plaintiff's argument is, in essence, that it has created a derivative work of the original lyrics in applying its own labor and resources to transcribe the lyrics, and thus, retains some ownership over and has rights in the transcriptions distinct from the exclusive rights of the copyright owners... Plaintiff likely makes this argument without explicitly referring to the lyrics transcriptions as derivative works because the case law is clear that only the original copyright owner has exclusive rights to authorize derivative works," Brodie wrote in the August 2020 ruling.
Curious how Genius ever saw this working out for them. They had the right to transcribe lyrics they didn’t own, but Google didn’t have that same right? I just don’t see how a ruling against Google wouldn’t have created an opportunity for songwriters to make the exact same case against Genius.
> They had the right to transcribe lyrics they didn’t own, but Google didn’t have that same right?
My understanding is that Genius is arguing that Google does not have the right to use Genius's transcriptions instead of creating their own transcriptions.
> songwriters to make the exact same case against Genius.
Genius already has a licensing agreement with the music publishers, so the same argument cannot be used against them, unless Genius is reusing another entity's transcriptions.
I'm curious if the ruling could be any different if the scraped website only served the content once the visitor clicks "accept" button next to the T&C link, rather than referring to it in the footer.
Also: is the situation any different when art galleries display online photos of public domain paintings and similarly attempt to put restrictions on use of these photos? After all, faithful photographic reproduction of 2D artwork seems even less derivative than transcription of song lyrics.
How about me taking a high resolution image of the Eiffel Tower at night (against copyright), and then another person scrapes my image and sells prints online? The argument reduces to “is stealing from thieves against the law”.
It is more like if both you and the scraper got licences to make images of the Eiffel Tower, but the scraper just scraped and reused your photo instead of taking their own.
Unless you mean particular artwork called "Eiffel Tower At Night", Eiffel Tower is 3d object. Making photo of it gives you opportunity to involve your own creative invention. But photocopy of 2d artwork seems to me to be clearly just a copy, not a derivative that deserves own protection distinct from protection of the source art. Even more so than transcribed text of audio recording.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 22.9 ms ] threadCurious how Genius ever saw this working out for them. They had the right to transcribe lyrics they didn’t own, but Google didn’t have that same right? I just don’t see how a ruling against Google wouldn’t have created an opportunity for songwriters to make the exact same case against Genius.
My understanding is that Genius is arguing that Google does not have the right to use Genius's transcriptions instead of creating their own transcriptions.
> songwriters to make the exact same case against Genius.
Genius already has a licensing agreement with the music publishers, so the same argument cannot be used against them, unless Genius is reusing another entity's transcriptions.
Also: is the situation any different when art galleries display online photos of public domain paintings and similarly attempt to put restrictions on use of these photos? After all, faithful photographic reproduction of 2D artwork seems even less derivative than transcription of song lyrics.