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.
Am I still allowed to sing (off key) to a song in the shower, without owning the original cd ?
la lala lala LA !, la la lala Luh !..
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
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.
RIAA is seriously making some good efforts in keeping everyone hating it's guts. Can anyone even speculate how lyrics sites hurt the industry? Dont bother saying "provides pirates with track titles", most official artist sites have lyricks and track listings. RIAA is slowly but surely shooting its own foot.
This sig was cut off by the sla
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
Why stop at banning reproduction of song lyrics?
What we really need to do is clamp down on people who actually _sing_ those songs, out loud, without paying a royalty. And I'm not talking just street musicians -- what about those immoral folks who sing in the shower? And the even more wicked ones -- since they try to conceal their crimes -- yes, people who hum along in their heads.
Let's face it. It's wrong. The original artist (via the record company) has complete control over how the music is to be experienced. Any performance not sanctioned by them is clearly illegal. And worse, all those folks who heard you sing would otherwise have bought the CD, so you're losing sales -- stealing from the artist.
Not only that, but someone could record you singing the song, even if the original CD was copy protected, which would clearly be a breach of the DMCA.
I know theft when I see it.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
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 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. Why is it people think music is somehow different from other forms of art and can be readily and freely stolen?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Then, P2P happened. All I gotta say is, you reap what you sow.
That is all.
Even if there sole purpose is to stop the muppet next to you with a walkman singing "Whats a glove got to do with it"
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
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?
Somebody had to stop this form of intellectual theft - the music business has done everything within their power to prevent the derisory practice of unlicensed shower performances - nonsense rhymes by artists with poor articulation etc. Clearly something had to be done or risk the entire population embarking on a karaoke binge.
After their pockets have been suitably lined for the trouble-
Without owning the CD, or the rights, you can't:
Sing it,
tell a friend,
write it down,
remember it,
listen to a friend's copy,
listen to it in someone else's car
hear someone sing it (excepting the band, provided you paid them in the first place)
am I missing anything?
This is assinine.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I use those sites to find out the who and what for song. Typically I hear something on the radio but I don't know who is signing it. All I can remember is phrase from it. So I use those phrases to search the net and find the song title and band. All the music industry is doing to me is reducing the likelihood that I will buy another album.
"We feel it is only fair to compensate our members for the loss of earnings caused by the illegitimate transcription of unlicensed lyrics"
Finding them will still be easy: if you know 2 or 3 words of a song, type those words + authorname + songtitle + the word lyrics into google and you're still going to find it just as easily.
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
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
It's no hoax. As someone else pointed out, this has happened before. lyrics.ch was fantastic but it got killed by this kind of action.
They required that the lyrics not be presented in text, so they had to devise a method that presented the lyrics in some kind of applet so end users couldn't grab 'em all wholesale.
The end result: if you didn't user Windows you couldn't use the site.
I stopped visiting, which, of course, was the point of their actions.
Jory
"dun dun duh-dun dun dun-duh-dun/ping/bip-bip-bip bup-bup-bup bop-bop-bop-bing"
With the lyrics and the melody, a person can imagine what the song sounds like without ever hearing it. Oh the piracy that will ensue and lost revenue from songs imagined.
C'mon people use your imaginations!
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
FoodLuvr writes: According to the GPA (Grocery Partner Association) increased swapping of illegal loosly knit communities of people calling themselves "grandmas" have hurt grocery sales in recent years. "These grandmas," says Richard Head, the president of the GPA, "swap recipes constantly, with no thought given to the impact on either the grocery industry or even the restaurant industry. Just because you enjoy a meal prepared by a grandma, doesn't mean the original source was hers, or that she owns the license to reproduce it. It could be stolen. Something has to be done about this, millions of people all over the world are currently enjoying stolen food." With that said, lawyers for the GPA are submitting cease and decist letters to major geriatric homes and senior citizens centers all across the country.
