Song Sites Face Legal Crackdown 537
CaptainPotato writes "According to the BBC, the Music Publishers' Association is stepping up to launch the next phase in the music industry's battle against online music. The MPA is demanding jail time for the maintainers of websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics. The MPA President has stated that closing websites and imposing fines is not enough, stating that by 'throw [ing]in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective' in its crusade." We just recently reported on the pearLyrics cease-and-desist order as well.
That makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Man..... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a musician... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you, music industry.
Idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe I listen to too much rap but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys never met a good business plan or marketing scheme they didn't want to sue out of existence. The only reason they've survived this long is that they've been the only game in town.
Artists are already discovering that they can afford home studios and to self-publish their songs online, which (as recent studies indicate) helps market the small-time bands. I'm thinking that within 10-20 years, the RIAA companies will either be defunct or will have gotten out of the business.
Will this pertain to TAB sites too? (Score:2, Insightful)
Call Oberlin! (Score:2, Insightful)
Please don't... (Score:1, Insightful)
$0.02 (Score:5, Insightful)
but I've bought a ton of cd's by listening to a song on the radio, writing down a random verse, and later googling that phrase to get to one of those cheesy lyric pages. I then can see what the song is, and what artist is making it.
Shut that down and you're gonna lose my sales.
jail time? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, jail time? That, to me at least, implies that society has been harmed in some measurable and somewhat significant way. Music lyrics? Is this after multiple warning to cease and desist?
Are they profiting off of this?
Obviously, I'm thinking outload here. But the main point is that jailing people is not something we should be deciding willy-nilly based on people from an industry that feels threatened.
It's one thing for them to want the state to help them in regards to illegal activity that affects their business. This is quite another.
Re:As a musician... (Score:2, Insightful)
My question is... (Score:1, Insightful)
If it's illegal to transcribe all of the lyrics, what about half of them? One stanza? One line?
Why is this illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those of us that play by ear are next. (Score:5, Insightful)
OTHER DUDE: "Sweet, show me how it goes."
DUDE: "Um, I can't -- it's illegal. And don't tell anyone I figured it out myself. If anybody asks I bought the music."
In similar news, concertgoers will now be forbidden from watching the hands of musicians during the performance, lest they learn something about how a song is played without paying the proper royalties.
Re:Damn it that's not good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
There was all kinds of mean, nasty and ugly-lookin' people on the bench there --there was mother rapers--father-stabbers, father-rapers! FATHER-RAPERS sittin' right there on the bench next to me!
And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible and crime fightin' guys were sittin' there on the bench, and the meaniest, ugliest, nastiest one--the meanest father-raper of them all--was comin' over to me.
And he was mean and nasty and horrible and all kinds of things, and he sat down next to me. He said, "Kid, what'd you get?"
I said, "I didn't get nothin'. I had to pay fifty dollars and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested FOR, kid?" and I said, "Litterin'."
And they all moved away from me on the bench there, with the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean, nasty things, till I said, "And creatin' a nuisance."
And they all came back, shook my hand and we had a great time on the bench talkin' about crime, mother-stabbin', father-rapin', --all kinds of groovy things that we was talkin' about on the bench, and everything was fine.
Courtesy of this page [sims.net]. I wonder if it's illegal?
Re:Indeed! (Score:3, Insightful)
I will note... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sheet music, I can understand. But lyrics? What the hell? There are only two reasons to look up lyrics online:
1) Curiosity about that "one line" you've never been able to understand
2) Finding a certain song's name
Neither will impact business, period. In fact, both promote the song, which very likely promotes the buying of sheet music.
This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've seen in relation to the copyright wars. It's the clearest example yet of companies suing "because they can" and because of a complete lack of business sense, rather than because it's in the public (or even their) interest to do so.
No one, and I mean no one, is going to shell out cash to buy lyrics. A manufacturer might as well sue customers for saying good things about their product in an online forum.
