Be careful what you put in an email(om.wordpress.com)
om.wordpress.com
Be careful what you put in an email
https://om.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/be-careful-what-you-put-in-an-email/
15 comments
"Even beyond the way they rope musicians into highly unfavorable contracts, they often don't even fulfill the contracts."
VC firms do the same thing. So why are they so respected on HN?
VC firms do the same thing. So why are they so respected on HN?
The artist-label relationship is similar to entrepreneur-VC relationship in more than just this one regard. Angels/incubators are like indie labels, and the relationship there is slightly less skewed, but most parallels still exist.
They're respected for the same reason bands respect labels. It's because often times the only way to make it big, really big, is to be a sellout and get in bed with a label/VC. Businesses need funding like bands and supporting yourself is a bitch so why not sell out and get a free ride?
So we read up on business news and learn how the VCs think so that one day a few of us will get "signed" and hopefully make it big. We all know it can be a kind of predatory relationship but at the same time entrepreneurs are all about taking that one big risk that pays off in the end. So startups, like bands, try to get VC backing in the hope that they won't become yet another company that was chewed up and spit by the VCs and instead becomes the next Google/Facebook/CoolestCompanyEverCo.
So are they really respected? Kinda. Depends who you are. Much of that perceived respect is akin to research so we can get in bed with them. Kind of like books on how to easily bed women except we read it right from the horse's mouth.
So we read up on business news and learn how the VCs think so that one day a few of us will get "signed" and hopefully make it big. We all know it can be a kind of predatory relationship but at the same time entrepreneurs are all about taking that one big risk that pays off in the end. So startups, like bands, try to get VC backing in the hope that they won't become yet another company that was chewed up and spit by the VCs and instead becomes the next Google/Facebook/CoolestCompanyEverCo.
So are they really respected? Kinda. Depends who you are. Much of that perceived respect is akin to research so we can get in bed with them. Kind of like books on how to easily bed women except we read it right from the horse's mouth.
Y Combinator is to VCs as _____ is to record labels.
The people who can fill in that blank will be very rich someday.
The people who can fill in that blank will be very rich someday.
American Idol, X Factor, The Sing Off?
Indie labels?
[deleted]
Seems to me that behaving ethically would solve a lot of problems (or at least not cause them in the first place).
This guy pretty much just wrote the lawsuit for his opposition.
This guy pretty much just wrote the lawsuit for his opposition.
I would argue "be careful whom you send emails to" as well. While drivingmenuts' comment about behaving ethically might apply in this case, sometimes you might think you're behaving ethically and it's only later than you realize that, while operating in good faith, you inadvertently broke some law (patents and copyrights are a minefield).
I prefer not to correspond with the type of person who would take advantage of this by releasing or publishing my emails. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but less often than you might think.
I prefer not to correspond with the type of person who would take advantage of this by releasing or publishing my emails. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but less often than you might think.
Who you send them too, other than your lawyer doesn't protect them from discovery. See Jwz's rant on the badattitude list [1] about lawyers and discovery and companies having to pay after the fact. Talking to people face to face is good, both from a legal protection standpoint and from a relationship building standpoint.
[1] http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html
[1] http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html
Exactly. I tend to assume that any email I write might eventually wind up permanently plastered on the net somewhere. Face-to-conversation is not only safer but a lot more satisfying.
Do you delete all your e-mails or do you leave your work e-mails on your work machine? If you don't delete them, then your e-mail archives could be used against your company. An e-mail that goes out to more than one person is virtually guaranteed to be around years later where it might haunt you.
> If you don't delete them, then your e-mail archives could be used against your company.
Unfortunately, the flip side might be as bad or worse: If you deleted emails or other potentially-relevant documents at a time when a lawsuit was reasonably foreseeable, then you could be hit with an adverse inference [1]. That is, the judge might conclusively presume (or instruct the jury to conclusively presume) that the missing emails or documents must have been really bad, otherwise you wouldn't have destroyed them.
And if government authorities were involved, then you could be indicted on criminal charges of obstruction of justice. (That ultimately destroyed accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP [2].)
