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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.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Now this just seems silly. Personally at least, I can tell you that I use lyrics sites for ONE primary purpose; to be able to find a song that I heard somewhere based on its lyrics, so I can then buy it. Seriously; that's all they are really useful to me for (of course, they can also be useful just to know the words of a song, but that's something else). What POSSIBLE benefit can they see in shutting something down that has a primary use of helping people to identify and purchase their product? Really, it just seems like madness.
As a musician i have only one thing to say:
Fuck you, music industry.
Who in the HELL ever buys sheet music for lyrics?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Didn't think so.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I fail to see how protecting lyrics is a big deal when most songs consist of "oooh", "uhh" and "yeah". Can you really copyright grunts?
Talk about lawsuit happy...can there really be that much money in song lyrics and sheet music?!?
Reminds me of that South Park episode, "Now Britney wont be able to buy her third caribbean island, all because of you evil children and your selfish downloading of music!"
I am absolutely certain there is a special ring of hell reserved for these RIAA goons and their SCO-like tactics.
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
It seems that they are in a quest to prove everyday to the world that they are even more stupid than previously supposed to be.
SeqBox
Really great plan. Take out sites that are probably used by many people (I am also one) to track down songs to buy.
These guys never met a good business plan or marketing scheme they didn't want to sue out of existence. The only reason they've survived this long is that they've been the only game in town.
Artists are already discovering that they can afford home studios and to self-publish their songs online, which (as recent studies indicate) helps market the small-time bands. I'm thinking that within 10-20 years, the RIAA companies will either be defunct or will have gotten out of the business.
Kythe
So a site that has a guitar tab to a song with the lyrics on it...is that unauthorized/unlicensed material that will now become "illegal"? That's just horrible if it's true. How much longer can these crazy corporations before they finally shoot themselves in both feet and fall down?
All music conservatories must now be shut down as they are producing students capable of transposing music from just listening to it and therefore becoming music pirates. I wonder if the people who own the sounds studios have the copyright for things like the sound a river makes. If so, our national parks are in danger of a lawsuit!
I am and always will be a stereotype, because who in their right mind prefers mono?
I wonder why suicide is on the rise.. surely the world is always becoming a better place?
which is totally what she said
Great, now people will be writing about Jimi Hendrix singing "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" in Purple Haze and Creedence Clearwater Revival singing "There's a bathroom on the right" in 'Bad Moon Rising'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Why didn't he just come out and say what he really wanted to say:
"Just prison time! That's not enough! These low life scum deserve nothing more than to be stoned to death (women aren't allowed to partake in the stoning, of course). They have stolen food from the mouths of hungry little children and strangled kittens. Well they would strangle kittens if they could. There probably terrorists as well you know!"
Will common sense ever return to the world? I think not with people like this running things.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Just my personal experience --
but I've bought a ton of cd's by listening to a song on the radio, writing down a random verse, and later googling that phrase to get to one of those cheesy lyric pages. I then can see what the song is, and what artist is making it.
Shut that down and you're gonna lose my sales.
I am not for illegal music downloading or for violating copyrights, etc.
However, jail time? That, to me at least, implies that society has been harmed in some measurable and somewhat significant way. Music lyrics? Is this after multiple warning to cease and desist?
Are they profiting off of this?
Obviously, I'm thinking outload here. But the main point is that jailing people is not something we should be deciding willy-nilly based on people from an industry that feels threatened.
