Music Streaming Website Grooveshark Shuts Down
The online streaming website Grooveshark lost its battle with the music industry on Thursday, shutting down immediately as part of a settlement agreement. The company was been being sued by a slew of record companies, including a 15 billion suit from Universal Music Group. According a notice posted on the company's website, they must also wipe clean any records of copyrighted material, hand over their online and mobile platforms, and surrender their patents and intellectual property. Grooveshark also issued an unequivocal apology. "Despite our best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.", A March 25 ruling by a U.S. Federal Judge granted EMI Music North America a motion for summary judgement on claims Grooveshark had violated its copyrights, a decision that could have found the web company liable to pay upwards of 420 million. Grooveshark was founded in 2006 by three college students at the University of Florida and for years has been a thorn in the side of major record labels who claimed the website was illegal.