That's why opposing counsel can get downright orgasmic when their adversary has deleted emails or destroyed documents, and when this can be "spun" as having been motivated by a desire to conceal harmful evidence.
I used to think it made sense to adopt, and then follow, a comprehensive "document retention" [sic] policy, where documents are reviewed every X months for possible destruction. In the real world, though, people get busy, and they don't take the time to do periodic document reviews. Then, suddenly, a lawsuit is imminent, and people realize they still have all these documents that should have been routinely destroyed but never were. So they try to play catch-up with a shredding party. The belatedly-destroyed documents might be utterly harmless, but that might not matter. (A belated shredding party is what got Arthur Andersen indicted.)
RULES OF THUMB: If your organization doesn't already have a document-retention policy, here are two serviceable rules of thumb that might help (YMMV, I'm not your lawyer, etc.):
A) Keep emails and other documents for as long as you think you'll have a business need for them -- and keep in mind that sometimes the law mandates specific retention periods for certain categories of document;
B) If there's a non-trivial possibility of a lawsuit that would be even remotely related to the subject matter of the emails or other documents, then don't destroy them without first checking with your lawyer. As the saying goes, sometimes the cover-up --- whether real, or simply the product of opposing counsel's "spin" --- is worse than the crime.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen
Unfortunately, the flip side might be as bad or worse: If you deleted emails or other potentially-relevant documents at a time when a lawsuit was reasonably foreseeable, then you could be hit with an adverse inference [1]. That is, the judge might conclusively presume (or instruct the jury to conclusively presume) that the missing emails or documents must have been really bad, otherwise you wouldn't have destroyed them.
And if government authorities were involved, then you could be indicted on criminal charges of obstruction of justice. (That ultimately destroyed accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP [2].)
That's why opposing counsel can get downright orgasmic when their adversary has deleted emails or destroyed documents, and when this can be "spun" as having been motivated by a desire to conceal harmful evidence.
I used to think it made sense to adopt, and then follow, a comprehensive "document retention" [sic] policy, where documents are reviewed every X months for possible destruction. In the real world, though, people get busy, and they don't take the time to do periodic document reviews. Then, suddenly, a lawsuit is imminent, and people realize they still have all these documents that should have been routinely destroyed but never were. So they try to play catch-up with a shredding party. The belatedly-destroyed documents might be utterly harmless, but that might not matter. (A belated shredding party is what got Arthur Andersen indicted.)
RULES OF THUMB: If your organization doesn't already have a document-retention policy, here are two serviceable rules of thumb that might help (YMMV, I'm not your lawyer, etc.):
A) Keep emails and other documents for as long as you think you'll have a business need for them -- and keep in mind that sometimes the law mandates specific retention periods for certain categories of document;
B) If there's a non-trivial possibility of a lawsuit that would be even remotely related to the subject matter of the emails or other documents, then don't destroy them without first checking with your lawyer. As the saying goes, sometimes the cover-up --- whether real, or simply the product of opposing counsel's "spin" --- is worse than the crime.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen
What if you deleted the email you sent saying "Please ensure the crane you are using is rated for that load" and you need it when you get prosecuted by health and safety for the horrible accident that just happened.
EDIT: Or the email saying "Yes you can carry out the work in the manner you proposed but only if it will be at no extra cost to my client and you take full responsibility for the alteration to the original design"
EDIT: Or the email saying "Yes you can carry out the work in the manner you proposed but only if it will be at no extra cost to my client and you take full responsibility for the alteration to the original design"
I worked at an investment banking company in the 1990s. They did not have email when I started, but when they adopted Exchange and everyone got a Windows PC and MS Office, the CIO set a policy that emails would be retained for 6 months, then purged. I don't know if this would fly today, but I think the fact that it was a blanket policy and not based on the content of the messages made it OK at least at that time.
These days e-mail retention (as well as IM logs, recordings of calls etc.) in the financial world is based on rules set by bodies like the SEC and the FSA and runs to about seven years (at least that's the number I hear thrown about working in that world).
Still, if a law suit is brought against the company, you'd generally stop deleting anything until the lawyers give the ok.