It's one thing for them to want the state to help them in regards to illegal activity that affects their business. This is quite another.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Is this the real life- Is this just fantasy-
Caught in a landslide-
No escape from reality-
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see-
I'm just a poor boy,i need no sympathy-
Because I'm easy come,easy go,
A little high,little low,
Anyway the wind blows,doesn't really matter to me,
To me
Mama,just killed a man,
Put a gun against his head,
Pulled my trigger,now he's dead,
Mama,life had just begun,
But now I've gone and thrown it all away-
Mama ooo,
Didn't mean to make you cry-
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow-
Carry on,carry on,as if nothing really matters-
Too late,my time has come,
Sends shivers down my spine-
Body's aching all the time,
Goodbye everybody-I've got to go-
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth-
Mama ooo- (any way the wind blows)
I don't want to die,
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all-
I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche,scaramouche will you do the fandango-
Thunderbolt and lightning-very very frightening me-
Galileo,galileo,
Galileo galileo
Galileo figaro-magnifico-
But I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me-
He's just a poor boy from a poor family-
Spare him his life from this monstrosity-
Easy come easy go-,will you let me go-
Bismillah! no-,we will not let you go-let him go-
Bismillah! we will not let you go-let him go
Bismillah! we will not let you go-let me go
Will not let you go-let me go
Will not let you go let me go
No,no,no,no,no,no,no-
Mama mia,mama mia,mama mia let me go-
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me,for me,for me-
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye-
So you think you can love me and leave me to die-
Oh baby-can't do this to me baby-
Just gotta get out-just gotta get right outta here-
Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters-,nothing really matters to me,
Any way the wind blows....
I guess we need to make room in the jails.
The MPA is demanding jail time for the maintainers of websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics.
Time to let all the copyright honoring murderers out of jail to make room. After all, the people they killed probably illegally downloaded music!
Society knows who the "real criminals" are.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
There is a real but small market for printed lyrics & score/tabs in nice books, sure.
But seriously, would you spend hours to find/print the one from the web, or buy a nice book withotu any mistake, and a nice layout?
I don't remeber having heard anyone publish a study about declining publish lyrics sales...
They're just over greedy. As somebody else said, most people who look up lyrics online end up BUYING the damned record.
And is there ANY legal site where you could purchase and downlaod lyrics and tabs ???
Personally, I think lyrics should be included in the file when you buy a song from the ITMS or other. WOuldn't it be could to have the possibility to see the lyrics displayed while playing?
I'm just sick of thos RIAA idiots... and I'm gonna backup my dear pearlyric widget !
Unfortunatly, I only have v0.4, if somebody has the latest, please share!
Shit I just thought a set of Lyrics, Dammit agian. Off to get a alumnium foil Hat and hide
This reminds me of something a virtual radio commentator that you hear when playing a recent game says:
"Remember, you shouldn't wistle the tunes you hear on the radio because it breaks the author's copyright. Wistling is killing the music industry!"
If you are reconstructing lyrics from listening to a song that they broadcast over public airwaves, what is illegal about me documenting what I heard?
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Jail time for unlicensed publishing of lyrics? I don't know how many times I've gone looking for lyrics to songs and the only place I can find anything is some web site where a fan has taken the time to put lyrics together. Maybe that's changed some and now that the music industry see dollar signs you really can go "buy" this stuff -- is it my responsibility to monitor and find this stuff (which, btw should have been available a long time ago)?
The music industry has betrayed the consumers since forever. Are they going to go after the publicly available and free CDDB? Probably. But even that didn't exist until the consuming public put together the first application to make this available on-line. And guess who provided the data? The friggin' public, again. And, now that the industry sees dollar signs, they want to claim ownership.
DUDE: "Hey man, I just figured out the solo for [insert song here]. It's so cool to play."
OTHER DUDE: "Sweet, show me how it goes."
DUDE: "Um, I can't -- it's illegal. And don't tell anyone I figured it out myself. If anybody asks I bought the music."
In similar news, concertgoers will now be forbidden from watching the hands of musicians during the performance, lest they learn something about how a song is played without paying the proper royalties.
Sweet informative mod.
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)
So here, for your illegal enjoyment, are the lyrics for Daft Punk's track 'Around the World', encoded in a C style language for your benefit.
for(i=0;i<143;i++)
{
printf("Around the World\r\n");
}
Jolyon
Am I an illegal now?
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Downloading your free music and dooming these entertainers to lives of only semi-luxury. How do you sleep at night mister?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
...that it appears this group isn't the "RIAA" companies per se, but rather an organization of sheet music/lyrics publishers.
