Music Should Be Heard But Not Understood

PaxTech writes "Warner/Chapell music has cease-and-desisted a small freeware developer who wrote a Mac OS X lyrics downoading application. pearLyrics in no way contributed to piracy or copyright infringement, it was merely a tool to search for lyrics on public websites and view or add them to mp3 metadata. This is part of a larger crackdown on websites distributing lyrics. Apparently, the labels would like to force us back to a world where Hendrix kisses guys."

Comments

Re:Overkill

[shark72]

"Okay, I can kind of see the basis behind SOME of the recording industry's points (go ahead and mod me flamebait now) seeing as music is copyrighted property and whatnot."

That's fine. Today, we are talking about the music publishing industry. I know it's a "same difference" to a lot of Slashdotters, just as non-Slashdotter types might think that IT guys, MIS guys, coders and project managers all do the same thing.

"But aren't lyrics not copyrighted or are the hundreds of sites out there that give song lyrics away for free underground criminal enterprises?"

Lyrics are copyrighted, typically by the lyricist. The lyric sites get around this with those cryptic "only for individual private study" disclaimers -- I'd copy and paste the exact text but I don't feel like going to a lyric site right now and festooning my display with twelve pop-ups.

Anyway, the lyricist may transfer the publishing rights to a company that specializes in such things (similar to entrusting a real estate agent to sell your house or a CPA to do your taxes -- pay a little more and let an expert do it), or they might form a one-person publishing company. Lennon and McCartney created a two-person company, Northern Songs, Ltd.

As an aside, since many of these publishing companies are just the lyricist and/or the composer, and lyricists and composers are creative folks, you get some funny and clever company names. Look on your CDs -- you'll often see things like "Contents copyright (c) MegaBigRecord Company and Green Ardvaark Ltd." "Green Ardvaark" is probably the guy who wrote the words or the notes.

Warner/Chappell Music happens to be an exception -- it's a very large music publishing company that handles the publishing rights for lots and lots of musicians. They are a subsidiary of the Warner empire (as are their record, film, and book divisions) but they are not a record company, and they are not in the recording industry. They are in the music publishing industry.

"In any case I think the recording industry is definately overstepping its bounds here and should probably focus on winning the first losing battle it got it self into (the fight vs. p2p file sharing) before trying to start another one."

Different industries. This is the music publishing industry, that gets its revenues through radio airplay, jukeboxes, licensing to films and movies, etc. -- pretty much everything but record sales and other pursuits of the recording industry. Perhaps it would be accurate to say that Warner should not be doing this, but this very well might be a left hand/right hand thing.