Still, if a law suit is brought against the company, you'd generally stop deleting anything until the lawyers give the ok.
> I think the fact that it was a blanket policy and not based on the content of the messages made it OK at least at that time.
Nope. If discovery has started, you have to retain even if you otherwise would have discarded.
That's in addition to any specific statutory requirements wrt the document's content.
Nope. If discovery has started, you have to retain even if you otherwise would have discarded.
That's in addition to any specific statutory requirements wrt the document's content.
I think the implication was that the policy was in place for when they weren't being sued, so that if they were sued, they could be completely reasonable in saying they only had 6 months worth of e-mails to provide for discovery.
It's pretty standard for CEOs and executives of publicly traded companies to delete all email -- not just locally, but ensure their entire email system, backups, etc are set to expunge an email entirely from the system as soon as they delete it.
Mainly for this reason.
Case in point: Eric Scmidt http://gawker.com/5505606/gmail-overlord-always-deletes-his-...
Mainly for this reason.
Case in point: Eric Scmidt http://gawker.com/5505606/gmail-overlord-always-deletes-his-...
I prefer to walk down the hall and chat with the other person. Humor and sarcasm don't translate well to email, and I've managed to personally offend people without realizing it. By taking the time to actually look them in the eye (and wink, as needed), I find it clears a lot of things up. Now if the email is a purely technical issue, an email is usually the best solution.
Whether or not you trust the person is irrelevant, if it's not privileged information (i.e. to your lawyer + some other definitions) it could always be found later on during discovery.
> releasing or publishing my emails
Has the copyright issue on emails been decided yet (and I missed it)? I thought you retain copyright on your emails and the recipient can't just release or publish them willy-nilly.
Has the copyright issue on emails been decided yet (and I missed it)? I thought you retain copyright on your emails and the recipient can't just release or publish them willy-nilly.
Off topic, but why does the text on this website look so awful in Chrome 15 in Win7 64? There are actually gaps in the letters. It looks awful in a different way in Firefox 8 - clumpy letters with awkwardly variable line width.
Update to clarify that it's the text that looks weird
Update to clarify that it's the text that looks weird
"Rude reminder that one needs to be very careful when sending emails"...when one is a shady-ass character up to some shady-ass shit.
This is less of a business plan than it is a hedge fund betting on one side of a race condition. The bet is that user growth will outpace successful litigation against the investment.
It would be less ethically problematic if they were doing the piracy themselves instead of croudsourcing it.
This is less of a business plan than it is a hedge fund betting on one side of a race condition. The bet is that user growth will outpace successful litigation against the investment.
It would be less ethically problematic if they were doing the piracy themselves instead of croudsourcing it.
That seems almost intentionally damning. Why would he put that in writing? This is disappointing because I really like grooveshark's service.
Things tend to look like that when you take the most damning possible statement out of tens of thousands of documents that you received in discovery!
That's the problem. When these statements come up in court documents, they are never put in context. You're just left up on the stand mumbling about how everyone else is misinterpreting your words.
That's because people don't usually go out of their way to produce damning evidence. Damning evidence is an accident, that's why you don't find much of it, even among "tens of thousands of documents." Which is why careful scrutiny of discovery documents is important in any legal case.
This wasn't really a secret, many people in the phonographic industry (including some at the record labels themselves) knew or suspected for quite a while that Grooveshark's business plan was something like this.
Can anyone explain exactly why this is sinister? If the label is aware of the price they're selling the license at and buying the data, where is the unfair deception?
They weren't licensing anything. They were relying on DMCA safe harbor provisions to protect them from infringement suits. The problem is that the executive e-mail indicates plain as day that they were ineligible for that safe harbor in at least two ways: they knew of and were profiting from infringement.
Who could have guessed that basing a business on copyright infringement might get you sued for copyright infringement?
Who could have guessed that basing a business on copyright infringement might get you sued for copyright infringement?
The email says "we use the label’s songs", "the data we got from them", "we pay them".
This suggests they were getting the label's data from the label and paying the label.