Sheet music, I can understand. But lyrics? What the hell? There are only two reasons to look up lyrics online:
1) Curiosity about that "one line" you've never been able to understand
2) Finding a certain song's name
Neither will impact business, period. In fact, both promote the song, which very likely promotes the buying of sheet music.
This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've seen in relation to the copyright wars. It's the clearest example yet of companies suing "because they can" and because of a complete lack of business sense, rather than because it's in the public (or even their) interest to do so.
No one, and I mean no one, is going to shell out cash to buy lyrics. A manufacturer might as well sue customers for saying good things about their product in an online forum.
Kythe
In the first instance, there's no more money to be made from me as I have already spent money - and I would refuse to pay to use a site that provides lyrics. Indeed, it would also discourage me from buying more music in the future from companies that endorse this approach.
In the second instance, there's also no money to be made from me as I won't be able to find the song by using its lyrics. Lose-lose for the music industry, it seems. To top it off, with this type of attitude, I'm also far less likely to purchase anything from companies pursuing this type of strategy.
That's why I stick with Internet radio and music from individuals, groups and companies that respect their fans, rather than trying to milk them for all that they are worth.
I'm not a musician, so I don't download tabs. Shutting down tab sites also seems pointless as any half-decent musician can pick up a song by listening to it. Every musician I know does it this way. Does this mean that the music industry wants to also jail musicians who learn by listening, rather than by buying officially sanctioned tabs and scores?
Silly me, I forget that all the great musicians learnt from the officially sanctioned sources, rather than listening and imitating their heroes... and that anybody who disagrees with what the music industry wants must be a pirate and thief.
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.
lets put this in programming terms:
Musical score != Rating.
Musical score == the actual music source code.
liqbase
Consider these 2 scenarios :-
1) Someone takes the lyrics/score as written in a book/CD case, copies it and publishes it on a web page.
2) Someone listens to a song several times, transposes the lyrics/score as they hear it and transposes it on a web page.
Now 1) is a clear breach of copyright (and should be settled in a civil court as such) but 2)...I cant help but think of that as a derivitive work and as such NOT in breach of copyright.
I dont know though - could someone enlighten me please?
This is not a crimal statute, it is a civil statute that is being broken, so how do you end up in jail exactly? Oh, thats right buy your very own Senator or Congress person and you are half way there.
WHAT THE FUCK!!!!
Please tell me what the fuck is wrong with having the lyrics posted so that people can find the words when they try to quote them...oh dear. It's not like people are using the lyrics to perform the song, and if so, then they'd get nail by the performance rights collectors.
All we want is to be able to find the lyrics essentially to educate us, and that should be in fair use. And were the MPA to provide such themselves that'd be cool.
But !@#$% them...I am so sick of this crap. It's gone way beyond sanity.
But...
Music lyrics are copyrighted material...
And the agents of the MPA are presumabley, agents of the songwriters. And they are requesting that their works be taken down.
So why the outrage? Are you suggesting that you have some right to the songwriter's works against their wishes?
My solution to this issue is to let the MPA get what they want. Hopefully smarter artists will, in the future, fill the void this creates.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I've been learning how to play bass guitar for the past two years, mostly by downloading tablature and playing along with various songs. This certainly falls under fair use, specifically teaching and scholarship. I can play a few dozen songs by memory, none of which have been performed publicly (in fact, I've never done a public performance of any song). Please tell me how I am a threat to the artists or even the copyright holders of these songs. I can't wait to see the statistics on how much they're losing in sheet music sales to piracy ... likely somewhere in the billions of dollars.
Don't they know that many of their artists learned how to play music in much the same way, by hearing a song and effectively reverse engineering it? Elvis Costello didn't learn to read and write music until the mid 90s, nearly 20 years after his first album was released.Let them waste their money on lawyers "protecting" their "IP". It's just so amazing that these people are so devoted to making sure their copyrights are never infringed that they're going to dig themselves a grave. I, for one, can't wait.
