{"id":2445391,"date":"2019-06-16T11:45:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T17:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=848781"},"modified":"2019-06-16T11:45:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-16T17:45:39","slug":"genius-claims-google-stole-lyrics-embedded-with-secret-morse-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/genius-claims-google-stole-lyrics-embedded-with-secret-morse-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Genius Claims Google Stole Lyrics Embedded With Secret Morse Code"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/genius.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/lyrics\/\" id=\"auto-tag_lyrics\" data-tag=\"lyrics\">Lyrics<\/a> website <a href=\"https:\/\/genius.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Genius<\/a> has accused <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/google\/\" id=\"auto-tag_google\" data-tag=\"google\">Google<\/a> of stealing lyrics from its site and reposting them in search results without permission, with Genius claiming they caught the search engine \u201cred handed\u201d thanks to Morse code embedded in their lyrics.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/lyrics-site-genius-com-accuses-google-of-lifting-its-content-11560677400\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> reports<\/a> that Genius\u2019 web traffic has dropped in recent years as Google has posted lyrics on its search results page in \u201cinformation boxes\u201d instead of routing users to lyric sites like Genius; in March, 62 percent of mobile searches on Google did not result in a click-through to another site.<\/p>\n<p>While Google posting song lyrics themselves is not a crime, Genius claims that Google has been lifting the song lyrics directly from Genius without permission and reposting them on the search result page. The evidence: Two forms of apostrophes embedded in Genius-housed lyrics.<\/p>\n<p>Starting in 2016, Genius positioned both \u201cstraight\u201d and \u201ccurly\u201d apostrophes in their lyrics which, when converted into dots and dashes like Morse code, spelled out the words \u201cRed Handed.\u201d Genius added that, using these apostrophes, they found over 100 instances of Google using Genius\u2019 own lyrics in the Google search results.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the last two years, we\u2019ve shown Google irrefutable evidence again and again that they are displaying lyrics copied from Genius,\u201d Genius\u2019s chief strategy officer Ben Gross told the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>. \u201cWe noticed that Google\u2019s lyrics matched our lyrics down to the character.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> corroborated Genius\u2019 accusations by matching the results of a randomly chosen three songs from the list of 100 instances \u2013 including Alessia Cara\u2019s \u201cNot Today\u201d \u2013 as well as Genius\u2019 lyrics for Desiigner\u2019s near-indecipherable \u201cPanda,\u201d which the rapper himself submitted to the site.<\/p>\n<p>However, Google denied the accusations through their partnership with LyricFind, which provides the search engine with lyrics through a deal with music publishers. \u201cWe do not source lyrics from Genius,\u201d LyricFind Chief Executive Darryl Ballantyne said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/genius-google-stole-lyrics-morse-code-848781\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lyrics website Genius has accused Google of stealing lyrics from its site and reposting them in search results without permission, with Genius claiming they caught the search engine \u201cred handed\u201d thanks to Morse code embedded in their lyrics. The Wall Street Journal reports that Genius\u2019 web traffic has dropped in recent years as Google has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 01:13:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}