Song Sites Face Legal Crackdown

[Praz]

Check out this article on slashdot
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/12/09...id=116&tid=123

Apparently, song lyrics and tabs sites are being gone after now. And jail time as a penatly was suggested by the president of the Music Publishers Association for people who post song lyrics on websites.

The full article is on the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm

I know copying tabs/song scores is illegal, but jail time? Are you kidding me? I understand that people need to make money, but corporate interests have grown to be far more important that public interests in so many ways.

Here is a quote from the above article
David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association, added his concerns.

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

"Music publishers and songwriters will consider all tools under the law to stop this illegal behaviour."

I don't know about you but I've bought many a CD after hearing a song on the radio and doing a search to find the lyrics I remembered.

Might want to be careful about those song lyrics in your sig... they could be coming for you next.

Edit: The article also talks about the cease and desist sent to the developer of PearLyrics, a program that interfaced to iTunes and downloaded lyrics of the song you were listening to by parsing websites. It was basically a special type of web browser browsing information that he had not put up himself, however, they told him to shut down. And while he probably hasn't don't anything wrong, he freely admits that he couldn't afford to deal with a court case. Just another show of corporate money and resources being able to act unjustly because other people don't have the money or the power to stand up to them

Probably not too many MRiverians who use iTunes, but it was worth a note anyway

[Astec]

Yup, looks like just more of the record companies trying to bulge their muscles. The problem lies in the people that dont bother to notice what these labels do, the artists are getting no more money out of this, just the labels.

These things are the reasons I dont buy the CDs anymore.

[Praz]

Just curious Astec... how do you get your music? Have you switched over to only getting music which is provided by artists unaffiliated with the major labels or is it a more illegimate means?

It seems that in the case when I want something that is major label, buying CDs used might not be a bad move. Save some money and the record company gets nothing from the second sale.

[Haku]

I think Stan from South Park put it best when he said:

"Dude, that's pretty f****d up right there."


Killing off lyrics sites will only reduce music sales - how else can we find out what that song was we heard a few lyrics of on the radio/tv?

[Astec]

Exactly haku, I only got the album by the coral for one track I liked found using lyric sites. Next thing we will know they are going to be getting us all arrested for listening or maybe even singing the song in public. When will it end?

[Haku]

Yeah, numa numa kid would probably be the first in jail

[Febs]

Well, public performance of a copyrighted work does require permission of the copyright holder ...

[LAB DESIGN]

We might as well give up listening to music right now...
I've had a tune buzzing round my head all day.. Shh... don't tell anyone.

LD

[3.14159265]

better not play our music too loudly on our nice irivers, it could count as public performance

[Astec]

Well, public performance of a copyrighted work does require permission of the copyright holder ...

No I mean as you walk along singing it to yourself. WHat Im getting at is that if they start at this soon enough they will move on.

[musichound]

Why listen to other artist's music when you can listen to all day long "Catch The Digital Flow" that came with your iRiver DAP?

[Adam8281]

Unbelievable, you'd think worrying about lyrics and tab sites would be the absolutely LAST thing record companies would worry about. I decided a while ago that I no longer want to illegally download music, but man, I just do NOT want to buy and give money to the music companies. So far I've been steering the middle "grey" course of allofmp3.com. I wish I could just buy directly from the artist.

[DreamTactix291]

I read this a few days ago when a thread at Hydrogenaudio.org discussed it. I think it's silly myself, but what can I do about a bunch of very greedy corporations.

I agree that I wish I could buy directly from the artist, but I do buy quite a bit of used CDs so that works pretty well too.