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Music Industry Issues Take Down Notices to 50 Major Lyrics Sites
alphadogg writes "A music industry group is warning some 50 website that post song lyrics that they need to be licensed or face the music, possibly in the form of a lawsuit. The National Music Publishers Association said Monday that it sent take-down notices to what it claims are 50 websites that post lyrics to songs and generate ad revenue but may not be licensed to do so. The allegedly infringing sites were identified based on a complicated algorithm developed by a researcher at the University of Georgia."
The "complicated algorithm" (basis statistics using Excel and Google) is described in the NMPA's "Undesirable Lyric Website List." Anyone remember lyrics.ch?
Are they trying to destroy their business? That's the only reason I can think of for making it harder for people interested in their product to get information about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's not like they're posting the sheet music or the guitar chords, let alone any kind of recording. If you don't already know the tune, the lyrics aren't going to help you understand the actual music. And since singers are so mush-mouthed these days, you need the lyrics to avoid accidentally creating new mondegreens.
Does iTunes even include the lyrics when you buy a song?
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Why don't the copyright-holders publish lyrics for everything on the web themselves? Then they'd kill demand for other lyrics sites and get ad revenues.
It is such a sham they even call it the "music industry". The amount of assets in the form of recording studios and distribution is relatively quite small. What's big is the number of office buildings housing lawyers. If you ever drive around the West Hollywood or Beverley Hills area you'll see big office buildings full of lawyers. That's what the "industry" is...
That's what this amounts to. And lost revenue. I've lost count of the number of times where I've been out in public and overheard pieces of a song I liked and committed key phrases to memory to google later. Never fails to find the song. (And frankly, sometimes the results are embarrassing. I like that shit?!)
In all of those other cases there is some type of exchange going on. The issue here is that you have group A producing content and then group B taking that content without compensating A and then using it as the basis for making money. It can be argued (pretty easily) that the lyric generators are adding value in the process, and thus there is an exchange going on between consumer and aggregator (via advertiser), but the relationship between producer and aggregator is completely one way.
While I think the music industry is being a jackass and this will do nothing positive for them, legally and even ethically I can see their point.
Silly, but it is their right... They own the copyright and that's that.
It's silly so the law shoud be changed. Nobody shoud have right to restrict sharing of public knowledge/culture/ideas.
I make money by pushing bits around; specifically, I write and maintain software for my company. The company has a general idea of what value I create, and pays me based on that. Sometimes I do better than they plan on and sometimes worse. It's a pretty sweet deal, but it doesn't transfer well to artistic endeavors.
Suppose I were able to write publishable-quality fiction. Suppose I then wanted to write a novel on speculation. How am I supposed to make money on it? I've written it, so under a no-copyright regime I can either sit on it, which does nobody any good, or release it freely, in which case I get no money for my work. Suppose I want to write another novel, despite not getting paid for the first. I have to go around fundraising as well as writing. People have to decide that they're willing to give me money, despite me not having much of a track record. And, of course, if I raise enough money (conditional on releasing the novel, I assume), that's an absolute upper limit on what I can make. It seems to me that I can put a heck of a lot of work in on fiction before I can start getting significant money from it.
In the current world, with copyright, I can write on spec, and if I can talk somebody into publishing it I can get financial rewards from it. They may not be much, but they can continue. I can strike it rich if I write something that really catches on. In the meantime, readers can decide if they want to pay me for my novel on a case-by-case basis. They don't have to commit to paying me sight unseen. If they come along and decide they like my work, they can reward me for the stuff I've already published. Under which regime can we expect more good fiction?
The difference is that your software is relatively easy to agree on a price for. You agree to provide good-quality software that does something specific. This is worth a good sum of money to somebody who pays you. Fine. A novel is not written for a particular need (aside from series and romance novels), and there is usually no one person who values the novel so highly as to pay what the author needs for a decent living. If some organization would guarantee a base amount of money for an original novel, there's be at least some reward for writing one, and we'd be paying endless amounts of money for crap.
And don't give me the line about how people will create because it's fun. Creating something is fun. Making it into a polished and entertaining product involves a lot of drudge work that nobody's going to do without being paid for it. Without copyright, people would still play the guitar and sing and tell stories, but that's where it stops.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Well we all know how much lyrics sites lead to a loss in sales for these companies.
Quite the opposite, i'd say. I've often heard a song i liked on the radio, but not known what it was called or who it was by, and then googled bits of lyrics to find out so i could buy it. And i'm sure i'm not the only person who does that. The Google search inevitably takes me to one of those lyrics sites. If they weren't there, chances are i wouldn't have bought the song.
They're just shooting themselves in the foot as usual, with their mindless short sighted approach.