A New York federal district judge has found online streaming service Grooveshark guilty of mass copyright infringement.
Parent company Escape Media Group Inc and Grooveshark founders Samuel Tarantino and Joshua Greenberg were deemed liable for 5,977 songs uploaded to the digital service in an attempt to boost the growth of the company after its inception in 2007.
Grooveshark’s service enables users to upload and stream music while allowing the company to bypass licensing laws via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal law protecting websites hosting third-party material so long as content can be removed in the face of takedown notices from copyright holders.
A Manhattan judge cited internal Grooveshark announcements urging employees to download and share as “much music as possible from outside the office” as an attempt to speed up the company’s online presence in a direct copyright infringement.
Greenberg to employees in a 2007 email (via TorrentFreak): “Please share as much music as possible from outside the office, and leave your computers on whenever you can. This initial content is what will help to get our network started—it’s very important that we all help out! If you have available hard drive space on your computer, I strongly encourage you to fill it with any music you can find. Download as many MP3’s as possible, and add them to the folders you’re sharing on Grooveshark. Some of us are setting up special “seed points” to house tens or even hundreds of thousands of files, but we can’t do this alone… There is no reason why ANYONE in the company should not be able to do this, and I expect everyone to have this done by Monday… IF I DON’T HAVE AN EMAIL FROM YOU IN MY INBOX BY MONDAY, YOU’RE ON MY OFFICIAL SHIT LIST.”
Grooveshark was also found to have destroyed evidence, including those files directly uploaded to the service by employees and executives.
One of the internet’s first online music streaming services, predating Spotify and the recent surge in similar digital offerings, Grooveshark could now face multimillion-dollar damages awarded to multiple record labels.
“By overtly instructing its employees to upload as many files as possible to Grooveshark as a condition of their employment, Escape engaged in purposeful conduct with a manifest intent to foster copyright infringement via the Grooveshark service,” Judge Thomas Griesa stated in his decision.
A permanent injunction ending or severely limiting Grooveshark operations is set to follow in the coming weeks.
