Music Stars Slam Piracy Law for Letting Google Rip Them Off

The Wrap
Music Stars Slam Piracy Law for Letting Google Rip Them Off
By Joan E. Solsman on March 31, 2016 @ 3:30 pm

 

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Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and a swath of music industry figures say the law has turned into a “business plan for profiting off of stolen content”

Hundreds of music industry figures, including megastars like Katy Perry and Maroon 5 and high-profile manager Irving Azoff, have lashed out at Google for profiting off piracy because of a “dysfunctional” law.

Search giant Google “can develop programs to play and beat a master of the complex game Go” but won’t create a way to fix its indexing of repeat infringers that pop back up almost as quickly as they’re taken down, music trade organizations said in a filing.

A letter signed by creators including Bette Midler and Elvis Costello alluded to Google’s massive video site YouTube as having “swallowed up almost every other form of listening, while paying among the lowest royalties in the business.”

The system has, at worst, become “a business plan for profiting off of stolen content,” the trade groups continued.

Google declined to comment on the matter.

The filings to the U.S. Copyright Office were submitted as part of a public comment period on what’s known as the “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law. The Copyright Office is expected to weigh the submissions and make a report to Congress. That report won’t have any legislative teeth but may make recommendations to lawmakers.

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