Genius.com has accused Google of stealing lyrics from its site and then reposting them for use in search results. Genius further claims it has irrefutable evidence against Google of lifting songs directly off its website thanks to a Morse code embedded within their lyrics.
Key sources indicate that Genius witnessed a significant drop in web traffic in recent years. The reason being that Google started posting lyrics on its search page within ‘information boxes’, instead of redirecting users to lyric sites like Genius. While Google posting song lyrics is not a crime, however, Genius accuses Google of directly copying lyrics from its site.
Back in 2016, Genius made a change to its site where it began alternating the lyrics apostrophies between straight and curly, which is essentially a water mark for every copy. With this change, when the apostrophies are converted into morse code, it spelled out the words red-handed. Genius claims it found over 100 different instances of this happening on several songs.
“Over the last two years, we’ve shown Google irrefutable evidence again and again that they are displaying lyrics copied from Genius. We noticed that Google’s lyrics matched our lyrics down to the character,” Genius’s chief strategy officer Ben Gross told the Wall Street Journal. “
In response, Google denied such accusations stating that lyrics were licensed from partners. The search engine giant further adds that it is going to investigate the matter and terminate agreements with any of those partners who were not complying to ethical practices.
