The music-sharing service Grooveshark was sued by major record labels in 2011, and yesterday the hammer blow finally came down. A New York federal judge has ruled in favor of the music companies on just about every issue that came up in the lawsuit. Damages, and the scope of an injunction, are yet to be determined.

The 57-page opinion (PDF) penned by US District Judge Thomas Griesa certainly seems like the beginning of the end for Grooveshark. It isn't hard to rattle off names of the unauthorized music-sharing services—like Napster, Grokster, Kazaa, and Limewire—that have been dealt a death-blow by federal court rulings.

The case doesn't look like a close call. Grooveshark was hoping to be protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects online services from copyright lawsuits as long as they meet certain requirements, including responding to the takedown notices sent by copyright holders.

Grooveshark's founders and employees were deeply implicated in growing the company's massive music library, which was organized in a central list. As far back as 2011, founders were exhorting employees to download music (from anywhere) and put it on Grooveshark as fast as possible—or face repercussions.

In 2007, Grooveshark CTO Joshua Greenberg wrote a company-wide post reading:

Please share as much music as possible from outside the office, and leave your computers on whenever you can. This initial content is what will help to get our network started—it’s very important that we all help out! ... Download as many MP3’s as possible, and add them to the folders you’re sharing on Grooveshark. Some of us are setting up special “seed points” to house tens or even hundreds of thousands of files, but we can’t do this alone… There is no reason why ANYONE in the company should not be able to do this, and I expect everyone to have this done by Monday… IF I DON’T HAVE AN EMAIL FROM YOU IN MY INBOX BY MONDAY, YOU’RE ON MY OFFICIAL SHIT LIST.

The opinion also took note of the testimony of ex-Grooveshark employees who testified on behalf of the record companies. They explained how their bosses ordered them to acquire "the most popular and current songs" and upload them into the Grooveshark system.

Easier and faster

In its initial incarnation, Grooveshark, referred to by the judge under the name of its parent company Escape, only allowed users to share music with other users who were online at the same time. "Escape recognized that this feature was a significant limitation of its business," wrote Griesa.

Then it designed its "Sharkbyte" software, which automatically copied all of its users' music and uploaded it into its storage library.

The message to employees was the same: go faster. After caching 20,000 songs in five days, the company's senior programmer wrote: "We need more people caching songs, so please cache your songs... form [sic] home preferably, since we already have too many people caching songs at the office."

By early 2008, Grooveshark had over one million music files. That's when it created Grooveshark Lite, the current version of the software. It allows anyone with an Internet connection to navigate to the website and stream any song in the catalog "without creating an account or downloading any software."

"Escape openly acknowledged that their business plan was to exploit popular label content in order to grow their service and then 'beg forgiveness' from the plaintiffs and seek licenses," wrote Griesa.

In 2007, Grooveshark executives engaged licensing discussions with record label executives, without telling them they were ordering their own employees to upload music as fast as possible. The judge's order notes that Universal Music didn't learn about employee uploads until 2011, when Grooveshark responded to discovery in a related state court lawsuit.

Grooveshark used an automated system to send out DMCA notices to users when it got notice from a copyright owner. Thousands of those notices were sent out to Grooveshark employees, including the company CTO Greenberg and co-founder Sam Tarantino, who are named defendants in the suit.

The music labels' expert explained that some records of the employee uploads must have been deliberately deleted by Grooveshark. The judge agreed, writing that he will also issue a sanction for discovery abuse in this case.

"Plaintiffs have demonstrated that defendants, in bad faith, deleted Greenberg and other user upload data as well as relevant source code," wrote Griesa.

Grooveshark's lawyer told The New York Times his client "respectfully disagrees with the court’s decision and is currently assessing its next steps, including the possibility of an appeal."