The only times... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the first instance, there's no more money to be made from me as I have already spent money - and I would refuse to pay to use a site that provides lyrics. Indeed, it would also discourage me from buying more music in the future from companies that endorse this approach.
In the second instance, there's also no money to be made from me as I won't be able to find the song by using its lyrics. Lose-lose for the music industry, it seems. To top it off, with this type of attitude, I'm also far less likely to purchase anything from companies pursuing this type of strategy.
That's why I stick with Internet radio and music from individuals, groups and companies that respect their fans, rather than trying to milk them for all that they are worth.
I'm not a musician, so I don't download tabs. Shutting down tab sites also seems pointless as any half-decent musician can pick up a song by listening to it. Every musician I know does it this way. Does this mean that the music industry wants to also jail musicians who learn by listening, rather than by buying officially sanctioned tabs and scores?
Silly me, I forget that all the great musicians learnt from the officially sanctioned sources, rather than listening and imitating their heroes... and that anybody who disagrees with what the music industry wants must be a pirate and thief.
How does a civil statute = jail time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this illegal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly.. It's not illegal, or should not be. Copying something verbatim from sheet music may be illegal, but writing your own interpretation of the music for a song should not be.
Why the outrage? (Score:3, Insightful)
But...
Music lyrics are copyrighted material...
And the agents of the MPA are presumabley, agents of the songwriters. And they are requesting that their works be taken down.
So why the outrage? Are you suggesting that you have some right to the songwriter's works against their wishes?
My solution to this issue is to let the MPA get what they want. Hopefully smarter artists will, in the future, fill the void this creates.
Fair Use anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't they know that many of their artists learned how to play music in much the same way, by hearing a song and effectively reverse engineering it? Elvis Costello didn't learn to read and write music until the mid 90s, nearly 20 years after his first album was released.Let them waste their money on lawyers "protecting" their "IP". It's just so amazing that these people are so devoted to making sure their copyrights are never infringed that they're going to dig themselves a grave. I, for one, can't wait.
Re:I will note... (Score:3, Insightful)
For sheet music, I wonder what percentage of the studio's customer base actually gives a damn about them. Almost everyone may have an interest in music, 10% of people may have an interest in lyrics beyond finding a song or clarifying parts of them but sheet music? Probably well under 1%.
Well, I have learned that common sense and smart decisions are deprecated in the upper levels of the entertainment industry. The major labels/studios are too big for their own good, they lost sight of what their real objectives should have been and now they are well on their merry way to self-destruction through customer base alienation. Tunnel vision is dangerous.
Re:I will note... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are countless songs on the web that have guitar/bass/drum tablature (sheet-music-like transcriptions of songs... but only show tuning and fingering, no time signatures, generally). For at least as long as I've been playing guitar (around 10 years), I've been scouring the web to learn how to play certain songs. Sure, there are books you can buy which show you how to play "Clapton's Greatest Hits." but the fucken book costs upwards of $20, and I don't want to (but I did) pay 20$ to learn to play one riff and the basic chord structure of "I shot the sherrif."
also, not every artist has commercially available transcriptions of their songs.
and another point- online guitar tab (olga.net, etc) is sometimes horribly inaccurate and almost always incomplete. Because of that, there's a header on most online tab stating that the transcription may not be accurate and is the author's interpretation of the work.
I could understand if someone got their hands on one of the books and copied everything into a text file and submited it to a site... that's wrong. but sometimes, you don't wanna noodle around for days to figure out a song that you're only gonna jam to in your room.
what's next? making bands play license fees when they play covertunes at a show? how about when I crank my amp up to 11 and rock out on some sabbath, are they gonna charge me with illegal broadcasting of commercial music because my neighbors can hear it?
all I have to say is "wtf."
Re:As a musician... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Middle Ages the Church controlled all writing. Easy to do, they had all the scribes. Thne the printing press changed the world. In reponse, the Church threatened to excommunicate anyone in pocession of an unauthorized press. The more things change, the more they don't..
