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Warner Chappell Apology For PearLyrics

Posted by Zonk on from the now-we-can-eat-fruit-again dept.

RacerZero writes "The recent Slashdot story Music Should Be Heard But Not Understood sparked a good deal of discussion about the overreaction of music industry heavyweights. This week Wired is running an apology from Warner Chappel music for their poor judgement. From the article: 'Facing an upswell of protest, Warner Chappell Music on Friday formally apologized to Walter Ritter over a letter it sent to the software programmer earlier this month targeting a helper application for Apple's iTunes called pearLyrics.'"

9 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Sad but by ravenspear · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Incidents like this illustrate the absurd litigious reactionaryism of the current music industry.

    1. Music Industry hears of application/service/person doing anything new related to music
    2. SUE SUE SUE I SAY!!!!!!!!!
    3. Oh wait, you mean this application/service/person might actually be doing something legal/useful/beneficial to us??? oh ok we're sorry

  2. Killing the Golden Goose by Alien54 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    otherwise known as the tradgedy of the commons, or

    "First, We kill all the lawyers"

    the music industry has gotten so paranoid that free advertising is seen as a mortal threat.

    a friend of mine who is in the business told me recently:

    Oh, I love these "the big record companies are Satan" kind of posts.

    All my friends at big record companies would vastly prefer this to be the case as opposed to the reality:

    the big record companies don't have a clue and are scared they won't exist in ten years.

    that last bit is interesting:

    and are scared they won't exist in ten years.

    Of course, the paranoia doesn't help, and still leaves us with the question of what would be a realistic business plan they could follow.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
    1. Re:Killing the Golden Goose by aywwts4 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A wonderful point, I beilive from their actions thus far the body of evidence supports this claim. Television is trying it's hardest to pretend they have a clue, and in the end, I think it's going to work for them. (*thankfully Tivo gave them a kick in the arse) But the music industry as it exists today is pretty much on the fast track to obscurity. From how well they have embraced downloads, free music samples as advertisement, itunes, digital content and freedom, online advertisement, online music videos, lyrics, smaller albums, the threat of self publishing and promotion, the larger 'indie' film soundtracks, basicly they made just about every move in the wrong direction reliably. Oh well, some small labels that get it will prevail, rise from obscurity, and they will promptly be bought by the existing large companies because its not like they dont have income coming in from other sources, and the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation will return to the status quo.

      --
      Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
  3. Yeah, they're sorry by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry they got caught. Sorry people reacted the way they did.

    What makes me think that if no-one had noticed, they'd have taken this thing right through to the bitter end, even if it meant ruining the poor guy?

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.
  4. One of the sad things... by SmoothTom · · Score: 4, Insightful
    One of the sad things about this whole incident is that the music company seems to not even have tried to ascertain what the application was doing - it is merely a very focused search engine that makes it easier to find lyrics and attach them to purchased music.

    Another sad thing is the chilling effect on further development of anything associated with the music industry and music lovers in general. As was said in the article:

    One of Ritter's recent brainstorms -- an application that queries lyrics data online to help music fans choose tracks based on themes, like "love" or "breakup" -- may now remain only an idea, he says.
    A search feature like that could actually HELP the music industry (as well as listeners) by leading potential customers to new 'must have' songs for their collections.

    The short-sighted, overly litigatious folks in the music industry are the ones causing the majority of the problems for their industry. The world has changed over the last century, and they need to look ahead rather than behind in shaping their business.

    --
    Tomas

  5. Re:Where was apple? by dr.badass · · Score: 3, Insightful

    According to the article, Apple immediately removed the link to this software. With their teams of lawyers you figure they could have performed a proper review of the claim and seen it was just another case of Goliath bullying around innocent people.

    Why would they bother? The link has virtually no value to Apple, and there is no incentive for them to throw their lawyers at somebody else's problem.

    --
    Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
  6. translation by Ahaldra · · Score: 3, Insightful
    [text text text] we are committed to working together to provide consumers a convenient, legal way to find accurate song lyrics.

    The goal of Warner/Chappell's prior letter to pearworks was to gain assurance that pearLyrics operated according to those principles[text text text]

    to me that reads:
    [fluff fluff fluff]Your program is illegal, next time we will criminalize you before we slap you with lawyer letters, so we are in a better position marketing the incident in our favour [fluff fluff fluff]

    Please tell me I'm wrong.

    --
    Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
  7. Hm. by Matilda+the+Hun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is it just me, or could that have been better written as Warner Chappell Apology to PearLyrics? If you don't know the names of the people involved, one would think that the person who wrote the program is apologizing for making it in the first place.

    --
    Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
  8. Comply? by moxley · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have to say that it makes me queasy watching people who receive cease and desist letters just comply with them without puting up a fight; even if it is only until "a situation gets clarified." I am really mainly referring to cases where it is obvious that industry is trying to stifle free speech, or lock consumers into non open source alternatives - and especially where (like with nost of the RIAA lawsuits) they are trying to use their size and familiarity with the legal system (and staff of corporate lawyers) to try to simply intimidate citizens out of even attempting to fight for their rights.

    Warner apologized because they "feared protest." Yet the developer still seems to be too intmidated to put his app back online at this stage.

    Maybe that's not the case, I don't know - I have no idea what his personal situation is, and I am not tyring to suggest that he is spineless by complying with their order, maybe he just can't deal - I don't know and I do certain respect someone's right to respond to these things in whatever way makes sense for them personally...

      - but I do certainly hope that most developers, artists, free thinkers, and everyone else who uses the web and forms of digital media/media creation and distribution tools to express themselves in any way shape or form would fight this sort of abuse; I know I would - and I wouldn't comply with shit just after receiving a letter.

    If more people don't start standing up for their rights we're all going to get walked on, and there are plenty of bastards lining up to do it.