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.'"
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?.
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
reactionary it may be, but absurd it is not. Ritter's reaction to this whole 'cease and desist' business is exactly the effect they're looking to have with legalistic strong-arm moves: scaring small developers without the financial resources for a legal fight, preventing them from innovating in directions that will challenge the current--legally delineated--status quo as far as how music is published and distributed.
IANAL, but lyrics are also copyrighted material, and someone needs to get permission from the owner of that copyright before doing anything with them. personally, i fail to see how reproducing the material with correct attribution (as in a searchable website or database with song lyrics) is problematic, but hey.
the *real* point here, as others have posted, is not that this litigation was spurious, but that the "record company lawyers" actually successfully managed to make a reasonable call as to whether a bit of software was worth persecuting based not on the legality of its use of copyrighted material, but rather on whether that use of said copyrighted material was damaging. this actually represents a step away from blind legalism toward a more considered stance on what actually constitutes harmful copyright infringement. if this turns out well for pearLyrics, it might actually encourage development of online resources for music-related info.
so kudos, thanks for not *totally* skewering a small developer.
/. is what happens when geeks talk. get used to it.
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.