FLR
According to this "authority", you must get permission before you record (video or audio) a worship service.
Right.
If you already have these recordings in your (church/religious) library, you must destroy them.
Right.
I think they presume a bit too much.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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.
Ah, does anyone else miss that wonderful lyrics site?
I used to hear a song on the radio, remember the chorus, look up the title/artist at lyrics.ch, and then buy the CD (downloading at 28.8 sucked!).
Of course the RIAA/Harry Fox took down the site, and in protest I haven't bought a CD since.
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.
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.
Is anyone else just flat sick and tired of the "entertainment industry"? Isn't the purpose of "entertainment" to make life more enjoyable? Does anyone find being sued for ridiculous amounts of money entertaining?
We should refer to these people as the "litigation" industry to be more accurate. I hereby vow never to be entertained by the litigation industry again.
Yes, I realize that nobody likes the litigation industry, but I'm just sick of it, and needed a vent. If I ran across an "entertainment industry" scumbag dying in an alley, I would only stop to kick their teeth in.
You got it close, but this is better.
}
while(majority_population != smart_to_this_crap)
{
rights --;
prices ++;
sales --;
blame_on_piracy ++;
sue_college_students(infinity_times_2_dollars);
I am that much more enlightened and proportionally disillusioned
Last time I checked, publishers and record labels didnt SELL lyrics. (note: lyrics != song)
So whats the beef? Posting lyrics isnt stealing anything unlike posting mp3 tracks taken from the latest album.
I work for a band(s)
the history of the world
Either way you look at it, copyright holders are not getting the $$$ that they are legally entitled to.
That's right! Ever since I found out I could just find the lyrics to music on the internet, I stopped buying CD's entirely! You see, the only reason I bought CD's was so I could find out what song lyrics are. I've never really been interested in hearing the actual "songs". I assume most people feel the same way about this that I do, because otherwise the owners of the music wouldn't be losing any money and we'd both sound like idiots, right? It's a damn good thing someone is doing something about stopping people from having a convient way to find out what people are saying in songs! This "internet" problem has gone on long enough!!
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
It seems to me that publishing lyrics is like quoting somebody. People here on slashdot, quote others all the time.
If you're as hopeless with names and/or often listen to one of those radio stations who insist on telling you the artist before the song, these sorts of sites are often the only way to find out the artist of a song to buy the CD!
Shooting themselves and us in the foot, as usual.
I think this is getting very petty and ridiculous! I would think it would be legitimate if they were just clamping down on the people downloading lots of songs and burning CD's to give or sell to people.
But clamping down on the casual downloader and seeming to even wanting to stop people from making a mix of their own CD's was bad enough. Now this?!?!
Use to get how to play a song also of a site called Dansm's. Usually just basic cords and the lyrics or part of the lyrics that people figured out. The media people stopped him and others like it.
It is just one thing after another. The singing in the shower bit above was funny, but makes you wonder if a cop see's you singing in your car if your going to get a ticket for copyright infringement in the future.
Well, there is one way to hurt them. Boycott. Just stop buying tapes, CD's,... Also to make it legit, stop downloading from sites so they can't say that is where the buyers have gone. Just quit for a year. Let them see that you hold their purse strings or continue to be their patsy.
This reminds me of the Dixie Chicks and their comments in England. Hate us, say what you want, it's your right, just don't stop buying our music. Make us rich!
This action is only one more reason I only buy CDs used, unless they are from non-RIAA labels.
Never one to take this kind of nonsense sitting down, I replied immediately.I've been checking my mail but, still, nothing.
-Waldo Jaquith
And more to the point: Is there another business so intent on alienating its consumers? Let's get real: fans seek out lyric sites to learn the words to their favorite songs. Musicians seek them out to learn words to songs they want to cover - an activity that will, if they play in a properly licensed venue or make a commercial recording, eventually land a little money in the pockets of the copyright owners. Both of these activities only serve to increase recognition and fan dedication. So what exactly is the problem? Yes, it is technically illegal and representatives of lyric copyright holders are within their rights to seek legal remedy. But as the only likely effect is the alienation of fans and other musicians, you gotta wonder what the justification is.
