Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
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
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.
I am absolutely certain there is a special ring of hell reserved for these RIAA goons and their SCO-like tactics.
It spins them right round, baby, right round, like a record, baby, right round, round, round.
Aaaahhhhh! Illegal lyrics, Slashdot is doomed!
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
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.
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.
I hope so, because if they get their way then that will be the only way future listeners of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" will have of finding out whether Bealzebub really does have a devil for a sideboard...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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.
Hehe. Being a native speaker of English doesn't necessarily mean that one can understand the lyrics for any given song!
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
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
...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.
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.
Just keep in mind that EVERY TIME someone goes to a place like Lyrics World to find the words to a song, that's revenue deprived of some poor, starving songwriter. That's because EVERY TIME someone wanted those words to a song, if places like Lyrics World hadn't existed, they would have hopped right into the car and driven to their local music (not Record/Tape/CD) store to buy a copy of the sheet music. There's NO SUCH THING as casually wondering what the words to a song are - there's only thieving and conniving to deprive starving songwriters of the ability to feed their poor children.
Clearly this move is going to enhance my enjoyment of music, and make me want to buy more.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Oooh, so technically, deciphering lyrics is a DMCA violation, too!
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
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.