We seriously needc coyright reform: limit to 7 years & invalidate without publishing "all source materials used in creation". So software would never receive a copyright unless it was open source software, and music would never receive a copyright unless lyrics & tabs were published. Of course, they don't need to promote the source, but it needs to be available online from their site, and at the library of congress.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Gentlemen, start your text editors....
From their site:
The MPA welcomes your questions and comments. The most efficient way to contact the MPA is via email. Emails from the general public are usually replied to within 2-3 business days. You can email MPA Administrator Julie Averill, at:
mpa-admin@mpa.org
Additionally, you may submit written correspondence to:
Music Publishers' Association
243 5th Avenue, Suite 236
New York, NY 10016
Contacting the MPA via phone is not recommended, unless you are a member or vendor communicating about specific MPA business:
(212) 327-4044
What I think is possible is that the industry is moving past the idea of "open computing". What I mean by that is that boxes like the xbox360 will be the appliances that people use to check their email and to send/receive IMs, VOIP, etc. The idea of an operating system won't matter to the user, any more than it matters what software the plane you're in is running. Even pilots aren't too familiar with avionics, and it doesn't matter - as long as it works. Once the public has been conditioned to accept computing as this pervasive background thing, then DRM will establish a firm foothold and it becomes difficult for file trading because most won't know enough and won't care enough to mod/change their boxes (which may stop working if you try) in order to manipulate their software in order to trade files.
It all has to to with what generations grow up with. My nephew is 9 - and to him the internet is AOL. His mom is a member, and to him, the web is a place to check his email, play games, and find out information about more games. He knows of this thing called google - you ask it a question, and it gives you answers, but he doesn't like it too much because he feels like it doesn't answer them "right" most of the time. He already has preferred channels for getting his information. X-Play on G4 shapes his gaming opinions ("dude, how can you like that game? it only got 2 out of 5 on x-play!") - and the internet isn't this wide open place for him - but an aggregation of things his already likes to do at places he trusts and knows.
What frustrates him about the internet: Maybe like two years ago, I was babysitting, and we were watching the Discovery channel on rare spiders. He was so interested that he wanted to find out more. I suggested the internet. At the time (lol) whenever he wanted to find something out, he rationalized that the answer would be at www.nameofthatthing.com - in this case www.spider.com. So he typed that in... and suffice it to say, what he got had little to do with spiders.
It was a goth porn site. The main page was some chick with her tits out, nothing more than he'd seen on national geographic, but it made him really mad for some reason. He was like, "spider.com should be about spiders!" All of which is to say, to him the internet isn't ordered the way it should be. And I don't think that sentiment is totally incorrect. I think that the media congloms are slowly moving towards ordering it that way.
I hypothesize that the internet will become more ordered - less transparent - and places like blogs and message boards will be some of the few places average citizens will get to post... and registrations will be scrutinized and traffic will be analyzed... and the status quo will normalize. In this reality, file trading abates because the critical mass audience will be conditioned to accept the status quo - which is the internet as a background datastream - a stream that provides the water coming from your faucet but a stream that you don't DRINK FROM directly. Drink from the faucet - not from the stream. Disagree? Look at AOL commercials with its propaganda. (The internet is a dangerous place. We PROTECT YOU and your children and your money and your life.)
Unfortunately, I think the RIAA has the right idea - scare the kids with fear of litigation - (my nephew wanted the Rock Lobster clip from Family guy - I downloaded the torrent - and we laughed about it for like two hours until my sister made us delete it because she didn't want to get sued - my nephew has now internalized that meme - downloads are like shoplifting to him - which is to say wrong).
Don't get me wrong, I in no way support this. This is what I think is happening though.
un burrito me trampeó.
Now the stupid RIAA wants to end this. How this is going to help them is beyond me. Do they really think (as they apparently think regarding iPod hardware) that there's money to be extracted from these web-sites? Most seem to be a labor of love with likely little extra money to give to the greedy bastards. And I doubt that if you license the lyrics, that they will give them too you in machine-readable form. How many of these are captured and typed in by contributiors? Dumb all around.
