There’s another band focusing on their ‘Grooveshark problem,’ and they’re pretty damn huge. Take a look at this comment by Lisa Thomas Music Services, LLC, which handles publishing administration for both Glenn Frey and Don Henley, as well as Eagles Recording Co. II, the band’s label. It was entered last week in response to our earlier publication of a frustrating email exchange between Grooveshark and King Crimson (Paul Geller is an SVP at Grooveshark).
Digital Music News contacted owner Lisa Thomas directly, not only to verify the authorship but to get a sense for next steps. Those aren’t decided yet, though Lisa agreed to show us the problem firsthand. On Friday (October 28th), Thomas copied us on a DMCA takedown notice to Grooveshark, one that included no fewer than 367 specific links to 31 classic Eagles songs.
The expectation was for those links to be removed within 24 hours, and when we checked back Monday morning, Grooveshark had indeed deactivated all of the links. But 30 out of the 31 songs earmarked in the takedown notice were also readily available on Grooveshark for anyone searching the site, often with multiple copies available and right at the top of the results queue. In fact, we quickly found 3 copies of ‘Desperado,’ despite a request to remove 72 specific urls pointing to that song. The one song we couldn’t find was “Desperado Part II”.
We’re not sure if the new copies were uploaded by users, or by Grooveshark itself (as alleged by an employee whose identity has not been verified). Or, simply missed by the original takedown notice, despite its exhaustive nature. Either way, Thomas told us that this was nothing new: her group has been sending multiple takedown requests, with songs routinely reappearing in short order.
All of which seems to suggest that no matter how aggressively a rights owner serves DMCA takedown notices, content will quickly resurface as if nothing happened. Especially for a group the size of the Eagles.
