Stop Watching Lyrics On Google Search's Information Box Because It's Unfair!

Back in June, a well-known digital media company called Genius has sued Google because the company was said to allegedly steal song lyrics from its sources. In a recent response to the Wall Street Journal, the music platform said it discovered this problem by taking advantage of Morse code. Genius then started filing a lawsuit against Google, claiming that Google has made tons of alleged copies despite the fact that it has got no approval or permission from Genius.

The lawsuit mentioned above took place on Dec 3^rd also accused another business entity named LyricFind in charge of “misappropriating content” that Genius actually owns. According to the lawsuit, Google first suggested its information box in the form of lyrics in 2014 when people searched for them on google.com. Genius at the time denied the accuracy of the lyrics results displayed in these information boxes most of the time.

What’s more, Genius confirmed the lyrics Google offered looked similar to Genius-owned content on a character-for-character basis, including line breaks, contractions, and punctuation, meaning it's highly likely that content from Genius’s website has been stolen. With genres having especially intricate lyrics like hip-hop, the evidence becomes a lot more obvious. As part of this, the lyric-sharing company raised questions over this “coincidence” after it found a lyrics result for the song “Panda” suspected for being misappropriated.

Genius has invested to build not only its technology but also community, so the wrong behavior of Google seriously doesn’t match any service agreement while profiting off millions of dollars that should be credited to Genius after about ten years of working.

Genius’s spokesperson Ben Gross said to Gizmodo that Google wants to prevent users from going to other sites, instead of staying there to read the lyrics they’re finding. If true, the tech giant will have to stop such an unfair and anti-competitive practice as soon as possible regardless of how convenient it was.