Re:It won't be enough... (Score:4, Insightful)
It all has to to with what generations grow up with. My nephew is 9 - and to him the internet is AOL. His mom is a member, and to him, the web is a place to check his email, play games, and find out information about more games. He knows of this thing called google - you ask it a question, and it gives you answers, but he doesn't like it too much because he feels like it doesn't answer them "right" most of the time. He already has preferred channels for getting his information. X-Play on G4 shapes his gaming opinions ("dude, how can you like that game? it only got 2 out of 5 on x-play!") - and the internet isn't this wide open place for him - but an aggregation of things his already likes to do at places he trusts and knows.
What frustrates him about the internet: Maybe like two years ago, I was babysitting, and we were watching the Discovery channel on rare spiders. He was so interested that he wanted to find out more. I suggested the internet. At the time (lol) whenever he wanted to find something out, he rationalized that the answer would be at www.nameofthatthing.com - in this case www.spider.com. So he typed that in... and suffice it to say, what he got had little to do with spiders.
It was a goth porn site. The main page was some chick with her tits out, nothing more than he'd seen on national geographic, but it made him really mad for some reason. He was like, "spider.com should be about spiders!" All of which is to say, to him the internet isn't ordered the way it should be. And I don't think that sentiment is totally incorrect. I think that the media congloms are slowly moving towards ordering it that way.
I hypothesize that the internet will become more ordered - less transparent - and places like blogs and message boards will be some of the few places average citizens will get to post... and registrations will be scrutinized and traffic will be analyzed... and the status quo will normalize. In this reality, file trading abates because the critical mass audience will be conditioned to accept the status quo - which is the internet as a background datastream - a stream that provides the water coming from your faucet but a stream that you don't DRINK FROM directly. Drink from the faucet - not from the stream. Disagree? Look at AOL commercials with its propaganda. (The internet is a dangerous place. We PROTECT YOU and your children and your money and your life.)
Unfortunately, I think the RIAA has the right idea - scare the kids with fear of litigation - (my nephew wanted the Rock Lobster clip from Family guy - I downloaded the torrent - and we laughed about it for like two hours until my sister made us delete it because she didn't want to get sued - my nephew has now internalized that meme - downloads are like shoplifting to him - which is to say wrong).
Don't get me wrong, I in no way support this. This is what I think is happening though.
Re:Man..... (Score:3, Insightful)
The sheet music association is even more obsolete than RIAA -- they are a legacy of the era when entertainment consisted of a piano or guitar in the living room.
What they are probably hoping for is to make a deal with iTunes where they get $0.005 cent for each song for bundling the lyrics.
Dumb and Dumber (Score:3, Insightful)
Now the stupid RIAA wants to end this. How this is going to help them is beyond me. Do they really think (as they apparently think regarding iPod hardware) that there's money to be extracted from these web-sites? Most seem to be a labor of love with likely little extra money to give to the greedy bastards. And I doubt that if you license the lyrics, that they will give them too you in machine-readable form. How many of these are captured and typed in by contributiors? Dumb all around.
Coming soon, how long before huming a song in public gets you jail time?
And is the MPAA suing the IMDB yet for giving movie plot summaries?
Re:I will note... (Score:4, Insightful)
- Watered down - harmonic, melodic, and/or rhythmic complexities edited out
- Over-complicated - usually the result of a sheet music transcriber pounding the sharp, angular irregularities of the music as the performer(s) wrote it into the smooth, round hole of what-they-teach-you-in-school
- Little to no attention to elements of the music that cannot be put into grand staff (dots-and-sticks) notation, such as picking style, relative mix loudness for each instrument, effect chaining, et. al.
- Little to no attention to drums
- Changed key from the original
I could really care less about the sheet music, and so would anyone with a reasonable amount of musical skill.However, prosecuting sites that host lyrics is absolute senselessness. Next, I assume, they're going to start going after every band, amateur or not, who does cover songs. "Damn those song-stealing bastards!" says the RIAA. "They're robbing us blind! Put down your hundred-dollar-bill-wrapped-cigar, Phil, and get the litigators on the phone! Tell them not to believe the rhetoric about how cover songs make the music more popular, it's stealing! We're being victimized!"