I would like to know where I can buy the lyrics to, say, an older REM song. Where can you get the lyrics for singers besides like Elton John? Good luck buying that at Tower records... not gonna happen.
stuff |
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 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.
Once you sing a song in public, the lyrics are now "out there".
For that matter, so is the music.
What's next? Is the RIAA going to send snitches out in public to rat on local bands for playing cover tunes? What is the difference between posting lyics to a copyrighted song on your website versus actually playing the song live in a club to a large group of people and singing those copyrighted lyrics over a PA system? Seems to me both constitute broadcasting the lyrics to the public. So is the RIAA going to sue us for playing cover tunes in clubs?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
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.
In the news:
RIAA and MPA have filed a joint suit against Microsoft. The suit claims that Microsoft provides a means through their conroversial web browser Internet Explorer, to download song lyrics and then play them back using a Windows feature called 'narrator'. RIAA spokesperson David Nuterballs was quoted: 'Not since Napster, have we seen such blatant use of technology to steal from our artists'. The suit, rumored to be in the trillions, pretrial will begin in July.
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.
Should the songwriters crack down on lyric sites? Maybe not. Can they? Absolutely. It's their work and they're free to flush it down the toilet if they want. They don't like the idea of other people profitting off of the fruits of the songwriters' labor, even if it doesn't mean increased income for them, and you can't really argue against their right to lay the crack down.
People look for lyrics because they enjoy a song and want to sing along or quote the song. To take away such services is to tell those who pay for the overpriced media, "Sorry, even though you bought it, you can enjoy it, but you can't enjoy it too much."
It's just silly. What are they selling - the words or the music? I feel I should be able to reproduce darn near anything I hear as long as I give credit where credit is due. How is hearing a song on the radio and then posting what you hear any different than video cameras in public places? What if the video camera captures something copy protected - do you need a license to reproduce it??
Have you tried some of the artists websites? Most of the ones I've visited are geared towards selling the next album. They often don't list names of tracks on their albums (I have to hit amazon.com for that) nor the lyrics. At least not in an easy to find manor. If it were, then wouldn't it be at the top of google? Then there are the splashy flash only sites. What good does that do me?
First of all, the MPA never sued us. In fact, we were never sued by anyone. We hardly even talked to the MPA, since when we did, their response was "You'll have to talk to the publishers directly." - so, not very useful.
Our negotiations were through the CMRRA (Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency), who did everything they could to help us - but in the end it turned into an administrative nightmare.
Secondly, this is really old news - I went through the copyright negotiation gauntlet over two years ago (and, of course, tried to get a slashdot story back then...). I'd hardly say that the MPA is "cracking down" on lyrics sites. Since the dawm of time there have only been four lyrics sites shut down - lyrics.ch (everyone knows the story there), lyricshq.com, LyricFind, and lyricsh.com. The final 3 were shut down only because we PROACTIVELY tried to get licensing - WE went to THEM (them, in our case, being the CMRRA), not because they were "cracking down" or anything.
----------
Darryl Ballantyne
http://www.darrylballantyne.com
There is no difference in their minds, and they are already doing this. Coffeshops, Clubs, Live Bands. All liable for performing copyrighted songs without permission for profit
bad sig...no donut.
Ummm... ASCAP and BMI already do this. Any venue that hosts regular performances of music, whether live, broadcast, or recorded, is probably sending money to ASCAP and/or BMI on a regular basis.
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/
No, that is not what I intended.
My intended meaning was that anyone should be able to give a live performance of any song.
A band in a club. Or a kid's birthday party singing "Happy Birthday".
You can - assuming you've paid the fee to ASCAP or BMI (depending on which PRO (Performance Rights Organization) covers the song). They're cheap, too - around $300/year for a blanket license, last I checked.
