Slashdot Mirror
Lyric Sites In Trouble With The MPA
Joe the Lesser writes "Apparently the Music Publishers Association is cracking down on sites, like LyricFind, that display song lyrics without permission. 'Just because there is no central licensing body it doesn't make it right to take lyrics and publish them without permission.' says Sarah Faulder of the MPA."
then yes there should be royalties paid to the copyright owners. Non-profit users shouldn't have to though.
This seems asinine to me. Don't free lyrics serve to enhance the listening experience? It seems to me that they are most likely to increase music sales.
I mean isn't this fair use? I'll admit I'm still a bit hazy on the concept as it relates to this sort of non-commercial use, so would some kindly slashdotter explain how it would apply in this situation? Or are they talking about commercial lyrics sites? (I suppose such exist). I know I personally use a russian server for most of my lyric searches, and I'm aware Russian intelectual property law is or was rather spotty.
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
Unless you're a top songwriter you basically get paid dirt.
Songwriters should be allowed to make money off the lyrics since they wrote them in the first place.
That being said, I think LyricFind and the MPA should sit down and work out a licensing agreement with each other to work out a deal that benefits all three parites involved (Songwriters, LyricFind and consumers).
If there is no central licensing body, who gave authority to the MPA to sue LyricFind on behalf of the copyright holders?
??
???
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
You'd think by now these people would understand that if you can search a snippet of lyric and the complete lyrics show up, then you'll know who the artist is and can go out and buy the album that may have been unknown to you before.
Um, excuse me? Don't you want to sell more albums and get more royalties?
I guess not.
Jory
Would it be all right to publis lyrics if they were changed in any way? I'll refrase that, would it be ok to publish lyrics in ALL CAPS and call that the BIFF version? (And putting it in the Public Domain?)
... hu hu ... don't know why ..."
Reproducing lyrics in text could be considred an art form (for sure there will be differences).
How about a search-only lyric site? Where you can google for that song that goes: "... hu hu hu what ever you mean
Why in the hell would anyone object to the reproduction of lyrics?
-- (:> jms cs.vu.nl (_) --"---
I have personally bought loads of albums where there are no lyrics printed on the sleeve. For example, attempting to understand Moby shouting through his 'Animal Rights' album is particularly difficult without being able to follow exactly what he's saying, and websites where people have *translated* his shouting/singing have been beneficial and added to the experience. Besides, if the artist doesn't provide written lyrics on the sleeve, why should it be illegal for someone to write and post an approximation (because that's all its likely to be with a lot of heavy rock/punk albums) so listeners can sing along?
If a site distributes copied cd's for _free_ (eg: mp3 files or an iso image) and they are not making any money out of it, then it is still theft. This is no different.
Intellectual property of music is more than just the recording of it. There's the sheetmusic/score/tab as well as lyrics and recordings.
Lyrics are *part* of a song. Not the entire work. I don't understand why reproducing it is *stealing* the song. One would think the *artists* would *want* people to know what they are saying! Next we crack-down on people who hum tunes in public? Sing in the shower? Tell other people the lyrics to a song (different from publishing them how?)? 'Cuz lord knows if somebody *could* have made a buck selling the information, then you must be stealing it!
This whole "I created foo, you can't use foo in any manner I deem unworthy" attitude is just driving me freaking nuts.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Poetry is a text based artform. Musical lyrics (most of which can't even be called poetry) are not exactly rocket science - it's the music people pay for not the inane lyrics except in extremely rare cases.
I would like to see the business case for how lyrics damage record sales.
If lyrics are protected and cannot be published or read, where does fair use end? Can music reviewers still write reviews with lyric snippets?
Is posting the technical specifications of a product illegal once it has hit the market and ANYONE can get them for free, just like lyrics?
