14 DAY TRIAL // Things are beginning to crumble for Grooveshark, though it's been having a good run as a quasi-legal music streaming website. A court in Denmark has labeled the site illegal and has ordered an ISP in the country to block it.
A group of copyright holders asked a court to force ISPs to block access to the site. The group selected '3' (Three), a telco that operates in the country for the lawsuit.
Three argued that Grooveshark did offer some legal content and that blocking the site would simply amount to censorship.
That wasn't enough to persuade the court which said that the amount of copyrighted content offered illegally on the site far outweighed all the legal content and the legitimate uses the site may have.
The court ordered an injunction against the site and Three is forced to comply and prevent its users from accessing Grooveshark.
The company has four weeks to decide whether to fight the decision, which would mean going to the High Court with the case. Even if Three does appeal, the injunction will have to be enforced until the result of that appeal is known.
Grooveshark is not the first site to be blocked in Denmark for copyright infringement, but previous targets have included more notorious names such as The Pirate Bay. That said, it is the first time Grooveshark has been blocked in any country by a court order.
The music streaming site recently started blocking users in Germany, claiming it could no longer afford to pay the licensing fees (performance rights) it had been paying there.
Recently, it also quietly started blocking users from other countries asking them to pay if they wanted to continue to use the site.
Meanwhile, in its native US, Grooveshark is being sued by all four major music labels in two different lawsuits for copyright infringement and breach of contract, respectively.