Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming platform has filed DMCA copyright infringing notices to Google, as the latter to act upon those sites which are selling its premium software for free. Sites mentioned in the notice are distributing a cracked version of Spotify premium accounts, thus giving users ad-free streaming and access to Spotify’s premium content without being paid. Google is yet to act upon the notice.
Largest Music Corp With General Problems
Spotify has a user base of more than 286 million across 80 countries. Out of them, nearly 50% (130+ million) users are paid, customers. This Swedish platform is popular enough to push Apple, YouTube, Amazon, and other players behind with its extensive features and fair pricing models. Yet, users searching for cracked versions of this, can find plenty of sites offering them, for free.
In a notice filed last month, Spotify asks Google to act on a few sites that are actively infringing their copyrights by distributing their premium content for free. The notice’s description read,
“This site uses Spotify intellectual property in its content without authorization and this falsely suggests Spotify sponsorship or endorsement of the website and violates Spotify exclusive rights. We reasonably believe that its owners intend to use it as an instrument of fraud.”
Infringing Domains
The above picture reveals the domains listed by Spotify in its DMCA notice to Google. These were found in the lumen database. All these sites are accused to be distributing the free version of their premium accounts. There’s yet another similar notice mentioning more domains of similar accusation. Further, a scan made by Malwarebytes has revealed few of these sites are allegedly spreading malware too.
Back in March, Spotify has sent similar takedown requests to GitHub, where over 130 forks of Spotify’s software including XSpotofy were hosted. These were boasted to provide ad-free streaming with access to premium stuff, for free! While all those were taken down by GitHub, it’s now time for Google to act upon. Spotify AB’s several DMCA notices filed to Google, ask the search engine to act against at least 20 domains and 60 different URLs that are infringing their rights.
Via: TorrentFreak