I suppose it's going to be illegal very soon for us to sing along to the lyrics in our cars, and the RIAA is going to lobby for the addition of a microphone and a credit card reader to every car stereo system so that they can detect those horrible sing-alongers that *gasp* actually enjoy listening to music and charge them money for each word of a song that they sing. So, the usual
Re:It won't be enough... (Score:5, Insightful)
When (if?) this happens, in order for ANY device to play media, the media itself will have to be digitally "protected" with a key the device is capable of verifying. Independent artists will be virtually locked out from producing and distributing media themselves (to any kind of mass audience) and will be required to go through those holding the keys. Who will that be? The big boys: MPAA & RIAA members, etc.
Frankly, this is the only rational reason for the sound and fury these organizations produce in regards to piracy. The amount of money they claim they lose to piracy is a fictional number. They made it up. There is no true way to know how much they are losing due to piracy and there are contra-indicative numbers showing it leads to more sales, not less. But whether they really lose money to piracy or not is beside the point.
They will lose everything when they lose control of the media distribution channel. And that, folks, is the real reason for all the lobbying efforts. It ain't about losing some money today. It's about losing all of it tomorrow.
But you all knew that already, didn't you?
I dont get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we have a new mod category please? (Score:4, Insightful)
MPA Preparing to Launch Pay Lyrics Service? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the only explanation I can think of. The RIAA wants to eliminate free/pirated downloads becuase it cuts into their album sales, or their pay-download site profits. The MPA wants to eliminate free guitar tabs so they can charge instrumentalists for sheet music. IN both cases, there is a for-profit, legal market for those goods. MPA members cannot currently profit in any way from the desire of music fans to know or look up lyrics. So why shut down lyrics sites unless they're planning to find a way to make it profitable for them...
Re:I will note... (Score:3, Insightful)
but they will visit the free, official site of the MPA (am I the only one who's never heard of this group?) and generate ad revenue for them, instead of some schmo listening to the songs and typing up what they think the lyrics are.
that is, of course assuming that the MPA would cowboy up and fill the void after they shut everybody else down. and who's to say they'd do something so rational?
Re:That makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This does not make sense at all... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a clue: No matter when "these days" are, the music has always sucked "these days". My great grandpa complained about Glenn Miller and Les Brown. My grandpa complained about Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. My dad complained about the Beatles and Jimmy Hendrix. I'm complaining about whatever that whiny noise is coming from kid's boomboxes these days.
Whatever music teenagers are listening to these days, one of the main reasons for its popularity is its ability to annoy adults.
Re:That makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm really lost on this one. I do understand why companies might not want other people to _make_money_ off of lyrics, for example, suppose an artist has a homepage with lyrics which generates them some ad revenue, but everybody obtains the lyrics through google which redirects them to other sites and generates ad revenue for people who didn't write the lyrics. But why would companies care if Joe Schmoe posts their favorite songs' lyrics on their nonprofit homepage, or somebody has a nonprofit fan site with lyrics of an artist's songs?
I guess there are people who write lyrics just to sell them to be used in songs by artists who don't write (just perform), but once they're used in a song, I still think my point about "when you buy a song do you not have permission to know what the words are" is valid.
If I'm not understanding something, can somebody please explain to me what I'm not understanding? I'm an artists who writes, records, and performs, and I don't understand why I would want to keep my lyrics a secret or why I should care if somebody posts my lyrics on the internet.
Perhaps there are some artists who don't really make money off of their music but instead just have fans because of their image? Their image might include something like "I'm too cool for my lyrics to be understandable/intelligible" but that's really the only case I can think of for when an artist would potentially lose anything from someone posting their lyrics.
Re:That makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
I haven't asked for permission to post this fact, nor should I have to.