Google accused of unlawfully copying song lyrics

San Francisco: Genius Media, a US-based digital media company that specialises in song lyrics, has accused Google of copying their work to display in its Search results for years without permission and has asked the search-engine giant to address the situation. According to Genius Media, the lyrics that Google displays alongside any usual information about a particular song on Search are picked up from the company’s work.

“The company has shown Google irrefutable evidence again and again that they are displaying lyrics copied from Genius in their Lyrics OneBox. This is a serious issue and Google needs to address it,” The Verge reported Ben Gross, Chief Strategy Officer at Genius Media as saying on Sunday. Launched in 2009, Genius Media describes itself as a “platform for annotating clever rap lyrics” and has since expanded into other types of music as well. As part of its investigation, the site used a series of alternating straight and curved apostrophes in its lyrics to form a type of watermark and as per their plan, converting the patterns into Morse code revealed the words “Red Handed”. (IANS)

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