Slashdot Mirror
Warner Chappell Apology For PearLyrics
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.'"
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
apology ? from who ? i..i...head explodes.....
I have a new idea for an MBA course. It will be called "Don't prosecute your customers when they try to advertise your product". I'm not sure if we'll be able to fit it into a single semester though.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
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.
But lest we forget, Apple can never be wrong, even when your money goes to line the pockets of Bill Gates.
As an artist, I hope this becomes a trend where music companys realize that our music is art and not just small green pieces of paper. I'm glad that this guy got an apology!
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
Good to hear that at least one company seems to have even the tiniest bit of common sense and decency left (even though they probably just did it because of the negative reaction they were getting, too, not because of a guilty conscience).
Now I'm just waiting for an apology from Sony, too - although I have the feeling that it'll be issued at about the same time that Duke Nuken Forever comes out.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Yes, here: http://www.pearworks.com/pages/pearLyrics.html
"Based upon our common goal of helping consumers enjoy the song lyrics they want - and our common belief that technology can help to transform the music industry to the benefit of consumers and artists alike - 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. However, in both tone and substance, that letter was an inappropriate manner in which to convey that inquiry. Warner/Chappell apologizes to Walter Ritter and pearworks.
Our solution will adhere to our shared belief that songwriters must be fairly compensated for their work and that legitimate web sites with accurate lyrics must not be undermined by unlicensed web sites.
We look forward to working together, and to helping to advance the evolution of the music industry cooperatively for the benefit of consumers and artists alike."
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Does this mean Hendrix stops kissing guys?
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
"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"
Emphasis added.
If there is money to be made by "selling" access to lyrics, I think they'll try to get all other sites ruled as "illegal" because they are "unlicensed".
I think they're still focused on getting every last cent they can from the public, in any fashion, for the music / lyrics / art / whatever.
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.
And Bill Gates got Person of the Year from Time? Great, now the apocalypse really is on its way. Dammit.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Back in the '60s the sheet music for a song cost more than the 45 RPM record, and you got 2 songs on the record and only one on the sheet music.
One could spend their entire life and career tracking down all the songs that got included on albums not because they were good but because of who would make money because of owning the publishing rights.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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:
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
[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.
RTFL from the EFF. It wasn't the volume of opinion or all your voices or a realization that pearLyrics might be beneficial to them or a conscience--it was the potential liability for damages from misrepresenting a non-infringement to the developer's ISP as an infringement that caught their eye. They would very likely have lost and paid out money not even adding the insult of losing in court and having that all over the web. They have no conscience--this was simply fear and greed in action. They had the legal tables turned on them, saw a potential loss staring them in the face, and gave up--defeat is not an indication of remorse or conscience--it is just defeat, no more, no less.
Dream on sucker... We just said that we're sorry, it's not like we MEAN it or anything.
- Warner Chappell
Obviously, you fail to understand the relationship of Warner-Chappell and the songwriters that they represent. Warner-Chappell is in the business of making sure that the songwriters that they represent are fairly and justly compensated for their works. It is the job of Warner-Chappell to ensure that the songwriters that they represent are not taken advantage of or denied fair compensation.
As long as pearLyrics adheres to the spirit of informing listeners to what the songwriters have written, I am sure that the songwriters that Warner-Chappell represent have no problems with what pearLyrics is doing. It is when an entity tries to profit at the expense of the songwriters in question that Warner-Chappell has to step in and flex its muscles.
Warner-Chappell's lawyers probably overreacted when it first saw what Walter Ritter had done. Odds are, some songwriters that Warner-Chappell represent told them to lighten up and back off.
The current distortion of the copyright system (endless extensions to copyright, multinational corporations going after individuals) is beginning to defeat the entire frakkin' point of having copyright in the first place: the encouragement of ideas to advance literature, music, science, and technology.
From the Wired 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.An apology from Warner Chapell (dear God how many components of the Time Warner omni-media complex exist?) doesn't eliminate the reality that they would rather use copyright to ensure that technology develops only the way they want it to, extending their cartel into the far future. They've already won on the legal front - copyright extensions far past the death of the author - now they blatantly want to control technology through legal terror.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
but I would be very surprised if the MPAA didn't make money off of blockbuster/netflix/etc. either on a per-rental basis or a monthly/quarterly/annual fee. If they didn't, then it must be legal to rent videos, or else the MPAA would have taken them to court for their money
I wouldn't be suprised if Blockbuster is paying the studios on a per rental basis. A long time ago Blockubster cut a deal with the studios for low/no cost copies of movies in return for a pay per rental fee. Don't know if they still do or not. If you rent from a smaller store like mine the mpaa will only be payed once for the movies I buy for the store. Also be aware part of the orginal deal was that the studios got the used tape back or a precentage of the sale. So buying a used tape/dvd still netted them money.
So if you can still find a small store in your area, rent from them. Sure they don't have 200 copies of the latest Hollywood pap, but you can still find something worth seeing.
Oh BTW the rental of tapes/dvds isn't covered by the copyright law. It's called "First sale".
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.
The corrected statement is The copyright owner must be compensated. The song writters might or might not be the copyright owner.
If there is money to be made by "selling" access to lyrics, I think they'll try to get all other sites ruled as "illegal" because they are "unlicensed".
I think they're still focused on getting every last cent they can from the public, in any fashion, for the music / lyrics / art / whatever.
I suspect they're sniffing for a way to establish a racket for print licensing somewhat similar to performance licensing. At first, I was surprised by the statement, "legitimate web sites with accurate lyrics must not be undermined by unlicensed web sites", because it seems to me that in order to extract the maximum revenue, they shouldn't license *any* sites/tools for that kind of service unless fees can be collected for each use, or at least for each user. Many hands need many pockets, and there are a lot of hands vying for those pockets in the industry.
Or, put another way, the pockets of the many outweigh the pockets of the few (or the one), so they need to get the money from the end users rather than the distributors.
But publishers have been complaining for a long time about lost revenues due to photocopiers, and it's nearly impossible to stamp that out. Now those aren't even needed to spread the material. I see a parallel of sorts with the problems performance rights orgs had back when they actually tried to go after musicians covering songs to collect royalties. Eventually they realized that they were trying to stick their hands in pockets that were much too shallow and hard to track, so they turned to the venues instead, under the theory that they receive the "ultimate benefit from the performance". The system they've worked out is hardly accurate or fair to many of those they represent, but the organization is still getting money from many pockets, and that's what counts (for them). It also helps to limit the control of that licensing to just a few entities, forcing artists into the difficult position on which the parasites of the industry thrive: either accept an unfair deal or nothing at all.
Major music publishers, though, haven't been able to stamp out the competition and achieve that level of control (yet), as artists can still administer those rights themselves if they want without too much difficulty. To make that less feasible, publishers need to offer something that would be too impractical for most artists to collect on their own, but (ideally) would have a larger payoff than what this licensing usually generates. The internet just might offer a way to get that kind of leverage for a change, especially if there isn't a practical and fair way to sort out who should get what royalties from the use of web services. If a publisher can engineer that situation, the artists can then grovel for crumbs from their hands, too.
Or maybe I'm too cynical.
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.