The only argument I see is that having the lyrics on a site generates traffic that can potentially generate profit for a site - so you are profitting from the artists work. But by that same logic, just having the name of the song listed on your site generates the same traffic. Are those now illegal to publish as well? Is it also illegal to place the singer's or group's name on the site, because that may also generate traffic? Are unofficial fan and gossip sites illegal because they generate profit for the creator?
The answer is yes. Remember all those lawsuits folks scoffed about when, for example, the Crayola corporation shut down multiple websites about their crayons, and *Ty (beanie babies) did the same? They even went so far as to serve legal papers to quake clans for using their names - and they could because they had the money to back up their legal departments insane claims.
Welcome to 1984.
I can't count the number of times I've gone to a lyrics site to find a song name/title/artist based soley on a line of lyrics.
C'mon... everyone's had an old song running through their head from time to time, where they can remember only a line or two. Enter that line into any lyric site (or google with quotation marks around it), find the song, and mark it down on your "future purchases" list.
What the hell is the matter with these people? I suppose if they want to cut their own throats they're free to do so, but sheesh...
This has to be a hoax; no organization dedicated to making money can survive long with this level of stupidity.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
they take away everything (i remember when you could find lyrics on the CD sleeves of some artists, those whose music you canactualy understand... i'm not paing $20 for 12 songs and getting no more than those songs, add the frelling lyrics to the sleeves and make money off the lyrics of those who buy em, it's expensive enough as is. it's difficult to find lyrics to a lot of songs, and frankly this thing has me even more annoyed, it's hard enough nw, let alone than they late it down.
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
Supposing I quote two lines of a lyric, is that allowed? What if I quote a verse? Where does something become a breach of copyright? Can I have a whole song with a couple of incorrect words or could it be a three word phrase that is recognisably from a given song?
This seems to be another excessive move from the recording industry. It seems to me that every time they take a step like this, the big record companies make themselves more obselete. Ultimately, artists won't want to be associated with their vile behaviour- there have been issues over artistic control of recordings for years and the more that viable alternatives arise, the more the creators of music will want to escape the machine.
Hopefully soon we will start to see the big kids of the music industry adding financial bancruptcy to their moral and creative bancruptcies.
The songwriter/lyricist writes the song, that is possibly their entire work.
That is why they get royalties for the performance, even broadcast, where the performing artist does not.
I heard an old Billy Joel ballad on the radio, a song from back in the days when I had hair. I just had a few lines, but the melody stuck with me.
I typed those lines into Google with his name, and the song popped up on a fan/lyric site. It was "And So It Goes." Never would have found it otherwise.
I did go out and buy the CD, though it wasn't easy to find. If this is their attitude, next time I'll just snag it off eDonkey. Fuck 'em. Lot's less hassle to just steal it.
If this "poetry" were not targeted at children, I would say that you are absolutely right. However, too much of it is aimed at the under-ten crowd (can you say Brittany Spears or Insync) and parents have a legitimate need to know what the lyrics say.
It seems to me that publishing lyrics is like quoting somebody. People here on slashdot, quote others all the time.
This action is only one more reason I only buy CDs used, unless they are from non-RIAA labels.
I don't know why anyone is surprised by this. Lyrics are basically poems, and no one would argue that poetry isn't covered by copyright. If I wanted to put up a page of poetry, I would have to contact the individual copyright holders and get their permission.
In this case I think you're... um... partly wrong. Whether that's the same as being partly pregnant (ie impossible) I have yet to determine for myself.
I can't necessarily say it's not equally wrong to reproduce someone's song lyrics as it is to do the same with published poetry. HOWEVER, the REASON behind copyright is to protect someone's... source of income, no? For a poet, this is the published word. For a lyricist, however, it's the song that his word goes into. You cannot argue that an artist would lose any revenue from the lyrics of his / her song being printed. Obviously if the song was reproduced without permission, there's an argument.
So yes, it is equally illegal. But is it equally wrong?
Why is it people think music is somehow different from other forms of art and can be readily and freely stolen?
