Most of the "contrarian" bets out there weren't really contrarian at all; you simply didn't have enough information to understand what was going on. AH's deal for Skype, for example -- you didn't have an understanding of the psychology of dealmakers at eBay or Microsoft to know what would happen (and, to be honest, I find it strange and distasteful that they are so proud of an investment in which they screwed over all of the portfolio company's employees so severely). Investment managers, all of them, have no imagination whatsoever; a good deal is one in which you simply have a lot more information than anyone else, and are thus able to engage in high-stakes information arbitrage.
Sometimes investment managers forget they are just that, investment managers. They want to be cool, they want to be the man in the ring, they want to be the creative artist. That's where they screw up. Phil Falcone's disastrous bet on LightSquared is an excellent example of a really smart guy shooting himself in the balls in this manner.
RapGenius is one of these investments. And anyone who has been around the block longer than a couple years is fully aware of it. Whether they are willing to piss off AH and state this publicly, however, remains to be seen. Very few people have ever truly called out KP on Segway, or Sequoia on Color, for example. It pays to remain quiet.
As for me, I'm just hoping smart young kids will stop trying to analyze this deal, and others like it, in the hopes of finding or "discovering" any sort of logic in what they see. Don't waste your time. Don't base any of your own ideas on what you see happening. Just focus on what you're doing, and ignore all of this nonsense. Yeah, these guys raised $15 million. No, they aren't role models; no, their business doesn't actually make sense within the context of the deal; and no, you shouldn't try to emulate any of this crap.
Oh, and this article has it all wrong. It isn't at all difficult to get close to people in the entertainment industry. They are all watching their businesses getting disrupted by young technologists, so they have an obsession with getting to know all of the young technologists they can. You used to collect cars or jewelry -- now you collect smart kids with startups. I can't wait for the next big rap song that has someone bragging about how "I got way more startups than you."
Call me a hater, I don't care. I'm just being honest.
[Edit] Here's the most interesting quote from the Business Insider interview:
"Some books are in the public domain, like Moby Dick. Then there are some books that aren't in the public domain. And when people start to annotate these things, they create something new so people aren't just coming for the book anymore. They come for the meaning."
That would be a huge expansion of fair use. If they can make this argument successfully in court, everything ever written would suddenly be on the table, and they would be well positioned to gobble it up.
Music comes in many forms, even individual genres come in many forms. You can't hate on all rap just because of some bad role models, just like you can't hate on all people of a group because of some bad apples.
This image > says bubble
I think a bigger challenge will be overcoming the natural constraints of the format. If the goal is to become the Internet Talmud, they will need deeper levels of commentary. You can see the strain when you look at the Rap Genius page for Ben Horowitz's latest essay[2]. The annotations were split evenly between useful links, jokes (which were decent, admittedly), and fairly pointless "explanations" that just repeat what the essay said in a way that's drier and harder to understand. A better set of annotations would consist of comments from other domain experts either agreeing with Ben's conclusions and adding more evidence, or disagreeing and explaining why[3]. There could also be factual notes explaining the context (digging into the history of Opsware, for instance). But Ben's essay is written in plain language and doesn't rely on many external references, so the Spot the Allusion style of annotation doesn't really work there.
To take a couple of examples from poetry, Spot the Allusion goes a long way towards explaining poems like The Wasteland[4]. But how would Rap Genius go about annotating William Carlos Williams? Well, we can actually look and see. If you look at The Red Wheelbarrow[5], you can see the format breaking down. There is no one true exegesis of a line from that poem, but Rap Genius isn't built to handle the kind of commentary the poem needs.
I'm sure this has already crossed their minds, so I'm interested in seeing how they deal with the problem.
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[1] For me, at least, it comes across as unnatural posturing and rubs me the wrong way. That's just my gut reaction. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually led to a backlash within the rap community, too.
[2] http://rapgenius.com/B-horowitz-making-yourself-a-ceo-lyrics
[3] The comments wouldn't have to come from the experts themselves; amateurs could add links to things they've written and said elsewhere.
[4] http://rapgenius.com/Ts-eliot-the-waste-land-lyrics
[5] http://rapgenius.com/William-carlos-williams-the-red-wheelba...
but $15m investment in rap lyrics? When research on machines that could eradicate cancer struggle for crumbs? http://www.kanziuscancerresearch.org/ WTF SV?
Are you trying to argue that cancer research is inherently more valuable than text annotation? Because that's, well, brash. Or are you arguing that cancer research has a moral imperative that makes it inherently more valuable than text annotation? Because that's naive.
