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
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.
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.
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.
"We feel it is only fair to compensate our members for the loss of earnings caused by the illegitimate transcription of unlicensed lyrics"
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.
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.
Either way you look at it, copyright holders are not getting the $$$ that they are legally entitled to.
That's right! Ever since I found out I could just find the lyrics to music on the internet, I stopped buying CD's entirely! You see, the only reason I bought CD's was so I could find out what song lyrics are. I've never really been interested in hearing the actual "songs". I assume most people feel the same way about this that I do, because otherwise the owners of the music wouldn't be losing any money and we'd both sound like idiots, right? It's a damn good thing someone is doing something about stopping people from having a convient way to find out what people are saying in songs! This "internet" problem has gone on long enough!!
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Never one to take this kind of nonsense sitting down, I replied immediately.I've been checking my mail but, still, nothing.
-Waldo Jaquith
Either way you look at it, copyright holders are not getting the $$$ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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Darryl Ballantyne
http://www.darrylballantyne.com
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