Downloading the music that you should be paying for == stealing. Even most people who do it will admit to that. I just can't convince myself that putting the lyrics up on a website as a reference is the same thing. Or even close.
This is just idiotic. Radio stations (on the rare occasion they play something good, which is a whole different discussion) RARELY tell you what song/artist you just heard. Not to mention songs in TV commercials, shows, etc. I cannot begin to count the times I have heard a song in one of those places, wanted to buy the CD, and been unable to because it's not credited anywhere! With lyric sites, all you have to do is put in a few words and there it is. Without them, I buy less music. If the industry was intelligent, they would encourage lyrics side-by-side with sales. Imagine using Amazon to go search for a line in a song and be able to buy the CD then and there. Another case of the music industry shooting itself in the foot.
LordBodak's journal.
This reminds me of Sony's attempt to have Aibo enthusiast sites shut down because they were doing things with the Aibo that Sony hadn't intended.
At some point, every manager and every CEO needs to stop and think "I can sue, but should I?" Lyric sites keep songs in the public eye, raise interest in their back catalog, and embed the product further into the cultural dialog. Is it a violation of copyright law? Yes, the same way that publishing screenshots of videogames is a violation of copyright law. But it makes no business sense for any videogame company to attack the publicity they recieve through the gaming news sites. And it makes no business sense to attack lyric sites which only serve to drum up interest in the music.
Question your lawyers.
The ______ Agenda
As others have pointed out, distributing free cds is copyright infringement, not theft. Theft is when someone loses possession of actual (not potential) wealth due to the activities of others. If we redefine theft as the deprivation of potential wealth, then suddenly we have a world where you are a thief if you choose to walk down a road other than the one where a hotdog vendor is waiting for customers.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I don't listen to much popular music, but once in a while I'd be in the car or at a restaurant where they had the radio on or something like that, and I'd hear a snippet of something I really liked. Used to be, I'd do an AltaVista search (this is a few years ago) and find out the name of the song and the artist and the album, and go buy it. (And I bought some clunkers that way, 'cause often the song I heard was the only one on the album I liked, but at least I had that song, and legally.)
I basically assumed at the time that while the lyrics were copyrighted, no sane music publisher would object to having them redistributed, since that was basically free advertising.
Then the music industry started going after lyric sites. I know some of them are still out there, but (1) they're a bit harder to find/search, and (2) I'd feel weird about participating in something that was technically illegal for no better reason than just to be able to give my money to a stupid industry that's trying to deprive me of my constitutional right to free expression [and not just by self-destructively vigorous enforcement of copyright, but that's a different diatribe]. So now when I hear a little snippet of a song on the radio that I like (unless it's NPR, in which case they usually make it easy for me to find all the information I need and often make it easy for me to hear the whole program again on the web), I just say "oh, well" and go download something (legally) from BeSonic.com or some other musician-supported site. I still buy CDs, but I spend less on them than I used to, and they're much more classical and folk (the sort of thing I hear about on NPR) and much less pop and rock (the sort of thing I'd hear in businesses or randomly spinning the dial in the car) than they used to be.
Oh, well, I guess the music publishers don't want my business, since they're making it harder for me to buy their product.
If these sites are so useful, then the sites shouldn't have any trouble paying for the license to publish material which isn't theirs. Just like books, music, movies, research papers, and all other copyrighted material, it is important to protect the copyright. If I find utility in publishing today's New York Times or the newest Harry Potter, it isn't my choice to put it on the internet, it is the copyright holders.
As many college students know, searching Lexus Nexus, and research abstracts are extremely useful. But they also require large fees from the University to pay the original copyright holders. Likewise, if some is going to publish someone else's lyrics, they should have to pay fees to the original copyright holder. And if that means, charging the end consumer, so be it. Record companies may find it in their interest to publish lyric catalogues at a loss in order to drive sales.
Anyone who argues in favor of copyright looters should spend some time in Basra and let me know how that feels. I, like everyone else, prefers free to paying, but until they figure out cold fusion, you can't get something for nothing.
