Groove Shark is a search engine, yeah, in that it indexes free range MP3s and helps searchers get to them. But it never exposes the remote URLs, much less the originating web page.
As far as a searcher is concerned the MP3 is hosted by groove shark. When somebody hosts an MP3 they almost always want to be acknowledged, and more often than not they’re doing it to generate page views as much as plays. For grooveshark to sabotage their goals is bad faith.
Why be rude when you can so easily avoid it? How cynical do you have to be to care that little?
Seeqpod also made it hard for searchers to leave their site, but at least they gave attribution to their source hosts by showing the remote URL.
The primary disincentive against attribution/linking is copyright, e.g. if you make it easy to find the source you make it easy for DMCA takedown bots to snipe at the culturally generous hosts.
A lack of copyright (through abolition or copyleft) restores people's natural inclination to show respect, and to demonstrate the pedigree and provenance of their sources.
Of course, one can go to the other extreme like Creative Commons and effectively threaten to sue people for millions of dollars if they fail to attribute their source.
Nature has it best. People will show respect where they choose, and where doing so does them and those they respect credit, not avoiding it or doing it because of legal cost or threat.
I'd assume the main reason behind this was to maintain a certain quality and availablability of streamability even after the source becomes dead, overloaded, or slow. Not specifically down to not wanting to show attribution of the source. If I were to start a site doing something similar I would also start mirroring found mp3s, I believe hypemachine even does this last time I checked, but obviously shows attribution to the blogger in question.
I don't think that's a reason to not attribute the source or provide a visible copy of the link, though.
Agreed – links to sources should always be provided regardless.
Hey Lucas,
I work here at Grooveshark and I just wanted to clear up some confusion–though Grooveshark and Seeqpod seem similar, we don't really work the same way. The content you see on Grooveshark doesn't come from externally-hosted MP3 or remote link. Like Youtube, all the songs on Grooveshark are uploaded directly from our users to a server, and we just index for searching.
If we *were* spidering content from third-party sites, I can definitely understand being a little perturbed (or downright pissed off) that there's no attribution. That's just not cool, and any site providing bandwidth/content/help to the web should definitely get the credit they deserve.
Anyway, sorry for the confusion/lack of info on our end, Lucas, and if you have absolutely any questions/tips/just want to chat, well, we're now friends on Twitter!
Thanks,
Ben+Grooveshark
http://twitter.com/grooveshark
IntenseDebate Notifications wrote:
> *This comment requires moderation*
>
> Ben commented on groove shark
> – Lucas Gonze's blog
> :
>
> Hey Lucas,
>
> I work here at Grooveshark and I just wanted to clear up some
> confusion–though Grooveshark and Seeqpod seem similar, we don't really
> work the same way. The content you see on Grooveshark doesn't come from
> externally-hosted MP3 or remote link. Like Youtube, all the songs on
> Grooveshark are uploaded directly from our users to a server, and we
> just index for searching.
>
> If we *were* spidering content from third-party sites, I can definitely
> understand being a little perturbed (or downright pissed off) that
> there's no attribution. That's just not cool, and any site providing
> bandwidth/content/help to the web should definitely get the credit they
> deserve.
>
> Anyway, sorry for the confusion/lack of info on our end, Lucas, and if
> you have absolutely any questions/tips/just want to chat, well, we're
> now friends on Twitter!
>
> Thanks,
> Ben+Grooveshark
> http://twitter.com/grooveshark
>
> Email: ben@grooveshark.com
> Site/Blog URL: http://grooveshark.com
> IP address: 209.251.128.198
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So this Hypebot story is inaccurate, Ben?
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/more-major…
"Playable search engines like Grooveshark host no music, but rather grab it for play Google-like from across the web. Downloading is not enabled and unlike after a Google search, the location of the song files are never revealed."
Also, if somebody uploads a song, do you give attribution to the uploader? I can't find that.
This is an unfair comment. Either Grooveshark owes attribution to link sources or they don't, and they simply don't.
Lucas,
You are annoying. The point of GS is to share music, not give attribution to everyone who shares a song. The bigger issue concerns the copyright holder—who rightfully deserves to get paid. I can’t even believe your only contribution to this debate is that the person who uploaded the song should get recognition. The jackass who uploaded the song probably free-loaded it off an illegal network anyway. I can’t stand Internet losers like you who put up these pathetic blogs claiming to cover “internet music technology since ~2002” and all you do is spout out random thoughts and opinions you most likely stole in the first place. And to top it off you get the whole argument wrong. Get a life and quit clogging up the intertubes with this garbage.
-Stan Rodgers
Stan,
You so almost have a clue. Your resemblance to a non-tard is close. Your ability to follow the conversation is nearly adequate.
regards.
Seriously, though, Stan, if you want to talk about infringement then you need to have something to say. You can’t just get up on a soapbox and call people’s attention and then clear your throat and look vacant. Is that really the best you have to offer on the topic of infringement and Grooveshark?
this is some kind of public cry-for-help thing (?) Are we all supposed to gather around Stan and do some kind of maturity intervention…