Investors make investments. You invest in things that you expect to make the most money.
Id suggest some "market research" on whether consumers want better cures for cancer or rather text annotation for rap songs
this reminds me of what stackoverflow has done - verticalized Q&A sites based on what they validated/proved with stackoverflow itself.
Unfortunately when they (Quora) started to try to scale new verticals the growth rate was significantly reduced and panic set in on both the leadership front as well as the investment front. The act of debating is what drives annotation, not the act of annotating itself.
I'm not saying that the can't do it, in-fact they seem like some ballin' ass hustlers, but they have in fact not yet solidified a product to market fit that can scale universally.
Quora on the other hand has been pursuing the one-size-fits-all approach which conflicts with the diversity that comes with increasing popularity.
rapgenius.com (the site) proves the model of Rap Genius (the company). They were able to attract a critical mass of domain experts to explain rap music. Moreover, their SEO model works. Imagine if in a year a search for Brown v. Board gives you results for Wikipedia and Law Genius. Wikipedia summarizes and quotes. Law genius is a primary source that presumably will have annotations from domain experts. If properly executed, the Rap Genius model will enable a wider audience to deal with primary sources, leveraging crowd-sourced commenting to enable a person with little domain knowledge to understand the original document.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/warren-buffett-jay-... http://video.forbes.com/fvn/forbes400-10/jay-z-buffett-forbe...
It's come a long way, from basement/block parties to a cultural force.
All of a sudden, their valuation makes sense... that sort of data would be hugely valuable for Google as part of Google Plus.
They should think about alternative branding for the other types of content, though. Maybe "what's the rap?" or "rapsheet."
This is the really interesting thing here. There are already song explanation sites but they are pretty terrible. They've got a great interface and a vision, now they have lots of resources to really step their game up and offer deeper commentary, multiple commentaries, etc. I'd love to see some kind of interface to show multiple readings of a poem; all the feminist viewpoints, historical, all the different ways in to something really complex.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4652309
Obviously not every text lends itself to the annotation format, but there is certainly value out there.
-- They will need to overcome the spotify issue, presumably [1]
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[1] The underlying issue is the model appears to be leveraging in-copyright source material. The rights holders will argue its a for-profit platform for re-publication, rather than a permitted use in a limited capacity. That is the issue at hand for the market and/or courts to decide.
viz:
17 U.S.C. § 107
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
1 the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2 the nature of the copyrighted work;
3 the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4 the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.**
However, there is reason to think a deal could be structured that benefits all parties. The business has potential to add real value, as it is a new channel for adding new life into legacy content libraries (for example).
> "The use to which the works in the HDL are put is transformative because the copies serve an entirely different purpose than the original works: the purpose is superior search capabilities rather than actual access to copyrighted material," wrote Judge Baer. "The search capabilities of the HDL have already given rise to new methods of academic inquiry such as text mining."
This might set precedent for a showdown over annotations that quote extensively from the source text, since online annotation systems also "[give] rise to new methods of academic inquiry."
The main point here is that laws about fair use are pretty vague, and new technologies always shake things up. We don't know what is legal and what isn't until it's put before a judge. In the case of Google's book scanning, the court case took seven years, which shows just how tricky this area of law can be.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/05/google-v-perfect-...
[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-rules-book-...
The page they have up with the Topic Blog post, however, is just a 100% reproduction with flyover notes. If You were to reprint the entire Harry Potter series, and add notes to the margins, it might seem similar. I believe that was already a subject of legal debate, though. Which might be precedent [see notes 1,2].
That being said, I don't per-se disagree with any of the issues being raised in your post. Also, I wouldn't rule out they will find a way to license content. The issue is just at what price? That's the spotify connundrum, IMHO.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._and_J._K._Rowling_...
Judge Patterson said that reference materials were generally useful to the public but that in this case, Vander Ark went too far. He said that "while the Lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon's purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled." He said he ruled in Ms. Rowling's favor because the "Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide."
[2] Another example, might be you-tube. Who has its "annotations" listed below each work of art. These are commonly referred to as "Comments". Some of the comments can now even be time-inserted into flyovers, more similar to the "flyover" type annotations currently up on the linked article. This is an example where there is both licensing and unlicensed content as a hybrid model.
Here's a question[1]. Let's say you took a work that was not in the public domain but has been the subject of extensive academic study, like A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Every line of that short story has been quoted in an academic paper at this point, and each quote was fair use. What would happen if you compiled all of those papers in a single website? That website would contain the full text of A Perfect Day for Bananafish, but in a fragmented form. Would it still be fair use?
