Google Accused Of Copying Song Lyrics In Search Results
American search engine giant Google has been accused of copying song lyrics from the leading song lyrics website Genius. The latter has claimed in a report that it has been notifying Google about the plagiarism since the year 2017 but no action was taken since then. The lyrics were posted on the search results of the songs without necessary credit being given to the original publisher.
About the accusation
As mentioned above, Genius has claimed Google has lifted song lyrics from its website to display in search results. The evidence submitted by the plaintiff regarding the case was related to how the lyrics were drafted. Genius claims it knowingly used a combination of straight and curved apostrophes as a form of watermarking on its website. Interestingly, in a morse code form, the combination of the apostrophes spell out “Red Handed”; which is a fancy way of catching those who copy from its website, red handed. According to Genius, there are over a hundred cases where Google lyrics have also included the exact apostrophe sequence, confirming the plagiarism charges.
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Google, in a statement, has denied all the aforementioned claims by Genius. It has said that the company takes copyright very seriously and that it sources the lyrics from LyricFind; who is also a known name in song lyrics and major contributor on Google’s search results. While Genius’ case against Google is quite strong, it may not hold up well in court as it does not own the copyright of the lyrics in question. However, the former has claimed that the traffic on its website has decreased substantially ever since the latter started displaying lyrics in the search results. Google has started an investigation regarding the plagiarism claims and more details are awaited when the results of it are announced.
