Slashdot Mirror
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."
So what's new? Companies send Cease and desist orders all the time, it's the easiest way to scare people into doing what they want. It's ridiclous but it's true, if you act like you're going to sue people they figure out if they can aford the law suit (win or lose) and more often than not they see they don't have the money so they're forced to stop.
It's like pointing a gun at someone, they "could" not get shot, but is it worth the risk when you could just give them your watch and be done with it?
I like muppets.
Maybe my comprehension of spoken(sung?) language sucks but I prefer having the lyrics, it really helps me understand what an artist is trying to communicate, and among other things it makes it a lot easier to read the subtext involved. This is especially helpful in the case of a "rock opera" type "concept" album (one example is Green Day's "American Idiot", another from another area is VNV Nation's "Matter+Form")
I can't wait to have to pay to understand the words to a song.
But first you have to buy the CD - what I've used lyrics sites for most often is "hey, that song on the radio was pretty good - wonder who the artist is?" Most of my recent iTunes purchases came after doing something like that - and on occasion I've even bought the entire CD.
Copyright is, at its most basic, the monopoly to use force to control a non-physical "thing." Before copyright racketeering, we had ten thousand years of art, music and creation. Today marketable art is more and more in the hands of those who can not produce. Where 7 years of legal force might be ok, no law offering power ever stays reasonable.
The web is ending our need to copyright, as enforcing it will soon be impossible. BitTorrent is getting replaced with third party proxies so information stores can;t be traced. Small bands that give away their music are seeing increased sales of show tickets and merchandise. Old Brick and mortar retailers can't compete with eBay and Amazon, and the used market always offers the same art for less.
Here's the basis for the end of copyright: the free market. The laws of supply and demand say anything for sale with an unlimited supply is worthless. Art is worthless -- the profit comes from how you package it (live versus CD) and what you offer as a value added incentive.
Every lyrics site I find is loaded full of ads, and I think they all steal from each other. Why isn't there a wikilyrics site?
It is 3Q 2030.
You're arguing with your wife again. It seems she's missed her spending quota again this quarter. A proud patriot, you have no problem spending 85% and sometimes 90% of your income on consumer goods, yet she can't manage to spend even close to the 75% required by law. It's that foreign mentality, you suppose--that's what happens when you are educated overseas and without the benefit of a corporate sponsor. You have to remind her that if the Internal Consumer's Service (ICS) catches her, she'll be doing time in Philip Morris(TM) Prison like her uncle.
Oh well, hopefully a night at the town's AOL-Time-Warner-Clear-Channel-Blockbuster(TM) Authorized Media Distribution Center will smooth things over with her. That reminds you--you need to have your eye- and ear-implants inspected for this quarter again, otherwise you won't even be allowed in tonight.
You haven't attended church services for a while. Although your wife is a devout follower of God's Customers(TM) and shops in the Church Store at LEAST five tiems a quarter, you're not yet convinced that converting from Consumers For Jesus(TM) was that sound an investment.
Your son Rick has just graduated from the local McDonalds(TM) High School. You want him to go to Pepsi(TM) University like his sister, but he wants to go to Coke(TM) College. Not that it matters--the permits you get at either school are the same. Although he really wanted to attend Stanford(TM), his corporate sponsors rejected that proposal, based on what it might do to his credit rating.
Your youngest daughter just graduated Pepsi(TM) U. It was expensive, but she is all set now, having received a Creative Thought Permit and a Entrepreneurship License. On top of that she's accepted a job at Fortune 10 corporation. Of course almost everyone works for a Fortune 10 nowadays, there being only thirty-some corporations left. It's too bad she had to sign all those NDA's though--you'd really like to be allowed to know where she would be living and how to get in touch with her. Ahh well, it's the price you pay for our corporate security.
Your older daughter, after twenty quarters of employment, was finally permitted to tell you that she is working in middle-management at AT&T. Of course, every job in the United Corporations of America is middle-management. The cheaper--skilled--labor is all outsourced to Those Other Countries, whatever they are called. In ten more quarters, assuming her credit rating remains good and she has attained Shareholder status, she'll be allowed to talk face-to-face (no encrypted channel) with us again!
Apparently, her five year old daughter has been grounded again, this time for racking up a $6000 fine--singing "Happy Birthday(TM)" at a party without a Media Distribution License. She really needs to be taught a lesson--that as a patriotic Consumer of the UCA, she needs to respect the rights of Shareholders and property owners. What a dangerous thoughts she has! She thinks she should be allowed to say whatever she pleases, no matter what it does to someone else's portfolio! No one can get it through to her that terrorist ideas like that will land her in one of those "special" schools--and she'd be subjected to a lower quarterly limit on all her credit cards.
Fax from your wife--she'll be late tonight. Corporate HQ has re-instated fourteen-hour work days until the end of this quarter. It's too bad she's not allowed to quit her job--you could get her a pretty sweet management position any time in your department at Microsoft.
This document is hereby released to the public domain. You may (and are encouraged to) reproduce, republish, read, modify, and/or archive it without limitation.
Orignal story by Accord MT
Write your own damn songs.
I do. I'm an improv pianist and perform in a classical choir, and in fact saw (back in the days of Napster) someone downloading a recording of said choir from me. Did I think "Oh, someone deprived us of a $10 CD?" Of course not.
Think about Metallica's response to Napster. People like Fred Durst own music publishing companies, you can bet he'll side with the RIAA without a thought for fans. Just about the only path to an increased audience is through the major publishers. Look at the garbage they sell though, do you think many of the people getting famous today are actually artists in the sense of creating and deeply caring for what they do?
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
I can't believe the posts I'm reading here, and how misunderstanding and unsympathetic you all are.
Song lyrics are poems. They are written by professional lyricists. A person who writes song lyrics holds a copyright on what he's written, and he needs to protect that copyright in order to earn a living. Lyricists for pop songs don't get paid salaries. Their only chance is to earn royalties from sales.
Weird Al Yankovic is an example. All of his hits are somebody else's music with Weird Al's lyrics. Lyrics are all he writes--well, he writes very little original music. For years he's had a message on his Web site urging his fans not to post his lyrics on Web pages, and not to read Web pages with his lyrics on them, because they violate his copyrights and reduce his ability to collect royalties on his work. If you want Al's lyrics, Al wants you to buy the CD with the lyric booklet in it.
One of the main reasons people buy CDs is so they get the booklet inside that contains the lyrics. In previous generations, people bought sheet music or collections of lyrics in books called "broadsides" if they wanted to read the lyrics. This is how lyricists made income.
If lyrics to copyrighted songs are posted all over the Internet, that's piracy. The person putting up the Web page is a pirate, and the people that read, download or copy those lyrics are committing piracy also.
From the tenor of the posts I've read here, it seems that all of you recognize that a song, and a recording of the song, are things that the artists have a right to own and protect, but you seem to think that for some reason lyrics are exempt from that. They are not. You wouldn't tell Gilbert and Sullivan that Sullivan had the rights to earn royalties from the music, but Gilbert did not, because he wrote only lyrics and those are free. Same with Rodgers and Hammerstein. Both the music and the lyrics are intellectual property, and each hold their own copyright.
This is the first tactic I use when trying to identify a song.
This space available.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?