Grooveshark is hunting an anonymous commenter | Hacker News Reader

Grooveshark is hunting an anonymous commenter

allthingsd.com

36 pointsryandvm11 comments

At first I thought: "How dare they, I'll never use Grooveshark again." Then I realized Groovshark probably has an inkling that the anonymous comment from a "former employee" is in fact some sort of astroturfing via the company suing them, so as to strengthen their case. Just my thoughts on the issue. We shouldn't be too quick to judge here, big media co's are devious bastards, no?

Reminds me of Viacom/YouTube. I wonder if this is going to have a similar ending.

I had a similar feeling, basically the comment can be considered slanderous. I do have to agree with the site that they might not be able technically to give the info.

I don't think whistle blower laws apply to someone making a post on the internet but I could be wrong. I thought it was more if you heard of illegal things and went to law enforcement about it.

Anyone can clarify if it applies or not?

>I do have to agree with the site that they might not be able technically to give the info.

I have mixed feelings about sites that rely upon the "we regularly purge identifying information" excuse. In this case I believe it makes the site directly responsible for libel as they are actively looking to protect the sources of information that benefits them.

I don't see how that can be if they're doing it with all comments.

They do it for all comments to have a protection when someone comes gunning for some comments.

This isn't about someone defending a champion of free speech or a hero of mankind. It's about, in most cases, liars who invent claims in comments to support their side. Such lies gain truth through repeated assertion (remember how RIM couldn't believe that the iPhone was possible? Retold endlessly, it was all based upon a quickly deleted claim on some random message board by some anonymous person claiming to be a RIM employee. The claim was absurd -- the iPhone used the same stock ingredients that RIM was used to -- but there you had an "insider" to support it).

People are bad about rumors, but there's still no reason to try to block anonymous commenting. If someone wants to make themselves anonymous for a single post, they will, barring blatant mistakes. We should not expect server logs to let us snoop around a comment made with exactly zero reputation or trustworthiness.

All the searching and outrage about the anonymous blogger is orthogonal to the original questions - are the majority of songs on Grooveshark put there by employees, by order of management (I'm guessing this takes away safe harbor), and is it possible for artists to get their music off of Grooveshark if they ask.

It's kind of ridiculous that an anonymous comment left on a blog caused all this hoopla in the first place.

I can't imagine that the comments from the anonymous commenter can be accepted as evidence or testimony in any sort of lawsuit or deposition. Wouldn't that violate all existing precedent regarding the right to cross-examine your accuser?

Edit: Nevermind... it appears that the Confrontation Clause only applies to criminal and not civil matters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause

I'd imagine it'd go the other way: the burden of proof would be on UMG to prove the claims made by the anonymous commenter. That would be easier to do if they could get the anonymous commenter to testify.

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