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Song Sites Face Legal Crackdown
CaptainPotato writes "According to the BBC, the Music Publishers' Association is stepping up to launch the next phase in the music industry's battle against online music. The MPA is demanding jail time for the maintainers of websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics. The MPA President has stated that closing websites and imposing fines is not enough, stating that by 'throw [ing]in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective' in its crusade." We just recently reported on the pearLyrics cease-and-desist order as well.
Those of us who are ancient will remember that that's happened before. In the mid-1990s, the Harry Fox Agency (IIRC) threatened to sue the OnLine Guitar Archive (OLGA) for illegally reproducing lyrics without permission. Many lyrics were partially excised as a result, but the threatened death of online guitar resources failed to happen...
So if you ever get a tab sheet were you get the first word of a line and a sequence of dots instead of the lyrics, now you know why.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
A perfect example of pure self-production/self-release is the band (and arguably the 2005 Indie Darling Band of the Year*) Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! They produced/printed their own music (released by Clap Your Hands Records), sold it exclusively at shows and through their website (at a profit of 4-5 USD per disc, a figure that is considerably higher than that of what bands on majors and indies make per disc moved), got a mention in Pitchfork back in June of this year and have since exploded. Whether or not the band continues on the road of DIY/RYO remains to be seen (the only argument for joining a label in this bands case would be tour support, although that opens up a whole host of other problems/financial woes), but at least a band of merit/worth/talent has proven that you can make a splash without big money and record executives getting in the way of the artistry.
*not an actual award, but the buzz on them has been pretty stout
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
what's next? making bands play license fees when they play covertunes at a show?
Aren't they already doing this; except the venue pays the royalties for the songs?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Please stop calling copyright infringement theft. It is not theft. Theft deprives someone of something. Copyright infringement is a wholly separate thing. You are stupid. Thank you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"