Yes. Read the subject line again. You. Are. An. Idiot.
What's your goal here? To continue to run your Website? To not need to kneel down and kiss the MPA's boots? To make a stand and defend a sane interpretation of copyright law? All of them are admirable goals. In your shoes, I'd probably have the same ones.
How are you going about achieving your goal? By tweaking lawyers. By tweaking lawyers who have already implicitly threatened serious legal action. By tweaking lawyers who work for a massive and well-funded organization who have already implicitly threatened serious legal action.
FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING?
Immature and juvenile responses have a quick, immediate feel-good reaction, sure, I can understand that. But it doesn't keep them from being immature and juvenile and unwise.
Please, please, please, consider the following to be free legal advice:
When lawyers are threatening you with lawsuits, the proper response is not to write a snarky letter. The proper response is to get your own damn lawyer and let him write a snarky letter.
Why? Because he knows how to fight these chumps.
You don't.
And no, saying "well, I read the Constitution a few times and I read Slashdot" doesn't count for crap in a legal-education sense.
Get yourself a lawyer. Now. Stop reading Slashdot and call a lawyer.
ObWarning: I am not a lawyer and I am not licensed to practice law. I am the son of a judge. And I have seen, firsthand, what happens to people who think they can take on lawyers.
If I hear a song on the radio, am I breaking the law?
No
How about if I write down the words to that song? Am I breaking the law now?
No
OK, now I put the lyrics up on my web page. Now?
Yes, you distributed.
The radio station had to get permission before they played the song. You have the right to listen to that distribution via the airwaves. You have the right to make a copy. You have the right to write down the words. But you can't give it away.
if an author is giving out copies of his book at a store and a friend of yours wasn't able to be there, you can't make him a copy of your book and say "It's OK, he gave up his copyright by distributing some free copies" He just gave you the right to own your copy. That is all. Why would you now own the distribution rights to his work?
When someone transmits something, whether it's TV, radio, or whatever, you have the right to receive a copy via their method of transmission and keep that copy or make other copies for yourself. But you can't distribute it, even if it's a stupid decision that will hurt music sales.
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
What makes you think the Dave Matthews Band's knowledge and acceptance matters? It doesn't matter. The only question is who holds the copyright on the lyrics... and if you have the permission of the copyright holder, even that's not a sure thing.
... etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And what have you done? You've just taunted them, dared them, "please, please, Mr. MPA Attorney, break out all the dirty and foul tricks you can to get even with me".
After all, the MPA's lawyers can, if they so choose, make an argument that you're not acting in accordance with the permission granted to you by the copyright owner. They can make an argument that the person who you think holds the copyright really doesn't. They can
You're an idiot. Stop reading Slashdot. Get a lawyer. NOW.
If you've been part of two lawsuits already, then by God, you ought to know this already without being told.
>>I've known Dave Matthews Band and their management for years, and they have no problem with anything on my website, tablature or otherwise
Yes but here is the classic line. Does the band own the rights to the the music?. if they do, then you will be clear.
now here is the other side of the coin, do you have advertsing on your site that is directly related to that lyric, if so, it would seem to most people that you are earning a living on someone elses work without paying them for it.
but hey what do I know.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
An old adage. "Never bite the hand that feeds you." It seems like the music industry is embarking on a deliberate campaign to piss off their customers.
Cracking down on file traders... Ok, that probably only affects a subset of their customer base, but going after fan sites that post lyrics to songs? It's not like the person who wrote the lyrics is going to actually miss out on song royalties because someone could read their lyrics on the web instead of listening to them in the song. Also, I know of a lot of parents that use such sites to figure out what their kids really are listening to. These days it isn't always easy to tell what is being said in the songs just by listening.
IANAL... But I play one on
I think you answered your own question. If you want to know the lyrics they want you to have to use the artist's official site.