Despite loving Grooveshark, I tend to agree that copyright has some meaning and purpose. I don't think taxi companies have a right to business just because they were there first.
Drop the "intellectual" part of "intellectual property" and that's exactly what AirBNB is doing - tenants are literally using property that isn't theirs (they've leased it, but they don't own it)[0] and are making money off it.
And in doing so, they are also impacting others' property rights, since the externalities of short-term tenancy are borne by neighbors, not by the person who lists a whole-apartment rental on AirBNB.
[0] And given how hard the music industry has been pushing the line "you don't own the music you buy; you're only leasing rights to access it" for digital downloads (not just streaming), this isn't really that different a situation.
Fundamentally, if I own a property I should be able to allow/disallow access to anyone as I see fit, and charge appropriately. If I make money, I'm still obligated to pay taxes on it (therein, I imagine, lie the problems).
So I'd claim that AirBnB and Uber are helping push for more sane regulations which allow free-er markets, while Grooveshark was basically just short of directly-stealing the content of others to profit on themselves.
That said, I'd still rather have Grooveshark than not, because I personally don't care so much about the record-companies rights - but certainly the government should be there to help uphold the rights of individuals and businesses, which, alas, means legal trouble for Grooveshark.
Where do we draw the line, and why do we draw it there?
It's not an abstract question: the regs that Airbnb pushes on are society's current answer to that question. They're going to change, as I think we can all see, but how far will they change? That's an extremely important and immediately impactful question right now.
Meanwhile, bringing this back around to Grooveshark: copyright is unlikely to change in ways that would be meaningful to Grooveshark.
But to answer your question seriously, I think the Japanese have a better zoning system than in the US, theirs allows for, in limited quantities, a bar in a residential neighborhood, or even an apartment next to a machining shop. The insight here is that it does no one any good to have a long commute, and so they have a system that affords landowners choices about the kind of neighbors they want to have, rather than dumping them all into residential-only zones.
