Is Grooveshark long for this world?
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Grooveshark, a popular online music service used by 30 million people, may be swimming toward extinction as it faces renewed legal attacks from major record companies.
Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment on Thursday joined a lawsuit that Universal Music Group had filed earlier this year against Grooveshark, alleging that the service violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by making songs available that were illegally uploaded by its users.
Grooveshark, which is based in Gainesville, Fla., boasts 15 million songs on its site. But Warner, Sony and Universal contend that many of those are not licensed tracks.
The on-demand music service does have licensing agreements with EMI Group and Merlin Network, but not the other major music companies, which are now on the warpath against Grooveshark.
Our colleague Jon Healey wades through the legal arguments in his post on The Times’ Technology blog, saying, ‘Grooveshark epitomizes what copyright holders think is wrong with the DMCA. They complain that even when the site responds to their request to take down unauthorized tracks, the songs pop right back up.’
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-- Alex Pham