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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.
If people don't want lyrics don't look them up. If you do, you don't need software. google.com > lyrics: "enter song here" > search
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Next up: no singing in the shower without a license.
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. But aren't lyrics not copyrighted or are the hundreds of sites out there that give song lyrics away for free underground criminal enterprises?
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.
$ man sig
bash: No manual entry found for sig.
are you sure about that?
always mosh clockwise
It seems that their tactics are already working. I'm already having trouble finding the lyrics for Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. If there are any underground sites still operating, please let me know. Thanks!
Do you like German cars?
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.
It must have been that "Thunder Chief" I keep hearing about...
SingPod
Sing that iTune
Also a question, does anyone have a mirror for the pearLyrics program?
I can't wait to have to pay to understand the words to a song.
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!
oh please everyone knows the lyrics!
bum bum bum bummmm
BUM BUM BUM BUMMMM
...shutting down recent lyrics sites, that is. After the big fuss made over lyrics.ch, I was surprised to be able to consistently find the lyrics to songs I've heard on the radio by simply searching Google. Many times, the places I'd find lyrics hosted lyrics for thousands of songs. What took them so long in shutting down these massive sites?
I don't really understand it. Unlike mp3s, I can't see lyrics downloads doing anything but boosting sales. Nevertheless, posting lyrics violates copyright and it is within their rights to try to get these places shut down.
I'm posting them here, risking life & limb:
Lalala-laa
Lalala-laa
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala-
yeah lets make it harder for cover bands to cover songs let alone regular people from understanding the message. Yhat way we can just string random words together with a crappy 4/4 beat and a repetative melody and mass sell crap you our consumers coz they will buy anything if we advertise it 24/7....see Brittany spears
yet another way to control and destroy culture....folk music was the evolvement of other tunes and melodies with new words....you cant sample, you cant get lyrics, you cant record music off the radio you cant share music, you cant do anything really without fear of "the man" which of course is what making music is all about...fear, conflict & free expression all the things that the music distributers want to stop.... it may get to the stage where you cant actually be allowed to sing along with the tunes for fear of retribution....
music is there to be enjoyed not billed for LEARN YOUR FUCKING INDUSTRY
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.
Is this meant to be a ripoff of Pretty Vegas?
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?
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.
http://rapidshare.de/files/8786735/pearLyricsV0_6. dmg.html
LOS ANGELES - The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that it will be taking legal action against anyone discovered telling friends, acquaintances, or associates about new songs, artists, or albums. "We are merely exercising our right to defend our intellectual properties from unauthorized peer-to-peer notification of the existence of copyrighted material," a press release signed by RIAA anti-piracy director Brad Buckles read. "We will aggressively prosecute those individuals who attempt to pirate our property by generating 'buzz' about any proprietary music, movies, or software, or enjoy same in the company of anyone other than themselves." RIAA attorneys said they were also looking into the legality of word-of-mouth "favorites-sharing" sites, such as coffee shops, universities, and living rooms. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43029
I'm sure it's stored in the same sites that has John Cage's 4'33"
geek page at KY speaks
Now I'll NEVER figure out what Kurt Cobain was saying!
Thanks for shopping RIAA.
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?
I'm suprised no one has mentioned amaroK. It has a pretty cool built in feature that looks up lyrics, a band's Wikipedia page, and other neat stuff. They just came out with a new version too.
I don't think there is an OS X native version, but it can be compiled with Fink. Other than the fact that you can't buy music I like it better than iTunes.
Reality test... am I dreaming?
Check wikipedia
Bah humbug. It's not copyright infringement, it's fair use. The lyrics are a small part excerpted from the work (which is both the lyrics and the music), and this app is non-profit and designed for reference.
- Sig files: contemptibly familiar the second time around.
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.
What happened here is that someone found out that some people will continue to buy CDs if that were the only way to get lyrics. But the cost of this effort is so much greater than any gains they'll see. It's not like that is one piece of the puzzle to stopping large scale piracy. It's not even comparable to chipping away at it.
Their only hope is to come clean on pricing, availability, and a wide variety of interoperability features that consumers want. The longer they wait, the harder it's going to be. And meanwhile there are always artists with expiring contracts waiting to be swooped up by better labels, or self-publishing.
The only thing these labels actually own are:
- CD manufacturing and distribution: This is an antiquated technology that is well on its way out.
- A Stranglehold arrangement for concert venues: Well known bands can work around this. New bands might soon plan to sign 1 contract with an RIAA label, and then go it alone (roughly like Harvey Danger).
They no longer control marketing, or any of the new distribution options. Granted these "new distribution options" are all basically free downloads or illegal networks, but that's what they have to compete with. They could spend another ten years fighting those in court and be no better off. At some point someone will put together a better fee system, and begin to attract enough new and big name artists with expired contracts, and provide all of the features. If the labels want to survive, they had better be the ones to do it first. They still haven't even admitted they're to blame.
Are you suggesting we dig him up to do that?
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
This is exactly why we need lyric sites!
Everyone knows it's:
Sax-a-ma-phone!
Sax--a--ma--phone!
Lyrics are part of music, and since music is broadcasted without "charging" for you to hear it (radio) than why in the world would ANYONE want to block someone from Displaying what they heard for free in a lyrical context. I thought the whole point of music was so you could hear it, not so we could prevent someone from reading it. While I can understand that some musicians would not want their lyrics misrepresented or displayed in a manor that takes away from the lyric's effect, I can't comprehend telling someone they can't display it as text. If a band wants to prevent misrepresentation (which is the ONLY reason I could see anyone getting upset) they should post their damn lyrics.
Whats next? preventing other interested musicians from creating tablature? Why don't we just halt creativity all together. I know that I have very strong influences on my creative works and I would hate to not be able to call upon them because a record label didn't want me to know WTF they were saying.
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
The lyrics are probably a separately copyrighted work, so copying the lyrics is actually copying the whole work.
Even if considered as part of the song, the lyrics are not a "small part".
There's a _chance_ it's fair use, but most likely not. Copying a whole poem or book this way is the same thing. The fact that they're lyrics doesn't change the issue.
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.
For the best satire about this sort of thing, read Phl and Kornbluth'd "The Space Merchants."
Written in the 1950s, it still on the mark.
This space available.
The RIAA has nothing to do with lyrics. That's a composer rights issue, and is handled by ASCAP and BMI in the United States.
I'd be ecstatic if she spent anything less than 125%!
Spending at or below your income is so 1970s... it's, like, what old people do?
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
There is a torrent of the file up on The Piratebay now.
Link to Torrent File
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.
Hell, I work at a music shop (boo me all you like, I need the money), and at least 3 customers a day are looking for a song they heard on the radio, but they never caught the song/artist.
So, I fire up a lyrics site (in my case, www.letssingit.com , as it's the only one I can access from work), and I search for the lyrics they gave me. Quite often I find the song and the album it's on, and they buy it. Now, if I didn't have a lyrics site to go to, those would be lost sales, as the customer wouldn't know what to buy.
On second thought, to hell with the lyrics sites. Let the industry lose sales if that's how they want to play it.
Fredrick Pohl
The Midas Plague
http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/midaswld.html
Excellent story, looks like he did some followups - must checkout my local library