Grooveshark faces a ban in Denmark

MUSIC STREAMING WEB SITE Grooveshark is facing the possibility of being banned in Denmark.

A Bailiff's Court in Fredriksberg has approved the possibility of blocking the service that has already courted controversy. The ISP Three, called '3' in the court's press release, is the first company to be asked to block the web site.

The case against Grooveshark was bought in front of the court by a group called the Rights Alliance that is made up of 32 parties. The court said that they entered into talks with Grooveshark about licensing in 2011, but failed to reach a satisfactory agreement.

The translation suggests that Three was chosen randomly and suggests that other ISPs might voluntarily follow the lead.

The release says that Grooveshark does not respect "rights". We have asked it to comment on the situation in Denmark, but this is a suggestion that plagues the streaming download service.

In January of last year we reported that EMI was suing the firm over royalties. Then EMI said that the company had not paid any royalties at all. Grooveshark described this as a contract dispute.

Update
Grooveshark told us that it "respects" intellectual property rights and artists and content owners, and disagreed with the ruling.

"Grooveshark is a U.S. company founded on our love of music and our passion to give musicians a platform to reach audiences worldwide. We respect the intellectual property rights of artists and content owners, and our policies are designed to ensure strict compliance with the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act," said the firm in a statement.

"We were not a party to the case in Denmark; were not asked to provide evidence to the Danish Court; and disagree with the decision enjoining the Danish ISP from providing online access to our service."

Grooveshark said that any injunction placed against it would take licensing revenue away from the many artists that it supports, which would be counter to the aims of the court.

"Any injunction of Grooveshark's licensed service takes revenue away from thousands of Grooveshark record labels and artist partners," it added.

There may also be some room for legal maneuverings, and the spokesman said that the decision to block the site ran counter to a recent decision from the European Court of Justice. There, in the case between Sabam and Netlog, the CoJ decided that banning access to sites was not a good thing.

"The ruling of the Danish Court also appears to be inconsistent with legal standards recently announced by the E.U. Court of Justice in SABAM v. Netlog," it said.

"That Court rejected an injunction against a service that, like Grooveshark, hosts user-uploaded content because an "injunction could potentially undermine freedom of information . . . [by] lead[ing] to the blocking of lawful communications" and "may also infringe the fundamental rights of its service users ... which are rights safeguarded by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union." µ