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Darryl Ballantyne
http://www.darrylballantyne.com
Look, it's very simple. Song lyrics, just like poety or newspaper articles or novels, are protected by copyright. It is a violation of copyright law to publish them without permission.
It DOESN'T MATTER if the sites publishing them don't make any money off of it.
It DOESN'T MATTER if free lyrics sites could have the effect of increasing album sales rather than decrease them. We're not talking about recordings. The RIAA is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
It DOESN'T MATTER if the lyrics are available for sale through legitimate channels.
It DOESN'T MATTER if you think the lyrics are inane and stupid. That doesn't make them any less worthy of copyright protection.
Unless you have permission from the copyright owner, you CANNOT PUBLISH the lyrics.
The MPA is entirely in the right on this one.
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.
The RIAA is on fairly solid legal ground when they try to stop people from passing around MP3s of copyrighted songs when they represent the copyright holder. Lyrics and tabs are another story entirely.
95% of the time, lyrics aren't supplied with the original song, and instead someone takes the time to listen to the song and try to guess what was said. Sometimes it's just a guess. Take the famous "Scuse me while I kiss the sky / kiss this guy" lyric by Jimi Hendrix. I remember hearing an interview where somebody who knew him said he intentionally said it so that it could be interpreted both ways. Writing down lyrics or tabs based on listening to the song and trying to figure out what was said or what was played is essentially reverse-engineering the song. Having said that, it has to be the easiest reverse-engineering task there could ever be. The output you're attempting to duplicate is a 1:1 mapping of the process used to create it. In other words, to get the words you hear, all you have to do is recreate the words that the artist was singing.
Now if this exceedingly simple "reverse-engineering" is illegal when there is absolutely no form of encryption or copy-protection, then no form of reverse-engineering can be legal. The MPA might have a case if someone were releasing lyrics for unreleased songs, where the "copy protection" is the lock and key under which the unreleased songs are kept, but once something is played on the radio, how can they pretend it's not ok to try to transcribe the song?
So sure, go after the people who copy lyrics out of jacket liners. Go after the people who release lyrics for unreleased songs. But if a judge decides that it's ok to go after someone who just tries to transcribe a song he/she heard, it means the end of "trying to figure out how something works". Say that bed you bought at Ikea, the one you lost the instructions for. If you figure out how to put it together and put up the instructions on the Internet in case someone else loses their instructions... you'll get busted. If you figure out how the levers work in the Hungry Hungry Hippos game and post an explanation, you're going to prison. If you figure out how the magician managed to saw his assistant in half by watching carefully, remember not to bend over in the prison shower.
The expression "Legally entitled" has no meaning in this context.
Usually "legally" should reflect "morally", as in "is this right?", but with the influence the ONE side in these cases has on the laws, the scales of Justice are not balanced any more.
Repeat after me: I shall not automatically assume that "The Law" and "What's right" are synonyms.I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
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?
I know what I'm doing.
While knowledge about point the first is amusing, point the second is the ace up my sleeve.
-Waldo Jaquith
None of these sites make money for publishing lyrics. They are all money holes, essentially. They run on donations, advertising, and the money earned by the contributors elsewhere.
There are books with music and lyrics to a good many songs, but very often they are badly written, and it is hard to find any more than a very small selection of the most popular bands, if they have deigned to publish one. They often cost as much as the CD whose songs they contain.
If all you are looking for is lyrics, there is no reason in my mind you should not be able to get that much on the internet, for free. Many bands do publish their lyrics on their site, but most do not publish the real lyrics to their songs (like some other posters have pointed out, the misheard lyrics or amateur fans' renditions are often used).
The whole situation is rather frustrating, honestly.
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.
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 there are 2 issues here. One is the percentage of the work that is being 'copied'. In the case of a poem, if you 'republish' the poem, the entire work is being 'copied'. In the case of a song, the lyrics could be described as maybe 10%, if that, of the work. The idea of demanding money to publish lyrics is utterly ludicrous.
