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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."
Isn't this (linking/facilitating) the reason why Napster and friends got nipped? They are sort of helping illegal (as determined by whoever) activities to gain publicity.
While I enjoy freely available and searchable lyrics, I must admit 9 out of 10 times I regretted having looked up the lyrics, it kinda ruins my feeling once I understand every single word and can sing-a-long. Am I the only one having this kind of 'empty-yet-lyric-filled' feeling?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
are you sure about that?
always mosh clockwise
Since I don't want to be on the whole defensive of the RIAA, here's a link to the RIAA Radar to balance things - boycott the RIAA!
I was just reading about when the Beatles put out Sgt. Pepper and wanted to put the lyrics on the back of the sleeve. I'm of the (80's) generation where lyrics always come with the record, but apparently that wasn't something that happened at all back then - EMI were very reluctant to print the lyrics, thinking it would severely cut down on sheet music sales from which they would get a royalty. Anyway, remember in the (bad old) days, when people would compile lyrics on personal homepages? Now whenever I do a google search I get umpteen specialized lyric sites, often who don't even HAVE the lyrics (just the song listed with no real link) and way too much javascript.
Some of you here may remember the Vivarin Lyrics Server, the story of which is told here.
Some of the details of Vivarin's story are *very* interesting. The overall arc is similar to pearLyrics: a new search tool for lyrics is created, then eventually cease-and-desisted. But many of the details, and the early internet era in which they occured, make for a good read.
It's sad, even pathetic, that in all these years the RIAA and its member companies haven't gotten even the least bit of clue. These sorts of search services add enourmous value. Thousands of people were able to identify and purchase music based on Vivarin's services ("what is that song, I remember a few words..?"). Heck, Warner's laywers called to provide thanks as Vivarin had helped them to win a legal case.
I seriously hope that the RIAA's stranglehold doesn't let up before they realize that hold is around their collective neck.
Copyright, in it's original form, was meant to allow an artist to control his work for a very short period of time--seven years, like you said--in order to profit for it so that artists could make a living doing what they do best. It's intended to promote creativity because it means an artist can earn a stable living on his/her work for a period before it reverts to public domain. The current version of copyright law has been twisted into something that goes directly against the original spirit of the law, and rather than promoting creativity it squelches it by allowing giant corporations with absolutely no hand in the creative process to control an artists work for a positively absurd 90 years.
How embarrassing. Musicians are generally thought of as being cool people. But (I would hope) that they are getting rather uncomfortable being associated with these weirdo-goon squad from the RIAA.
The RIAA doesn't really help you in your musical career and they act like psychotic creeps. How long before people will stop want to be musicians because they don't want to have to be associated with these RIAA industry people.
Could music actually become uncool as a result of the RIAA's vulgar actions? (I sound like Carrie Bradshaw there) Or are the people who want to become rock stars so out of it anyway that they couldn't care less?
Given that, normally, the songwriter (or his/her publishing company) holds the copyrights to music and lyrics, how is that the record labels are putting themselves in a position to enforce lyric copyright?
The record labels may have the rights to the artist's sound recordings, but the actual music and lyrics to any given song is another matter. If i were the Pearlyric author (which, btw, is a great widget on Mac OS X Tiger and, thankfully, continues to work), I would ask whomever sent the C&D notice to provide proof (written documentation) of copyright ownership pertaining specifically to lyrics (or, alternatively, proof of assignment of copyright ownership or agency) for all songs which Warner claims to have enforcement standing. I don't think they can, at least not for song lyrics. Those rights are held by the music publisher, which generally isn't the record company.
The Pearlyric author makes a good point that his app is nothing more than an aggregator of content that is already freely available on the net. Essentially, there isn't an effective difference between his app and, say, Google. Both do the same thing; only Pearlyric (as the name implies) has the narrow purpose of gathering song lyrics currently on the net (from established lyric content sites) based on either the song being played in iTunes or a user generated search. If Pearlyric is guilty of infringement here, then so is Google (or any other search engine), not to mention the lyric site owners.
Moreover, the Pearlyric application is (err...was) distributed for free and is clearly intended for narrow, personal use only. A claim of infringement here is wildly misplaced, particularly when it's made by the record companies.
Reminds me of a short story I read when young (11 or so) which described a society that had access to unlimited energy (from fusion) and thus unlimited production power. In order to maintain the economy everyone had to consume. Being higher up in the hierarchy ment less consumption. The main character was falling behind in his consumption quota so he ordered his robots to use the products instead. This he had to do in secret, until he was discovered and then praised for resolving the problem with the economy. Let the robots do the consumption of good.
Can't remember the name of the story anymore, which is sad, because it quite well describes where we might be heading.