Currently it says they have released metadata and album art. Is archiving and sharing the textual track metadata alone (no images, no audio) legal in the US, or Europe? By what basis is it legal or illegal?
1. You are all probably talking past each other - I expect the original question of legality was about criminal, and not civil, law.
2. I'm sure they did not view or sign the TOS to access this. You can't be bound to a contract you never view or intentionally assent to. At least in most countries/places.
For example, in the US I can show you tons of cases in just about every state and federal court where the court decided the TOS doesn't apply because it was never viewed or assented to.
(Ironically it works both ways, so if the contract provides you any guarantees, you can't take advantage of them to sue for breach if yuo never assented)
It's different if you can prove that they knew there was a TOS they would be bound by and just never bothered to look at the terms.
That is very hard to prove, and it does not suffice to prove that everybody has a TOS these days or whatever. You have to prove actual knowledge of a TOS by these particular defendants.
I use the US because it tends to be on the forefront of maximal browserwrap enforcement, so if it's not going to be enforced there, it's usually not going to be enforced anywhere
Monopoly is not a nice thing. Maybe it is convenient, but not nice.
People that gives money to artists are the ones going to concerts and buying music directly to artists. Spotify gives cents to artists, incetivizing awful behaviour (AI music, aggressive marketing, low effort art...).
Some people's urges to destroy all traces of human civilisation astonish me. What do you think Spotify is going to do with all its music when it ceases to exist in however many years? No, we must collectively feed Daniel Ek the Hungry.
Not legal. This group does not concern themselves with copyright law.
they do concern themselves with it, but in a "calling it out for being shit" kind of way.
Adherence to the legal framework is a function of your risk appetite.
Currently it says they have released metadata and album art. Is archiving and sharing the textual track metadata alone (no images, no audio) legal in the US, or Europe? By what basis is it legal or illegal?
Very, if we delete copyright like we're supposed to.
Not legal
Completely illegal.
The metadata scrape might not be.
Pretty sure any kind of scraping violates Spotify’s ToS.
ToS is not law except in the most draconian and authoritarian interpretations of the CFAA.
You are mistaken, it’s contract law.
Lawyer here -
A bunch of things:
1. You are all probably talking past each other - I expect the original question of legality was about criminal, and not civil, law.
2. I'm sure they did not view or sign the TOS to access this. You can't be bound to a contract you never view or intentionally assent to. At least in most countries/places.
For example, in the US I can show you tons of cases in just about every state and federal court where the court decided the TOS doesn't apply because it was never viewed or assented to.
IE cases like https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/nevada/nvdc...
(Ironically it works both ways, so if the contract provides you any guarantees, you can't take advantage of them to sue for breach if yuo never assented)
It's different if you can prove that they knew there was a TOS they would be bound by and just never bothered to look at the terms.
That is very hard to prove, and it does not suffice to prove that everybody has a TOS these days or whatever. You have to prove actual knowledge of a TOS by these particular defendants.
I use the US because it tends to be on the forefront of maximal browserwrap enforcement, so if it's not going to be enforced there, it's usually not going to be enforced anywhere
It's not. It's awful people justifying awful behaviour. And it's why we can't have nice things. There are always assholes ready to exploit others.
Monopoly is not a nice thing. Maybe it is convenient, but not nice.
People that gives money to artists are the ones going to concerts and buying music directly to artists. Spotify gives cents to artists, incetivizing awful behaviour (AI music, aggressive marketing, low effort art...).
There's some irony here considering Spotify used pirated mp3s at the start of their operations, I suppose.
Some people's urges to destroy all traces of human civilisation astonish me. What do you think Spotify is going to do with all its music when it ceases to exist in however many years? No, we must collectively feed Daniel Ek the Hungry.
Are you talking about Spotify here…?
lol is this comedy? Cuz it's absolutely hilarious opposite humor.
You're talking about Spotify, right? Famously started by ad execs pirating music and then selling it.
You must be the Spotify CEO, lol