Lyric Sites In Trouble With The MPA 666
Joe the Lesser writes "Apparently the Music Publishers Association is cracking down on sites, like LyricFind, that display song lyrics without permission. 'Just because there is no central licensing body it doesn't make it right to take lyrics and publish them without permission.' says Sarah Faulder of the MPA."
If they are making money out of it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lyrics (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean isn't this fair use? I'll admit I'm still a bit hazy on the concept as it relates to this sort of non-commercial use, so would some kindly slashdotter explain how it would apply in this situation? Or are they talking about commercial lyrics sites? (I suppose such exist). I know I personally use a russian server for most of my lyric searches, and I'm aware Russian intelectual property law is or was rather spotty.
Lyrics are copyrighted (Score:4, Insightful)
Songwriters should be allowed to make money off the lyrics since they wrote them in the first place.
That being said, I think LyricFind and the MPA should sit down and work out a licensing agreement with each other to work out a deal that benefits all three parites involved (Songwriters, LyricFind and consumers).
Question: (Score:5, Insightful)
??
???
Ah, the iron fist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, excuse me? Don't you want to sell more albums and get more royalties?
I guess not.
Re:Words? (Score:2, Insightful)
Copyright on the song, sure. But on the fscking lyrics? That's just anal.
What would be OK? (Score:2, Insightful)
Reproducing lyrics in text could be considred an art form (for sure there will be differences).
How about a search-only lyric site? Where you can google for that song that goes: "... hu hu hu what ever you mean
Why in the hell would anyone object to the reproduction of lyrics?
Lyric availability (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh...no (Score:1, Insightful)
Intellectual property of music is more than just the recording of it. There's the sheetmusic/score/tab as well as lyrics and recordings.
Re:This is a surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lyrics are *part* of a song. Not the entire work. I don't understand why reproducing it is *stealing* the song. One would think the *artists* would *want* people to know what they are saying! Next we crack-down on people who hum tunes in public? Sing in the shower? Tell other people the lyrics to a song (different from publishing them how?)? 'Cuz lord knows if somebody *could* have made a buck selling the information, then you must be stealing it!
This whole "I created foo, you can't use foo in any manner I deem unworthy" attitude is just driving me freaking nuts.
Re:This is a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to see the business case for how lyrics damage record sales.
If lyrics are protected and cannot be published or read, where does fair use end? Can music reviewers still write reviews with lyric snippets?
Is posting the technical specifications of a product illegal once it has hit the market and ANYONE can get them for free, just like lyrics?
The only argument I see is that having the lyrics on a site generates traffic that can potentially generate profit for a site - so you are profitting from the artists work. But by that same logic, just having the name of the song listed on your site generates the same traffic. Are those now illegal to publish as well? Is it also illegal to place the singer's or group's name on the site, because that may also generate traffic? Are unofficial fan and gossip sites illegal because they generate profit for the creator?
The answer is yes. Remember all those lawsuits folks scoffed about when, for example, the Crayola corporation shut down multiple websites about their crayons, and *Ty (beanie babies) did the same? They even went so far as to serve legal papers to quake clans for using their names - and they could because they had the money to back up their legal departments insane claims.
Welcome to 1984.
unfathomable (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon... everyone's had an old song running through their head from time to time, where they can remember only a line or two. Enter that line into any lyric site (or google with quotation marks around it), find the song, and mark it down on your "future purchases" list.
What the hell is the matter with these people? I suppose if they want to cut their own throats they're free to do so, but sheesh...
This has to be a hoax; no organization dedicated to making money can survive long with this level of stupidity.
Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to slap some sense into the industry.
I'm starting to think an ORGANIZED boycott may be the only way to do it.
Damn MPA/RIAA... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Uh...no (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not theft whether it is paid for or not. It is copyright infringement. This idea that copyright infringement is theft was invented by copyright holders and those who profit from strong copyright protection. If you look at copyright law you will see that it is legally quite different from theft. (and rightly so IMO)
Re:If they are making money out of it... (Score:5, Insightful)
How far does this go? (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems to be another excessive move from the recording industry. It seems to me that every time they take a step like this, the big record companies make themselves more obselete. Ultimately, artists won't want to be associated with their vile behaviour- there have been issues over artistic control of recordings for years and the more that viable alternatives arise, the more the creators of music will want to escape the machine.
Hopefully soon we will start to see the big kids of the music industry adding financial bancruptcy to their moral and creative bancruptcies.
Songwriters & lyricists (Score:3, Insightful)
That is why they get royalties for the performance, even broadcast, where the performing artist does not.
Re:Uh...no (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody will pay for the lyrics, apart from serious musicians who want to do a cover. If they don't want to pay, they'll just listen to the song, and copy the lyrics out.
boy, is this short sighted (Score:5, Insightful)
I typed those lines into Google with his name, and the song popped up on a fan/lyric site. It was "And So It Goes." Never would have found it otherwise.