The second issue is that of how widespread the distribution is. I'm sure there are thousands of websites right now that are 'illegally' 'publishing' poems. I put publishing in quotes because I don't really consider such small-scale reproduction to be publishing, and any attempt to gain money from this so-called 'publishing' is pure greediness. The idea of demanding money from such small-scale sites is also utterly ludicrous.
I hope these people are exposed for the greedy bastards they are.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
This might mean something if not for the fact that property rights are quire distinct from "intelletcual property" in all but the last 50 years of the ~1000 years our legal tradition.
Copyright exists to serve the public good, PERIOD. It is not considered a natural right of it's own by anyone except media moguls and their shills.
This just isn't some radical hippie idea, it's a 200 year old law known as the US Constitution.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Slave owners in the pre-Civil War South felt that liberating slaves was a violation of their "property rights".
They also felt that not helping them recapture runaway slaves was also a violation of their "property rights".
It would seem that you are saying that "property rights" are sacrosanct. To be held above reason, common sense, the general good of society, and not to be questioned under any circumstances.
That's because Narrator can dictate the lyrics better than some artists can sing ;)
Maybe I can finally understand some of the words that are sung that get mangled or purposely obfuscated.
What's next? Is the RIAA going to send snitches out in public to rat on local bands for playing cover tunes?
Public performance of cover songs is not RIAA's jurisdiction but rather BMI's, and BMI does exactly that
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yet another reason why the length of time that a copyright is valid needs to be drastically reduced. Widespread, free availability is the way that the artist can ensure that their work will remain available for generations to come. Copying someone's song and passing it off as your own IMO is theft. Copying it and giving the proper references to the author is free advertising.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It would seem that you are saying that "property rights" are sacrosanct. To be held above reason, common sense, the general good of society, and not to be questioned under any circumstances.
No, I'm using the concept of property rights to illustrate that all "rights" are "invented" by someone, so that is an irrelevant argument against intellectual property rights.
Prior to Europeans coming to the US, Indians did not have the concept of "land ownership". Everyone could use the land.
In Feudal Europe, the Kings owned the land. Individuals did not.
Does that mean that land ownership in North America is "invented", and therefore should be ignored? Does that mean that if I want to use your pool, I can, because property rights are an invention perpetuated those who profit from it? Of course it doesn't.
So how can the author of the post I'm replying to claim that "idea that copyright infringement is theft was invented by copyright holders and those who profit from strong copyright protection.", implying that it's a fake concept and therefore should be ignored?
And how can the author portray "profit" in such a one-sided way? Party A creates something. Party B wants to use it for free, in essence "profiting" from the work of Party A, and denying Party A the ability to "profit" from something he created himself.
Why is it evil for the creator of a work to profit, but not evil for the user of that work to profit?
Ah, I see your point. You are saying that the concept of "rights" in general has evolved and that the fact that it is a comparatively recent invention does not discount its validity.
For the most part I agree with that. That has some similarities to point I was trying to make. Which was: property rights laws, along with many other laws, need to be looked at with some logic and reason from time to time.
I believe, however, that the pendulum is swinging too far in the direction of favoring restrictive ownership and copyright holders. (Along with the crap that is spewing out of the Patent Office now.)
From the US Constitution:
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Many of the accusations and complaints right now have nothing to do with promoting science and arts. We have people being sued over copyright issues long after the creators have died. It is simply a army of lawyers and accountants "managing copyright portfolios" rather than doing productive work.
Not by the MPA. We were contacted by Copyright.net for that reason, though. We also proactively contacted the CMRRA to try to obtain licensing.
As a side not, Sarah works for the UK arm of the MPA - so even if we spent lots of time with the MPA it wouldn't have been with her!
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Darryl Ballantyne
http://www.darrylballantyne.com