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?
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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
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?
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.
then it is still theft.
It is not theft whether it is paid for or not. It is copyright infringement. This idea that copyright infringement is theft was invented by copyright holders and those who profit from strong copyright protection. If you look at copyright law you will see that it is legally quite different from theft. (and rightly so IMO)
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
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.
If the sites are taken down, then the copyright holders still aren't getting any money. Where are they losing out here?
Nobody will pay for the lyrics, apart from serious musicians who want to do a cover. If they don't want to pay, they'll just listen to the song, and copy the lyrics out.
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.
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.
Either way you look at it, copyright holders are not getting the $$$ that they are legally entitled to.
Something seems very wrong here.
Once you sing a song in public, the lyrics are now "out there".
This is getting more stupid by the day.
If you want to keep your lyrics a secret, then DON'T SING THEM and also DON'T PUBLISH THEM.
If you wrote a song, however trivial, and sing it publicly, then is someone "stealing" from you if they write down your lyrics? Put them on a web site? Yet, nothing has actually been "removed" from you?
I'm not arguing the legal aspect of the lyrics copyright status. I'm just saying that this is getting pretty downright ridiculous. Which will lead to a massive disrespect for copyright altogether. Which BTW seems to be happening as we speak.
Doesn't the MPA (not mpaa, and not riaa) have better things to do like busting down the door of kids birthday parties to arrest people for singing "Happy Birthday".
I will go so far as to say that I think one form of copyright simply should NOT exist. That is "performance rights". The very idea that nobody else can sing your song? Then keep it to yourself. (I can hear the second grade teacher saying.)
We need to form a SIG publisheres association so I can sue people who steal my sig. Would that be the SPA? Oh, wait.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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
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.
The thing you have to realize, is that the entire music industry is exceptionally evil. Not plain run of the mill "kicking small children with steel toe boots" evil, no, a much more special and exceptional evil -- pitting artists against their own fans, and screwing both on a massive scale. This includes lawsuits brought against college students, state sanctioned cyberterrorism on a massive scale, hypocritical moral indignation, paying artists next to nothing for music that earns the companies millions of dollars net, and actions like this, which take a practice which wouldn't be illegal anywhere else(scrawl down the lyrics to your favourite song, and hand out a bunch of copies. No court in the country would touch the case with a 500ft pole) and call it something different because "it's digital", bribing(through the more ambiguous "softmoney contribution), and other evil things (though I'm sure they do get out their small child kicking boots once in a while for concerts).
In this case, evil on a massive scale is it's own justification.
It's been a long time.
Funnily enough, as it turns out I often hear songs on the radio for which I might want to have the cd. Unfortunately it is practically impossible to find out what song/artist is being played on the radio. It is trivial to get such information about downloaded MP3s. Likewise, I will often search lyric sites (or google) for lyrics I remember from a song in order to figure out what I was listening to, then I know what CD to buy.
These people are just as wacked as the people that think you should have to pay a dollar every time you dare to hum a song someone else wrote.
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