I did go out and buy the CD, though it wasn't easy to find. If this is their attitude, next time I'll just snag it off eDonkey. Fuck 'em. Lot's less hassle to just steal it.
Re:What would be OK? (Score:0, Insightful)
Honestly, don't people on
</sarcasm>
Re:Words? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How far does this go? (Score:4, Insightful)
Afterall, they are "reverse-engineering" the music in order for you and I to be able to play the notes ourselves.
Assinine. All of this is simply assinine.
Re:boy, is this short sighted (Score:5, Insightful)
They're just a bunch of troublecausing greedy bastards. I don't think I'm ever going to buy a CD again.
Re:This is a surprise? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it illegal to quote somebody? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lyrics (Score:4, Insightful)
No, and no. I can make all the copies I like of all the books/lyrics/magazine articles/whatever and be perfectly within the bounds of the law. The part that makes it infringment is the redistribution part. Granted, that is being done in the case these discussions started with, but we have to make sure we keep the ground rules of the discussion in mind.
They're f*cked. (Score:3, Insightful)
This action is only one more reason I only buy CDs used, unless they are from non-RIAA labels.
Re:This is a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case I think you're... um... partly wrong. Whether that's the same as being partly pregnant (ie impossible) I have yet to determine for myself.
I can't necessarily say it's not equally wrong to reproduce someone's song lyrics as it is to do the same with published poetry. HOWEVER, the REASON behind copyright is to protect someone's... source of income, no? For a poet, this is the published word. For a lyricist, however, it's the song that his word goes into. You cannot argue that an artist would lose any revenue from the lyrics of his / her song being printed. Obviously if the song was reproduced without permission, there's an argument.
So yes, it is equally illegal. But is it equally wrong?
Why is it people think music is somehow different from other forms of art and can be readily and freely stolen?
Downloading the music that you should be paying for == stealing. Even most people who do it will admit to that. I just can't convince myself that putting the lyrics up on a website as a reference is the same thing. Or even close.
Re:Uh...no (Score:2, Insightful)
And more to the point: Is there another business so intent on alienating its consumers? Let's get real: fans seek out lyric sites to learn the words to their favorite songs. Musicians seek them out to learn words to songs they want to cover - an activity that will, if they play in a properly licensed venue or make a commercial recording, eventually land a little money in the pockets of the copyright owners. Both of these activities only serve to increase recognition and fan dedication. So what exactly is the problem? Yes, it is technically illegal and representatives of lyric copyright holders are within their rights to seek legal remedy. But as the only likely effect is the alienation of fans and other musicians, you gotta wonder what the justification is.
Re:Words? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't the difference here that the author of a book makes his money from selling the book? Publishing online gets in the way of that transaction. I completely agree that this can be illegal.
Music artists, however, make their money from the sale of CDs which sometimes include the lyrics. Publishing the lyrics online does not get in the way of any transactions. I don't think you can make the argument that this will get in the way of sheet music sales either. We're talking lyrics here, not notes.
I have yet to see a lyric section in a Virgin Megastore or on Amazon.
This seems to me to be another case of litigators gone wild.
Re:Uh...no (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:They infringed my copyright! (Score:1, Insightful)
Copyright is a RIGHT. The word has nothing to do with WRITING.
Re:Uh...no (Score:5, Insightful)
Something seems very wrong here.
Once you sing a song in public, the lyrics are now "out there".
This is getting more stupid by the day.
If you want to keep your lyrics a secret, then DON'T SING THEM and also DON'T PUBLISH THEM.
If you wrote a song, however trivial, and sing it publicly, then is someone "stealing" from you if they write down your lyrics? Put them on a web site? Yet, nothing has actually been "removed" from you?
I'm not arguing the legal aspect of the lyrics copyright status. I'm just saying that this is getting pretty downright ridiculous. Which will lead to a massive disrespect for copyright altogether. Which BTW seems to be happening as we speak.
Doesn't the MPA (not mpaa, and not riaa) have better things to do like busting down the door of kids birthday parties to arrest people for singing "Happy Birthday".
I will go so far as to say that I think one form of copyright simply should NOT exist. That is "performance rights". The very idea that nobody else can sing your song? Then keep it to yourself. (I can hear the second grade teacher saying.)
We need to form a SIG publisheres association so I can sue people who steal my sig. Would that be the SPA? Oh, wait.
Idiotic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Words? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're confusing the concept of "not getting money" with "losing money". (Incidently, this is the biggest difference between copyright violation and theft as well.)
