Google licenses from a number of places, including LyricFind. Which, I don't think, is a music publisher.
I offer that to correct a mistake, knowing it doesn't invalidate your point. Reading the complaint, it sounds like it's a ToS violation. The interesting thing is that Google -> Genius have some business agreements (Genius is an adsense customer, at the least).
To my Not A Lawyer brain, that moves it out of the "scraping public documents is fine" and into a more complicated relationship. The outcome of this lawsuit will be interesting!
Google licenses from the same music publishers. They have to or they wouldn't be able to display the lyrics.
Just having a license doesn't necessarily give you the actual lyrics though. They still have to create or buy them from somebody.
In the past I think LyricFind said that when they licensed lyrics, some were provided by the publisher and it was the publisher that scraped them from Genius. I may be mis-remembering that, but there was something along those lines.
I think this is an issue of Genius alleging that LyricFind scraped their website with is a ToS violation.
I offer that to correct a mistake, knowing it doesn't invalidate your point. Reading the complaint, it sounds like it's a ToS violation. The interesting thing is that Google -> Genius have some business agreements (Genius is an adsense customer, at the least).
To my Not A Lawyer brain, that moves it out of the "scraping public documents is fine" and into a more complicated relationship. The outcome of this lawsuit will be interesting!