File this under News from the Goolag. In case you had any illusions that Google has fully lost whatever shred of human decency they may have had, we just got even more confirmation in the CRB of the expense and invasiveness of Google’s lawfare against songwriters.

Remember–this BS I’m talking about today is ON TOP of the cavorting Google is doing in the Copyright Royalty Board in the CRB decision in the last rate setting proceeding that they have appealed once and no doubt will appeal again if they don’t get exactly what they want. That “remand” proceeding is called Phonorecords III and covers streaming rates for the 2018-2022 period.

The current insanity is in a completely different proceeding at the CRB (albeit on the same issues) called Phonorecords IV and covers rates for the 2023-2027 period. Same thing only different. There must be more children of the lobbyists and lawyers in the Imperial City who need to go to Sidwell Friends School and the Ivy League. Maybe even these lawyers:

The publishers filed a statement with the CRB to give the Judges some idea of what it is to be on the receiving end of this lawfare. Here’s some excerpts to give you a flavor of the transaction costs being imposed on your publishers (which inevitably will have an effect on operating costs and are going to come out of the songwriters’ pockets directly or indirectly).

And as you read this, I will tell you that I have a side bet going with even money that nobody–and I mean nobody–at Google reads any of the millions of pages of private songwriter information being produced. They will, of course, no doubt scan or download it all into their databases and use it for other commercial deals later down the line to the songwriters’ disadvantage.

Universal tells the Judges that they have a special issue with non-disclosure agreements that highlights the truly special vindictiveness and insanity of the Google discovery request.

And it goes on and on and on. What is clear is that Google fully intends to violate every shred of privacy that songwriters have left all in an attempt to disprove that which every songwriter knows to be true–songwriters have been decimated by the DMCA (which Google has turned into a science), unlicensed streaming (which Google profited from starting with its agreements with Megavideo as stated in the indictment (at page 8) and may explain who’s most interested in keeping Kim Dot Com from being extradited) and in particular Google’s bullying tactics to use all of the above as leverage to widen the value gap and its concomitant income transfer into its own corporate profits.

You have to ask yourself what kind of people engage in such Satanic chicanery.