In order to lose something, you must have it to begin with, and then have it taken from you. If your argument above were true, it would mean that when I go to a site with a posting of some book, and read it - somehow money that is in the publishers/authors bank account vanishes. This obviously isn't the case. (If it were, I'd like to see the money trail
What really happens is that I go to said site, and read said book, and there is no monetary transaction whatsoever. The publisher/author neither receives, nor loses money. Since they're not receiving money for their work - and most likely they would really like to receive money for it - they can then sue on the grounds of copyright infringement. They cannot, however, sue for theft - as no "loss" has occurred on their part.
If lyrics are on the net, who loses money? Do you know anyone who ever bought song lyrics?
I don't know - personally I think they're being a bit overzealous here. There's a lot of useful things a well-organized lyric archive can achieve.
If I buy a CD, and the liner notes don't include lyrics (some do, some don't), and I can't make out what the artist is saying - it's very useful to be able to look it up.
If I hear a song, and remember a lyric, but have no idea what the song is called, it's very useful to be able to look up the song title/artist/CD by the lyric fragment. Heck, it might lead to me purchasing the CD. No guarantee, but the possibility is there.
I don't think anyone would pay for this service, though -- especially in the first circumstance, where the CD has already been bought and paid for.
What I'm really concerned about, however, is what a lawsuit like this could mean for truly entertaining sites like http://www.kissthisguy.com/ [kissthisguy.com] (which is an archive of sometimes-hilarious misheard lyrics to various songs). I would think such things would fall under Fair Use and Parody - but we've all seen how much the *AAs respect those...
Sensible Lawsuits (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point, every manager and every CEO needs to stop and think "I can sue, but should I?" Lyric sites keep songs in the public eye, raise interest in their back catalog, and embed the product further into the cultural dialog. Is it a violation of copyright law? Yes, the same way that publishing screenshots of videogames is a violation of copyright law. But it makes no business sense for any videogame company to attack the publicity they recieve through the gaming news sites. And it makes no business sense to attack lyric sites which only serve to drum up interest in the music.
Question your lawyers.
Not theft (Score:3, Insightful)
The end result of a crackdown on lyrics sites (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't listen to much popular music, but once in a while I'd be in the car or at a restaurant where they had the radio on or something like that, and I'd hear a snippet of something I really liked. Used to be, I'd do an AltaVista search (this is a few years ago) and find out the name of the song and the artist and the album, and go buy it. (And I bought some clunkers that way, 'cause often the song I heard was the only one on the album I liked, but at least I had that song, and legally.)
I basically assumed at the time that while the lyrics were copyrighted, no sane music publisher would object to having them redistributed, since that was basically free advertising.
Then the music industry started going after lyric sites. I know some of them are still out there, but (1) they're a bit harder to find/search, and (2) I'd feel weird about participating in something that was technically illegal for no better reason than just to be able to give my money to a stupid industry that's trying to deprive me of my constitutional right to free expression [and not just by self-destructively vigorous enforcement of copyright, but that's a different diatribe]. So now when I hear a little snippet of a song on the radio that I like (unless it's NPR, in which case they usually make it easy for me to find all the information I need and often make it easy for me to hear the whole program again on the web), I just say "oh, well" and go download something (legally) from BeSonic.com or some other musician-supported site. I still buy CDs, but I spend less on them than I used to, and they're much more classical and folk (the sort of thing I hear about on NPR) and much less pop and rock (the sort of thing I'd hear in businesses or randomly spinning the dial in the car) than they used to be.
Oh, well, I guess the music publishers don't want my business, since they're making it harder for me to buy their product.
MPA has the right to go after these guys (Score:3, Insightful)
As many college students know, searching Lexus Nexus, and research abstracts are extremely useful. But they also require large fees from the University to pay the original copyright holders. Likewise, if some is going to publish someone else's lyrics, they should have to pay fees to the original copyright holder. And if that means, charging the end consumer, so be it. Record companies may find it in their interest to publish lyric catalogues at a loss in order to drive sales.
Anyone who argues in favor of copyright looters should spend some time in Basra and let me know how that feels. I, like everyone else, prefers free to paying, but until they figure out cold fusion, you can't get something for nothing.
Re:Uh...no (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, evil on a massive scale is it's own justification.
You're an idiot. (Score:2, Insightful)
What's your goal here? To continue to run your Website? To not need to kneel down and kiss the MPA's boots? To make a stand and defend a sane interpretation of copyright law? All of them are admirable goals. In your shoes, I'd probably have the same ones.
How are you going about achieving your goal? By tweaking lawyers. By tweaking lawyers who have already implicitly threatened serious legal action. By tweaking lawyers who work for a massive and well-funded organization who have already implicitly threatened serious legal action.
FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING?
Immature and juvenile responses have a quick, immediate feel-good reaction, sure, I can understand that. But it doesn't keep them from being immature and juvenile and unwise.
Please, please, please, consider the following to be free legal advice:
When lawyers are threatening you with lawsuits, the proper response is not to write a snarky letter. The proper response is to get your own damn lawyer and let him write a snarky letter.