Coming soon, how long before huming a song in public gets you jail time?
And is the MPAA suing the IMDB yet for giving movie plot summaries?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43029/ RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs
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.
San Francisco Photographers
There is supposed to be a good reason for putting people in jail, and this is not one of them.
;)
Ask yourself:
1) are these people a risk for the society at large?
2) what are we supposed to accomplish by putting them in jail?
As to number one, the problem is more an etical issue - nobody dies, nobody get anything but possibly lower sales.
As to number two, US is already country with highest % og people in jail, yet in no other industrialized country are there as many people shooting each other with gun - if jailtime worked, why are these number not going down? It is like, send these harmless schoolboy to learn how to become hardcore criminals in jail.
Why not instead focus on rehabilitation? Set up a schedule where those caught are constraint in the area of the crime? What is worse, one year in prisson or one year without rights for using Internet?
Please stop sending people to hard core crime schools when not a danger to the society at large.
When (if?) this happens, in order for ANY device to play media, the media itself will have to be digitally "protected" with a key the device is capable of verifying. Independent artists will be virtually locked out from producing and distributing media themselves (to any kind of mass audience) and will be required to go through those holding the keys. Who will that be? The big boys: MPAA & RIAA members, etc.
Frankly, this is the only rational reason for the sound and fury these organizations produce in regards to piracy. The amount of money they claim they lose to piracy is a fictional number. They made it up. There is no true way to know how much they are losing due to piracy and there are contra-indicative numbers showing it leads to more sales, not less. But whether they really lose money to piracy or not is beside the point.
They will lose everything when they lose control of the media distribution channel. And that, folks, is the real reason for all the lobbying efforts. It ain't about losing some money today. It's about losing all of it tomorrow.
But you all knew that already, didn't you?
he rationalized that the answer would be at www.nameofthatthing.com - in this case www.spider.com. So he typed that in... and suffice it to say, what he got had little to do with spiders.
It was a goth porn site. The main page was some chick with her tits out, nothing more than he'd seen on national geographic, but it made him really mad for some reason.
It made me mad to. It is now some business. No goth tits. Thanks for nothing dirtbag.
with a DJ not (usually) announcing who a song is by, how am I supposed to find out what the name of the song is? as it stands now, if I remember a bit of the lyrics I can punch them into google and usually find the song... on a lyrics site... so no lyric sites, no finding out what the name of the song was, no sale... duh!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
As for karaoke and drunk people... yeah, it generally takes alcohol for people to have the courage to get up there and, quite frankly, I've found that it generally takes alcohol to make listening to some of them bearable. Every year, I give up alcohol for Lent and I find that going to karaoke during that time period is actually rather painful...
As a side note, it's kind of a shame that karaoke is largely only offered in bars. If they offered it in a location more conducive to voice health like maybe a coffee shop, you might get more talented singers up there. As it is, anyone with a trained voice generally avoids those smoke-filled dens like the plague.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
-1 False Analogy!
You're using her as bait, Master!
My guess is that the MPA, or individual members thereof, are planning to launch their own for-profit, possibly subscription based, lyrics website.
That's the only explanation I can think of. The RIAA wants to eliminate free/pirated downloads becuase it cuts into their album sales, or their pay-download site profits. The MPA wants to eliminate free guitar tabs so they can charge instrumentalists for sheet music. IN both cases, there is a for-profit, legal market for those goods. MPA members cannot currently profit in any way from the desire of music fans to know or look up lyrics. So why shut down lyrics sites unless they're planning to find a way to make it profitable for them...
There was another case, too.
There used to be a fantastic web site about the Bonzo Dog Band. It had an annotated copy of the lyrics, explaining all the 60s pop culture references and in-jokes.
Some wankers from EMI threatened copyright litigation, and the entire thing was yanked. Even though the information was not available from EMI.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak