Slashdot Mirror
New Russian Site Carries Unlicensed Song Lyrics
Anonymous Coward sent a link to lyrics.mguk.ru/, operating under the name LyricsDot, which looks a lot like the old non-profit www.lyrics.ch database did before it signed an agreement with the (U.S. based) National Music Publishers Association and went commercial. The trick with this new lyrics server is that it's in Russia, where U.S. law (and copyright law in general) seems to mean little or nothing. Is this the wave of the future? Will other sites containing data that violates copyrights or otherwise irritates large U.S. companies move to Russia or other countries where local authorities are unlikely to cooperate with American law enforcers? It's going to be interesting to see where this all goes.
It's amusing to see that Russia, a country where during the cold war millions of Americans were taught to hate/fear as the big, bad, oppressive Soviet Union, may turn out to be the one place where information and "intellectual property" is free and safe from censorship.
Lyrics? You are worried about some freaking lyrics? Oh, wow. :)
Let me tell you something. You can go to Russia or China or India or South America, anywhere and you can get the entire Adobe Photoshop for 2USD. You can get ANY game for less than 3USD, you can get any Windows, any Unix, AIX anything for less than 5USD. And you are worried about some lyrics
You can't handle the truth.
The basic idea, except that the company that administers loads of music publiching rights in the US, the Harry Fox Agency, convinced Interpol to sieze this guy's computer and shut lyrics.ch down. Then, in order to stay out of jail, he worked out a way to put the lyrics up, with permission, but in an almost completely useless form. If you want to see lyrics.ch, you have to accept an browser application that will install on your system to show the lyrics in a way that is supposed to prevent copying.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
whois lyrics.mguk.ru ...
Query: lyrics.mguk.ru
Registry: whois.ripn.net
Results:
domain: MGUK.RU
type: CORPORATE
descr: Corporate domain for Moscow State Univercity of Commerce
Also, does any of us feel guilt at listening to classical music knowing that no royalties are going to the estate or descendants of the creators? And I'm not just talking about the really ancient centuries old stuff where "rightful heirs" are today unknown. Even some artists who wrote songs in the 20th century like Scott Joplin, who would be protected by current law if their copyrights hadn't already expired, get nothing from the use of their work. Do you feel bad for this?
How can anyone support Disney keeping sole control over Mickey Mouse and yet have a clean conscious incorporating 'the entertainer' into their copyrighted movie of slot machine or game program?
BTW, the copyright on pkzip won't expire until the year 2101!!!!!! Is this in any way reasonable?!
No offense taken - I agree with you. Remember, many Americans are as unhappy with the U.S. government as you are, but as long as a majority of our fellow citizens doesn't even bother to vote, and corporate dollars control our electoral politics, things are not likely to change.
It's gotten to the point where it looks like the best we can do is find "workarounds" for some of the dumber laws.
I don't support copyright or patent violations per se, but some of the things we are allowing to be copyrighted and patented, and the way some of the copyright and patent holders act (making threats that cause large legal bills even if they are not valid), we might as well all get used to being outlaws. This country once tried to ban alcoholic beverages -- and created a large group of outlaws by doing so. Then the U.S. government decide to go to "war" against some popular recreational drugs -- and created a whole new class of drug outlaws. Now we seem bent on creating intellectual property outlaws.
In the end, what happens is that U.S. citizens lose respect for *all* laws, and stop caring about whether they follow them or not. And citizens of other countries lose respect for the U.S. in general.
- Robin
Well, I'm not disturbed, just, well...pissed off. I used to frequent Lyrics.ch a lot when it was "free" (before 1999).
Let me tell you a story...
When I was in grade 8, I discovered that my school had a bunch of old reel-to-reel tape recorders that were going to be thrown out. After some negotiations with a teacher, and some of his negotiations with the principal, I was allowed to take one home. Since I needed some tape to record with, I went to a local stereo shop and bought a reel. It had already been used, so it was a bargain. When I played it, I found that someone had recorded two rock songs at the beginning of the tape. I didn't care much for the second one, but I absolutely loved the first! I listened to it over and over. I was never able to find out the title or who sang it. I played it for a few friends, and they couldn't name the song or artist, either. Eventually, I lost interest in it.
About nine years later, I was heavily into MP3s, and I planned to try to transfer many of my cassette radio tapings and other recordings to MP3 format. I remembered that rock song on the reel-to-reel tape, and decided to have a go at it. It was about this time that I also knew about Lyrics.ch. Since the title and artist of this song still eluded me, I decided to see if Lyrics.ch's full-text search engine could help. After only a few tries, I discovered the title and artist: "Isolation" by Toto. Since Lyrics.ch also lists the name of the album a song is from, I was able order a CD with the song on it, and get a much better quality copy (which was good, because now, 11 years later, that reel-to-reel tape recorder is breaking down). I tried some of Toto's other music, and soon found that I really liked them.
Lyrics.ch also helped me decipher the lyrics of lots of other music I had, as well. It was also instrumental in helping me track down a few songs I heard on the radio but for which the DJ did not announce the title or artist.
Then, in January 1999, as you know, the Harry Fox Agency and some big-money, copyright-owning record companies came knocking. When all the dust settled and the negotiations finished, Lyrics.ch was still in operation, but one could only view about 1/3 of their songs.
I gave the "new" Lyrics.ch a try. In order to view a song, I had to run a large Java applet that took a while to download and presented a "high security risk" according to Internet Explorer (my version of Netscape at the time was 4.05; not good enough to run the Java applet). Then, the lyrics appeared, but I was unable to copy-and-paste them out of the browser window. The lyrics disappeared whenever the applet lost the focus, so clicking File->Print was useless. The Java applet displayed about a page-full of lyrics at a time, but for only about five seconds per page. Not enough time to read them, and useless for singing along with the song! At the end, it just displayed, "This concludes the reading of this lyrics." I would have to reload the page to view them again.