Now let's say you pieced the quotes together like a jigsaw puzzle, and included the extensive commentary in flyover annotations. Is it still fair use? Probably not, would be my guess.
What if only half of the quotes were pieced together, and the rest was summarized? What if the annotations of the summaries included quotes that fill in the rest of the story? Where exactly is the line drawn?
I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, I promise. I just find it interesting. It's like we're facing the metaphysics of copyright, sort of a Borges As IP Lawyer thing.
[1] Posed as a thought experiment, because I have no idea what the answer is.
This is a good question. The Academic purpose, however, would seem to be very useful as a criterion for Fair use (under point 1). The completeness of a compendium, however, may create its own issues (under point 4).[1]
The closest commercial example, might be sampling of music. Perhaps the early 80's, with the emergence of DJ culture etc. Small pieces of extant art, repurposed. This did not usually impact the original adversely. And the issue is not that no new value is being created -- it most certainly is -- its just that these things tend to end up in court. So, to avoid that, people settle or license.
I would be open to hearing other arguments or cases, but I think that we would need to start with something that has at its origin a commercial endeavor. Another example that comes to Mind is Shep Farley, the Obama Hope poster. This had a good amount of transformation on top of a sample of an image from a photograph. But ended up being settled out of court. See eg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey#Legal%20issues%2...
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[1] Eg if it rendered away in full the need to buy at least 1 extant copy to study
Let's say an annotation platform allowed users to post snippets of material as freely as Youtube, along with annotations and commentary. And let's use A Perfect Day for Bananafish again as the source of these snippets of text. Imagine the following sequence.
Alice posts the first paragraph of the story, along with extensive notes. Bob posts the second paragraph of the story, along with extensive notes. Carol adds an annotation to the first paragraph with a link to the second paragraph. Dave, Eve, and a few dozen other people jump in the mix, and pretty soon you have the entirety of A Perfect Day for Bananafish on the annotation site, and it's incredibly easy to read the paragraphs in full and in their original order. Maybe the annotation site even has an algorithm that detects related pieces of content, and creates the links automatically. (This is certainly the case for Youtube.)
Where should the takedown notice be directed? Each person in the chain only posted a small part of the work, and each post includes annotations and commentary that would seem to grant it fair use protections. Taken as a whole, though, the entire work has been recreated in full. Can the rightsholder demand that the website remove links users make between posts? If so, under what section of the DMCA? And what happens if the links are made algorithmically?
Does a rightsholder have to issue takedown notices for each piece of the chain individually? If the people who made the posts file appeals, does the rightsholder have to take each and every one of them to court in separate cases? And if they do, would they get demolished by counterclaims?
This isn't an idle question, when you think about the annotations for The Great Gatsby[3] that the founders of Rap Genius have been mentioning in their recent interviews. It seems like this sort of scenario is inevitable, and I don't know if copyright holders have any way of actually dealing with it.
[1] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h_AfErLSM...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp.
[3] http://rapgenius.com/search?q=the+great+gatsby
Edit: It's important to keep in mind that, in this scenario, all of the potentially infringing content is being posted by people with no commercial motive, which makes it different from the Shepard Fairey case. The annotation site itself is making money, but is protected by the DMCA under current understanding of the law.
Edit x2: I love how deeply annotated this discussion of annotations is. Quick, someone link to this thread from Rap Genius and close the loop!
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Each person in the chain only posted a small part of the work, and each post includes annotations and commentary that would seem to grant it fair use protections.
Is likely going to fail under (4). ie, it fails not at the annotation-of-a-single-sample-in-isolation stage, but in the pre-meditated-compendium-cum-reproduction for profit stage.
You Tube, for the most part is a different example. They have a reasonable expectation that their content is intentionally UGC (original) or short-form (sampled) or a montage (also sampled, with transformation). The are multiple cases of ex-ante reasonable fair-use. So they can claim safe harbour.
Right now, ex-ante, that would be a tough argument for Rap Genius (given Harry Potter example). Their protoype looks to a plain observer like re-purposing in full the material (Annotated Linked Article), as a base upon which to add XYZ. Just like the NYTimes has to license a photo to annotate a story (they cant claim the story is annotating the photo=fair use), or else Getty images would complain. etc.
[edit]
Also, I do think you need to start with the presumption of a for profit business. If Wikipedia (or its foundation, etc) did a non-commercial version, I think then the analysis would change, fairly. The combination of extant materials/prototypes/early versioning, and their VC backing, etc. seem to put them in a different game.