That seems like a license to me.
This suggests they were getting the label's data from the label and paying the label.
That seems like a license to me.
The e-mail implies that their plan was to knowingly infringe for months/years before negotiating a license.
They could then use the data gained from (infringing) streaming/uploads as a bargaining chip while negotiating the license.
They could then use the data gained from (infringing) streaming/uploads as a bargaining chip while negotiating the license.
I think the email is ambiguously worded.
I read it as, "we license their songs, and then we license the usage data back to them at a higher rate once it reaches some threshold."
You apparently read it as, "we infringe until we have enough usage data, and then we negotiate a contract where they pay us."
The few ambiguous parts are,
1. Whether "we use the label’s songs" means to license or to infringe.
2. Whether "the data we got from them" is licensed or infringement.
3. Whether "what we pay them" means what they had paid in license fees up to that point, or the terms of the negotiated license.
I read it as, "we license their songs, and then we license the usage data back to them at a higher rate once it reaches some threshold."
You apparently read it as, "we infringe until we have enough usage data, and then we negotiate a contract where they pay us."
The few ambiguous parts are,
1. Whether "we use the label’s songs" means to license or to infringe.
2. Whether "the data we got from them" is licensed or infringement.
3. Whether "what we pay them" means what they had paid in license fees up to that point, or the terms of the negotiated license.
You're missing:
> we are achieving all this growth without paying
> a dime to any of the labels
> In our case, we use the label’s songs till
> we get a 100 (million) uniques
I read "not paying a dime" as referring to their net with the labels
In their business plan, they take a loss for licensing up front, but eventually net positive by licensing the data back to the labels.
Contrast with, e.g., Spotify, who nets a loss with the labels.
In their business plan, they take a loss for licensing up front, but eventually net positive by licensing the data back to the labels.
Contrast with, e.g., Spotify, who nets a loss with the labels.
if that were the case, why would they then say:
"Let’s keep this quite for as long as we can."
also,
> they take a loss for licensing up front
doesn't seem like the correct interpretation, because they say
"we are achieving all this growth without paying a dime to any of the labels"
"Let’s keep this quite for as long as we can."
also,
> they take a loss for licensing up front
doesn't seem like the correct interpretation, because they say
"we are achieving all this growth without paying a dime to any of the labels"
That's exactly what he meant, they don't pay a dime because they offset it by selling data.
To me, the phrase "let's keep this quite [sic] as long as we can" implies you know you're doing something wrong.
No it doesn't. It implies that you don't want people to know about it. But there's plenty of things in business that are legal and ethical, but you still want to keep quiet. For example, Google kept their search revenue quiet for a long time and intentionally did so. Were they doing something wrong? I'm sure Apple would like to keep their supplier deals quiet.
If you're getting a good deal with competitive advantage, you often want to keep that quiet -- and it doesn't imply you're doing anything wrong. Now if they statement ended with, "or we could all up in jail" then that would imply they were doing something wrong. This just sounds like they found a sweet deal and wanted to make sure they could milk it with as little cost for as long as possible.
If you're getting a good deal with competitive advantage, you often want to keep that quiet -- and it doesn't imply you're doing anything wrong. Now if they statement ended with, "or we could all up in jail" then that would imply they were doing something wrong. This just sounds like they found a sweet deal and wanted to make sure they could milk it with as little cost for as long as possible.
I don't know about that, but I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt since this is all on Universal's words, they provide an amazing service, have license agreements with EMI and lots of smaller labels.
Is there a list somewhere of all of the actual artists Grooveshark has legal agreements with? I'd love to see the percentage of streams of unlicensed artists vs. licensed artists and how much each contributes to their total stream output per month.
Grooveshark didn't start licensing anything from major labels until extremely recently. They built their userbase on unlicensed music.
Everything in the second paragraph is happening in the future. This isn't immediately clear, but it's a common enough writing style. Just pretend they wrote "we will use", "we will pay them", and "they will pay us".
The second paragraph, if I'm reading it correctly, details how they don't report streaming data to the labels until they have enough data to guarantee that they can charge labels more than the cost of streaming the songs. I imagine the labels don't particularly care for this behavior, and history (specifically Grooveshark's history) seems to have borne this out.
