Redlemon

...bastards.

Song sites face legal crackdown
Here's my deal: if you can get the singers to pronounce all of their words clearly, you can go ahead and take the lyrics sites down. Until then, no.

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I can't read your signature. Sorry.

Poppinjay

Yeah. And R.E.M. must now and forever put their lyrics in the freaking CD booklet.

Michael Stipe had to look up the lyrics to the "End Of The World..." on the net to perform it recently. So, he should bust himself.

By this Keiser guy's logic, guitarists who figure out the tabs themselves will also be criminals. What next, a copyright on the G chord?

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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

martinguerre

idiots.

the only time i buy CDs are when i know which one to buy. this requires hearing a song on the radio, and then *looking up the song by searching for lyrics*

Unless stations want to spend airtime tagging songs at the beginning and end, which they don't, since they can sell that time...

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

flamingdog

You notice how the injured party in all of these debates are always representatives of music publishers, but always talk about how it hurts the artists? Funnily enough, it's not too hard to find a great deal of reportage expressing how publishers are already screwing artists.

Fly

you tell 'em buddy..........




....now you're talkin' my language.

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BASTARD

SterlingStudios

QuasiMojo

Yeah, I guess Pearl Jam cover bands are gonna be shit outta luck

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AzAbOv ZoBeLoE

Spektr

What a crock of shit. Bloated label execs just shaking everyone down to make a buck.

alpha

"Unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing"

huh? how does it hurt the artist if people can look up the lyrics from the web? tablature also. there's no sense in that sentence.

flamingdog

It doesn't. What it does hurt is the publisher's ability to wring a few more cents out of their artists' work by selling books of the music/lyrics. Back in the mid-90s, me and my friends used to get hold of books of music for our favourite albums.

Of course, we used to get them from the library and photocopy the songs we wanted...

Hanxter

Martian

I don't see how this is enforcable. Even if the American courts uphold this (unlikely, in my opinion) that doesn't guarantee that it will be upheld all over the world.

Quoting lyrics is like quoting anything else; so long as the source is credited and an individual doesn't try to represent the material as their own work, it falls under fair use.

This latest move by the labels is stupid, but essentially meaningless.

EDIT - also, I tend to use song lyrics that represent how I'm feeling in my signature. I wonder if that means that I'm depriving artists or money?

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I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Zephyr66

I hope to hell this doesn't work, cause I'd be nowhere without tabs... fuck.

n0nsensical

This is certainly not the case in the U.S., but I can't speak specifically for elsewhere. For one thing, it's generally impossible to say that a borderline use like this IS or ISN'T fair use until it's been tested in court.

As for determining this, 17 USC Chapter 1 §107 is what establishes fair use in the U.S.:
So this case of copying and distributing a copyrighted work we're talking about, song lyrics (the melody and the lyrics of a song have copyright protection), may not fall afoul of factor (1), though it's not exactly educational either, but certainly the copyright owner may argue that it does fall afoul of (3) and (4). Specifically that they're distributing the work in its entirety and that clearly this may have an impact on its market value since it's freely available where otherwise the copyright owner could charge. It's up to the courts, but I highly doubt the outcome would be favorable to the distributors. (For similar reasons, TFP posters reposting articles instead of simply linking to them is legally dubious, but probably not to as much of a degree, and I figure it's a lot less likely that the article writers would object)

It's the record companies that most of the complaining is done about. Record companies and publishers are generally seperate entities, though it's common for record companies to also publish and there probably exist publishers that also make records. (Publishers deal with song rights and record companies deal with rights to the specific recordings that are put on CDs, etc.) In my understanding, a 50/50 split of revenue between the publisher and the songwriter is common, whereas record labels typically pay the artists (another distinction between the songwriter and the artist that is often lost), especially new artists, considerably less.

kutulu

I don't know if that is true or not but if it is true then all the labels have to do is use their congressional pissboys to change the law. It will happen.