Why? Because he knows how to fight these chumps.
You don't.
And no, saying "well, I read the Constitution a few times and I read Slashdot" doesn't count for crap in a legal-education sense.
Get yourself a lawyer. Now. Stop reading Slashdot and call a lawyer.
ObWarning: I am not a lawyer and I am not licensed to practice law. I am the son of a judge. And I have seen, firsthand, what happens to people who think they can take on lawyers.
Re:Uh...no (Score:4, Insightful)
Funnily enough, as it turns out I often hear songs on the radio for which I might want to have the cd. Unfortunately it is practically impossible to find out what song/artist is being played on the radio. It is trivial to get such information about downloaded MP3s. Likewise, I will often search lyric sites (or google) for lyrics I remember from a song in order to figure out what I was listening to, then I know what CD to buy.
These people are just as wacked as the people that think you should have to pay a dollar every time you dare to hum a song someone else wrote.
Re:Uh...no (Score:2, Insightful)
The expression "Legally entitled" has no meaning in this context.
Usually "legally" should reflect "morally", as in "is this right?", but with the influence the ONE side in these cases has on the laws, the scales of Justice are not balanced any more.
Repeat after me: I shall not automatically assume that "The Law" and "What's right" are synonyms.Re:This is a surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
No
How about if I write down the words to that song? Am I breaking the law now?
No
OK, now I put the lyrics up on my web page. Now?
Yes, you distributed.
The radio station had to get permission before they played the song. You have the right to listen to that distribution via the airwaves. You have the right to make a copy. You have the right to write down the words. But you can't give it away.
if an author is giving out copies of his book at a store and a friend of yours wasn't able to be there, you can't make him a copy of your book and say "It's OK, he gave up his copyright by distributing some free copies" He just gave you the right to own your copy. That is all. Why would you now own the distribution rights to his work?
When someone transmits something, whether it's TV, radio, or whatever, you have the right to receive a copy via their method of transmission and keep that copy or make other copies for yourself. But you can't distribute it, even if it's a stupid decision that will hurt music sales.
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
Yes, you are. (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, the MPA's lawyers can, if they so choose, make an argument that you're not acting in accordance with the permission granted to you by the copyright owner. They can make an argument that the person who you think holds the copyright really doesn't. They can
You're an idiot. Stop reading Slashdot. Get a lawyer. NOW.
If you've been part of two lawsuits already, then by God, you ought to know this already without being told.
Re:No, I'm Not (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes but here is the classic line. Does the band own the rights to the the music?. if they do, then you will be clear.
now here is the other side of the coin, do you have advertsing on your site that is directly related to that lyric, if so, it would seem to most people that you are earning a living on someone elses work without paying them for it.
but hey what do I know.
I seem to remember... (Score:3, Insightful)
Cracking down on file traders... Ok, that probably only affects a subset of their customer base, but going after fan sites that post lyrics to songs? It's not like the person who wrote the lyrics is going to actually miss out on song royalties because someone could read their lyrics on the web instead of listening to them in the song. Also, I know of a lot of parents that use such sites to figure out what their kids really are listening to. These days it isn't always easy to tell what is being said in the songs just by listening.
Re:Uh...no (Score:3, Insightful)
The second issue is that of how widespread the distribution is. I'm sure there are thousands of websites right now that are 'illegally' 'publishing' poems. I put publishing in quotes because I don't really consider such small-scale reproduction to be publishing, and any attempt to gain money from this so-called 'publishing' is pure greediness. The idea of demanding money from such small-scale sites is also utterly ludicrous.
I hope these people are exposed for the greedy bastards they are.
Re:Uh...no (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright exists to serve the public good, PERIOD. It is not considered a natural right of it's own by anyone except media moguls and their shills.
This just isn't some radical hippie idea, it's a 200 year old law known as the US Constitution.
Re:Uh...no (Score:2, Insightful)
They also felt that not helping them recapture runaway slaves was also a violation of their "property rights".
It would seem that you are saying that "property rights" are sacrosanct. To be held above reason, common sense, the general good of society, and not to be questioned under any circumstances.
Re:Uh...no (Score:2, Insightful)
For the most part I agree with that. That has some similarities to point I was trying to make. Which was: property rights laws, along with many other laws, need to be looked at with some logic and reason from time to time.
I believe, however, that the pendulum is swinging too far in the direction of favoring restrictive ownership and copyright holders. (Along with the crap that is spewing out of the Patent Office now.)
From the US Constitution:
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Many of the accusations and complaints right now have nothing to do with promoting science and arts. We have people being sued over copyright issues long after the creators have died. It is simply a army of lawyers and accountants "managing copyright portfolios" rather than doing productive work.
Re:That's really hurting the music industry. (Score:2, Insightful)