> they don't report streaming data
What do you mean? How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Whether they are obligated to "report streaming data" is up to their contract, not ethics.
What do you mean? How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Whether they are obligated to "report streaming data" is up to their contract, not ethics.
> Whether they are obligated to "report streaming data" is up to their contract, not ethics.
There is no contract.
Users upload the music the service is streaming to everyone. Most of that music is copyrighted and the company has no license (or any other contract) allowing them to stream it.
They expected to eventually be sued by one or more labels for doing this. They also expected to have enough data by then to use it to negotiate a contract where they actually make money while legally licensing the music.
There is no contract.
Users upload the music the service is streaming to everyone. Most of that music is copyrighted and the company has no license (or any other contract) allowing them to stream it.
They expected to eventually be sued by one or more labels for doing this. They also expected to have enough data by then to use it to negotiate a contract where they actually make money while legally licensing the music.
> the company has no license
Did I miss this part? Source, please.
Did I miss this part? Source, please.
> Source, please.
Common sense, Wikipedia, previous lawsuits against the company, this lawsuit in question. Feel free to Google. It's not all unlicensed, but their catalog is built upon user uploads (and from previous court cases, from their own execs uploading music they have no license to), not just a database of music they licensed like a legal music store/service.
The UMG lawsuit alone alleges Grooveshark employees uploaded over 100,000 files they had no license to. There was no contract then, they just expected to have enough listening data to make a profitable licensing deal on that music... which might've worked if it didn't come out in discovery of a year old lawsuit that it was Grooveshark employees and not users that uploaded so much of the music. No DMCA protection for that.
Common sense, Wikipedia, previous lawsuits against the company, this lawsuit in question. Feel free to Google. It's not all unlicensed, but their catalog is built upon user uploads (and from previous court cases, from their own execs uploading music they have no license to), not just a database of music they licensed like a legal music store/service.
The UMG lawsuit alone alleges Grooveshark employees uploaded over 100,000 files they had no license to. There was no contract then, they just expected to have enough listening data to make a profitable licensing deal on that music... which might've worked if it didn't come out in discovery of a year old lawsuit that it was Grooveshark employees and not users that uploaded so much of the music. No DMCA protection for that.
Well, that's what UMG alleges based on a comment in a blog. If you look at http://blog.grooveshark.com it's evident they have deals with plenty of labels.
They already said Grooveshark intends to fight this battle before the Court, not in the press, so we are threading on thin assumptions here.
They already said Grooveshark intends to fight this battle before the Court, not in the press, so we are threading on thin assumptions here.
They have deals with lots of tiny independents. They do not have deals with the big boys. Guess whose music forms the bulk of their streams?
EMI is the world's 4th largest record label. Interestingly they are selling it to Universal, so now UMG has both a licensing deal and a lawsuit with GrooveShark...
The 'e' in email is short for 'evidence'. Little known fact.
> Let’s keep this quite for as long as we can.
Clearly the lesson here is that you need to spellcheck carefully before sending out your emails.
Clearly the lesson here is that you need to spellcheck carefully before sending out your emails.
How did Universal get GrooveShark's internal emails?
Presumably they were given access to them during discovery for the lawsuit, per standard practice.
Beware what you put in any medium that can be retransmitted without your permissions :)
What a dumb move. I'm really interested to know who the recipient was. This isn't about watching what you write more so than just being judicious about what information you choose to share and with whom you share it.
That segment of email made the email's author sound condescending and made the business itself look shady. I personally don't see any problem with that business model at all but there will be people who read it in a condescending tone.
One last thing, the spelling. How in the world does anyone who wants to be taken seriously get away with that sort of spelling? Especially if you're running a business. Slang and shorthand are for teenage texts, not emails from high level execs. I'm a high level executive myself. I'm the CEO/Founder/President of my $20k/yr business that has its office based in my living room and even I wouldn't let that happen in an email from me or anyone representing the work I do. The way you speak and write reflects on you in more ways than people realize. It can make a Nobel Prize winner look like a hillbilly.