I'm not sure, but I think the lyrics are now encrypted as they are sent down the wire to your computer. I have to wonder how much of this was mandated by the copyright holders, and how much was done by the Lyrics.ch staff simply to please them and avoid further trouble.
About the only to save the lyrics is to use screen capturing and retype the lyrics while viewing the screen capture (they'd be too small and blocky for an OCR program). This is difficult in Windows; you must quickly paste the bitmap into a paint program before capturing again. About the only operating system for which this would work is Mac OS; there when capture the screen, it automatically saves the captures with incremental filenames. I don't know how to capture the screen in X.
Why can I not save or print the lyrics as before? Sure, they're someone else's property, but wouldn't a strict copyright notice at the bottom of the page solve that? What's wrong with just good ol' HTML? And besides, they're just lyrics! What harm can one do with them? It's not like they're directly harming CD sales, like pirated MP3s.
It seems to me that this was just done by the record companies just to show the world who's boss. They could have said, "Listen, those lyrics are our intellectual property, but since they're helping people find music, we'll let your site stay up [unmolested], but you have to put this copyright notice on them and give us a cut of your ad-banner revenue." But instead, they've made the site almost useless. I refuse to run that Java applet on my home computer, too. Who knows what else it's doing, besides showing lyrics?
I realize that Lyrics.ch should not have taken such a liberty with someone else's copyrighted property, but the record companies should not have reacted as they did. Their reaction only hurt them, as far as I'm concerned. Remember how the lyrics were user-contributed before? I haven't seen any new ones added since the crackdown.
So, I applaud these brave Russians with their lyrics site. It wouldn't hurt to set up a mirror in Taiwan (a country which never signed the Berne copyright convention), too.
By the way, I've read The Right to Read, and I love it. Sorry, but my right to fair use comes before some money-grubbing record company's right to lock up harmless information like their lyrics. FIGHT THE COPYRIGHT NATION!!
The Soviet Union acceded to the Universal Copyright Convention in 1973, and the Russian Federation inherited those treaty responsibilities. In addition, Russia on its own signed the Berne Convention in 1995.
The Berne Convention is as close as anything comes to a world copyright, with 144 countries signed on [Word97 doc, sorry]. These 144 countries represent well over 85% of the world's population; the only countries remaining to sign are mainly disorganized ones like Somalia or rogue states like Afghanistan. The Berne Convention permits the same people who sued the Lyrics Database before to file suit in Russia.
Now, it may be true that there is a certain degree of corruption or even lawlessness in Russia, but from a legal standpoint, it is not true that US law means "nothing" there. A copyright filed in the US must be recognized by the other signatories, including Russia.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
USA to Russia: "Let's ditch this ABM thingy."
Russia to USA: "No waysky."
USA to Russia: "Waysky."
Russia to RIAA: "How do you like our new lyrics site?"
RIAA to USA: "Eeek! Gasp! Inarticulate sounds!!!"
USA to Russia: "OK, we'll stick with the ABM thingy."
Russia to RIAA: "OK, we'll take down the lyrics site."
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
At the very least, it makes politics more interesting.
Either there's some mass hypocrisy going on, or a good majority of Slashdotters are simply too immature to think things through. Recall:
Situation 1
Jon Katz et al. publish a book on the Hellmouth series of discussions and articles on Slashdot. Whether or not it actually accomplished anything is irrelevant; a mass outcry goes up from Slashdot posters whose material was used. Reasons ranged from not getting a slice of the pie to feeling intellectually raped to wanting a say where and when "their" material is used.
Situation 2
A site goes up in Russia purporting to use and abuse copyrighted material that the owners of which obviously don't want to be folded, spindled and mutilated in that way. Slashdotters cheer the advent of "free information".
I won't even the parallels this draws to people who take "liberties" with the GPL and other related copyright licenses. I mean, hey, they should be free to do what they want with it, right?
Marie Antoinette tried to have her cake and eat it too. She ended up missing her head, an irrelevant footnote to history. I fear this community will just end up an irrelevant footnote.
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
.. where U.S. law ... seems to mean little or nothing
Now excuse me, but being in Russia US Law has no effect, so it does not "seem" to mean little it actually means absolutely nothing.
Will they push for new laws that would force copyrighted content to be censored at the border (in the router), like other countries such as China do in their firewalls?
As a non-American, I can tell you that it the arrogance of the states gets to me sometmes.
No offence Roblimo, but your statement here is one of those times!
The US is one country. Yes, you are the most powerful, all that other stuff you love telling everyone. But you're one country.
What if Russia demanded that a US publisher pay a Russian poet for the illigal use of his poetry? The good 'ol USofA wouldn't give a flying rats ass.
And why? Because Russia is another country and the US should not have to abide by any other law except its own.
Just sick is what your country is. Just sick.
" This web page is protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this page, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil and criminal penalties, and will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law. Any files you have downloaded here are only for your own purposes. Any uploads prohibited. Our team does not bear the responsibility for your surfing this page."
Imagine that. Invoking copyright law to protect the content what violates copyright law.
___
This means we're gonna be logging into fragging RUSSIA to enjoy the freedoms we should have as AMERICANS.
And to think people fled to the US to enjoy the freedoms they couldn't have in Russia, just in my adult lifetime.
This is so sickly ironic it makes me chuckle.
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63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!