Grooveshark plans P2P music file-sharing community
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Oct 3, 2007 at 1:35pm
Grooveshark, now in beta testing, is a peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing community that brokers music files free of digital rights management (DRM) between members. The catalog of songs available on the Grooveshark network—anything from the Barenaked Ladies to Beethoven—is limited only by what members choose to share on the network, claims Sam Tarantino, founder and CEO of Grooveshark..
Every song available through Grooveshark can purportedly be played on any digital system, including Apple’s newly launched iPod touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod classic and iPhone. There’s no word on when the final version will launch.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
skeptic scott Says:
Is this an advertorial or a piece of journalism?
Has anyone bothered to read Groovesharks Terms of Service?
They are not obvious in your face like most ToS’s on websites, rather they are squirrelled away, impossible to find before you have signed up and require serious reading stamina as well as a barrack room law degree.
In short, by joining Grooveshark, you agree you are personally liable and that you will indemnify, hold harmless and defend Escape Media Group “EMG”, (Groovesharks parent company) and their respective directors, officers and employees, from any liability, including legal fees for any claim brought by any 3rd party.
So if you offer a song for sale for which they do not have the agreement of the copyright holder, you are liable, not them.
Grooveshark has no filters, it allows you to offer all music and any other user can buy that music from you.
So you it is your responsibility to know which artists have signed agreements with grooveshark. 70 have so far, no majors. (there are at least a couple of million)
Vincent Castellucci, the VP from Harry Fox, the worlds leading royalty collection and enforcement agency , sits on the board of EMG. (Escape Media, who is trying to ESCAPE?)
Those Terms of Service, which we casually click through on every website we visit, secure in the knowledge they are probably unenforceable anyway, have in the hands of Groovy Shark lawyers, become Weapons of Mass Destruction for the RIAA and anyone else with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of existing copyright laws.
If Grooveshark are offering a legit P2P service, why is it that, their Terms of Service, state that I, the user, indemnifies, holds harmless and defends Grooveshark including attorneys fees and legal costs should I inadvertently offer for sale some music for which Grooveshark have not received permission from the copyright owner. (99.9% of music on ANYONES hard drive.)
Shouldn’t that be the other way round? By offering a “Legal P2P Service”, should Grooveshark not indemnify, hold harmless and defend it’s users, including attorneys fees if we are sued for using Grooveshark??
tereastarr@KaZaA at least could plead ignorance, itwasntme, still got fined $120,0000. But with Grooveshark they have got you bang to rights, you have agreed liability all they have to do is buy a single track from a user and you have accepted payment and facilitated illegal distribution. That is a lot more serious than Jammie Thomas!
Come on MACSIMUMNEWS, aare you simply going to go along with this and entice your readers to commit to these terms? Or are you going to act like journalists and ask some real questions?
Posted on October 11, 2007