That segment of email made the email's author sound condescending and made the business itself look shady. I personally don't see any problem with that business model at all but there will be people who read it in a condescending tone.
One last thing, the spelling. How in the world does anyone who wants to be taken seriously get away with that sort of spelling? Especially if you're running a business. Slang and shorthand are for teenage texts, not emails from high level execs. I'm a high level executive myself. I'm the CEO/Founder/President of my $20k/yr business that has its office based in my living room and even I wouldn't let that happen in an email from me or anyone representing the work I do. The way you speak and write reflects on you in more ways than people realize. It can make a Nobel Prize winner look like a hillbilly.
I'm usually one to wince upon these mistakes, but for all I know a Nobel Prize winner could be a hillbilly. Some people like to use their time to get things done instead of worrying about grammar. It takes some time to accept that.
> The way you speak and write reflects on you in more ways than people realize. It can make a Nobel Prize winner look like a hillbilly.
Dyslexia can make spelling errors such as "quite" instead of "quiet" tricky to spot. I'm not aware of any software that's targets this type of heterograph / homophone errors.
Some software autocorrect is notoriously annoying.
People emailing close friends, where there's no expectation of wider distribution, are often less formal than they would be in other situations.
And why would a Nobel prize winner be any good at English spelling and grammar? I expect Russian chemists to be great at chemistry, and let the editors worry about the stylistic stuff.
Dyslexia can make spelling errors such as "quite" instead of "quiet" tricky to spot. I'm not aware of any software that's targets this type of heterograph / homophone errors.
Some software autocorrect is notoriously annoying.
People emailing close friends, where there's no expectation of wider distribution, are often less formal than they would be in other situations.
And why would a Nobel prize winner be any good at English spelling and grammar? I expect Russian chemists to be great at chemistry, and let the editors worry about the stylistic stuff.
Spelling: I for one couldn't parse it. I stumbled a handful of times and just stopped reading, looked at the comments here instead.
Looked like a kid texting to me.
Looked like a kid texting to me.
Thank you. I think people are dissecting my comment a bit much like they have an axe to grind. Someone mentioned getting things done over checking spelling. Please. Does it take that long to type an extra character or two. That's a bullshit argument. Then dyslexia? Well that's fine but dyslexia doesn't cause you to spell "because" as "cuz" so while I feel for dyslexics, that too is just not good enough. The remark about "oh what if the Nobel Prize winner was a Russiin chemist?"... Oh, come on with that. It's obvious what I mean. The point is that this type of spelling can make the smartest of us and those of us worthy of a lot of respect look like fools. People will write you off for it. Suppose this were written by Steve Forbes or Bill Gates or PG himself but we didn't know it. I'm willing to bet that if the recipient wasn't a close friend and didn't recognize the sender's address that they wouldn't be taken seriously. That's my point.
I think you get it darklajid. When someone writes this way it just reflects poorly on the person. My point was that people don't take you seriously even if you really are a genius that can help them if you write and speak in a manner like we see in this email. It it's a close friend then maybe it's fine but my overall point still stands despite the nit picking.
I think you get it darklajid. When someone writes this way it just reflects poorly on the person. My point was that people don't take you seriously even if you really are a genius that can help them if you write and speak in a manner like we see in this email. It it's a close friend then maybe it's fine but my overall point still stands despite the nit picking.
Just a reminder that emails are public, everyone you dont want reading them will see it. Unless you are the government with the torture emails which were accidentally deleted.
what a disgrase! can't even spell "quiet"!
They appear to be respectable businesses, and have mounted a successful propaganda campaign regarding paying them for music, but let's not shed a tear for the major labels. They steal far, far more from musicians than 'piracy' ever has. Even beyond the way they rope musicians into highly unfavorable contracts, they often don't even fulfill the contracts. Every major label has failed to pay up to hundreds of millions owed for radio plays and licensing, from all levels of musicians. All in all, they're about as respectable and deserving as your average street pimp. Good for Grooveshark. Someone needs to shake up that industry.