Grooveshark On Thin Ice With RIAA Lawsuits

Streaming website Grooveshark has become the latest flashpoint in the cat-and-mouse game between the music industry and music sharing services. But unlike their largely unsuccessful suit against cyber-locker site MP3Tunes earlier this year, the copyright owners this time around appear to be well poised to tear down the “safe harbors” that typically protect such websites.

Grooveshark, which claims to have millions of listeners, is popular as an online jukebox stuffed with popular songs added by users. Universal file a lawsuit against the site on November 18 because, unlike online similar services like Pandora and Spotify, the site didn’t obtain licenses to stream the songs.

Grooveshark appears to be on thin ice due to a series of damning emails submitted by Universal which suggest that the company’s executives were themselves stuffing the site with copyrighted songs. The emails are included with the complaint (embedded below) and include messages like “We bet the company on the fact that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” The complaint also includes a chart purporting to show that the executives uploaded hundreds of thousands of songs. The music industry has previously claimed that its take-down notices to Grooveshark have been ineffective because the site allows removed copyrighted material to simply reappear a short time later.

Grooveshark complaint