14 DAY TRIAL // Grooveshark's future is bleak, if only because of the many lawsuits that it's trapped in. The site may win the lawsuits and still go under, as it happened to MP3tunes.
But it seems that Grooveshark is not content with fighting the lawsuits brought upon it, it's actively seeking out time in court.
Grooveshark is being sued by three of the four major labels for copyright infringement. The fourth, EMI, is suing it for contract-related issues, specifically, not being paid what it was supposed to.
In the first lawsuit, the music labels brought forward before the court, for whatever reason, an anonymous comment in which an alleged former Grooveshark employee reveals that the company is actively encouraging employees to illegally upload new music to the site.
If proven, this would make Grooveshark an easy target for the music labels and the court would not take it kindly. But, of course, anyone can say anything on the web, so the comment is unlikely to be taken seriously in court.
As such, who made it and why is irrelevant. Not to Grooveshark though, the site has been actively trying to find out who is behind the comment. For this, it's asking Digital Music News, the site where the comment was posted, for details on the commenter.
The site though doesn't keep logs so it is in no position to know who made the comment. Logs are only stored for a few days and then rewritten, so the chance of recovering anything at this point are close to zero. The site refused to provide any info even if it did cite laws protecting journalists.
The court however ordered the site to come up with the data that, as you can imagine, is more than problematic, since the data is not there. Even if by some miracle of data recovery, something could be restored, it would mean that the site would have to seal the server's hard drive until the court requires the data.
The site is appealing the decision and the court isn't asking for the data until that appeal is settled, but it is asking for the "data" to be preserved. The ruling is very problematic for any site that does not store logs as it means that they can be forced to provide data that isn't even there and to halt their activities on the off chance that something might be recovered.
The irony is that even if the data were to be provided, it would not make any difference in the Grooveshark lawsuit. All it may do is enable Grooveshark find out who ratted them out or, alternatively, who made the false accusations.