Song Sites Face Legal Crackdown

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.

Two words

[Kythe]

"Bull" and "Shit".

I am so sick of that excuse.

This has never been about the artists, who are making increased profits with p2p file sharing, etc.

This is about a few mega-corps who have had a cartel lock on the marketplace, and haven't had to develop any business sense at all.

Songwriters are primarily song performers, and they make most of their money in tours.

more betrayal

[yagu]

Jail time for unlicensed publishing of lyrics? I don't know how many times I've gone looking for lyrics to songs and the only place I can find anything is some web site where a fan has taken the time to put lyrics together. Maybe that's changed some and now that the music industry see dollar signs you really can go "buy" this stuff -- is it my responsibility to monitor and find this stuff (which, btw should have been available a long time ago)?

The music industry has betrayed the consumers since forever. Are they going to go after the publicly available and free CDDB? Probably. But even that didn't exist until the consuming public put together the first application to make this available on-line. And guess who provided the data? The friggin' public, again. And, now that the industry sees dollar signs, they want to claim ownership.

Scores?

[Libor Vanek]

OK, I understand the "lyrics part" - it's "intelectual property" same as poems, books etc.

But WTF about "unlicensed song scores"? Does that mean that I can't publish on my blog what songs I like and hate?

Is this REALLY illegal?

[MrBandersnatch]

Consider these 2 scenarios :-

1) Someone takes the lyrics/score as written in a book/CD case, copies it and publishes it on a web page.
2) Someone listens to a song several times, transposes the lyrics/score as they hear it and transposes it on a web page.

Now 1) is a clear breach of copyright (and should be settled in a civil court as such) but 2)...I cant help but think of that as a derivitive work and as such NOT in breach of copyright.

I dont know though - could someone enlighten me please?

Copyright reform

[Weezul]

We seriously needc coyright reform: limit to 7 years & invalidate without publishing "all source materials used in creation". So software would never receive a copyright unless it was open source software, and music would never receive a copyright unless lyrics & tabs were published. Of course, they don't need to promote the source, but it needs to be available online from their site, and at the library of congress.

Point out the lost sales to the MPA

[nonsense28sal]

Many have noted how being able to look up lyrics *increases* sales by identifying the correct song to purchase. Perhaps it should be pointed out to the MPA how this maneuver will impact their sales. Full contact information listed below.

Gentlemen, start your text editors....

From their site [mpa.org]:

The MPA welcomes your questions and comments. The most efficient way to contact the MPA is via email. Emails from the general public are usually replied to within 2-3 business days. You can email MPA Administrator Julie Averill, at:

[e-mail]

Additionally, you may submit written correspondence to:

Music Publishers' Association

243 5th Avenue, Suite 236

New York, NY 10016

Contacting the MPA via phone is not recommended, unless you are a member or vendor communicating about specific MPA business:

[phone]

Re:Man.....

[Mr. Slippery]

I think it might be to protect the song writers as they don't perform or record songs, but I agree, this is stupid.

Song writeres get royalties when amateur muscians - such as me - play their music at the local bar. Or when pros cover their songs in concert or on a recording.

Where do amateur muscians often learn the words and chords to songs? The net. Making it easier for musicians to learn songs helps songwriters.

Musicians have been fighting the publishing industry over this for over seven years. [augusta.com] It's protectionism for buggy-whip manufacturers, no benefit for artists or creators at all.

This does not make sense at all...

[kandresen]

There is supposed to be a good reason for putting people in jail, and this is not one of them.

Ask yourself:

1) are these people a risk for the society at large?
2) what are we supposed to accomplish by putting them in jail?

As to number one, the problem is more an etical issue - nobody dies, nobody get anything but possibly lower sales.

As to number two, US is already country with highest % og people in jail, yet in no other industrialized country are there as many people shooting each other with gun - if jailtime worked, why are these number not going down? It is like, send these harmless schoolboy to learn how to become hardcore criminals in jail.

Why not instead focus on rehabilitation? Set up a schedule where those caught are constraint in the area of the crime? What is worse, one year in prisson or one year without rights for using Internet? ;)

Please stop sending people to hard core crime schools when not a danger to the society at large.

Karaoke and licensing

[SeanDuggan]

I was going to respond back with a detailed answer on how karaoke and music licensing works, but honestly I'm more mystified than ever after having looked it up. I found a site that had laws regarding karaoke [karaokeant...agency.com], but I'm still mighty confused. The licensing for performance of karaoke seems to come under the generic performance royalities rules which any business which transmits music, whether it's jukebox, personal CD player, or FM radio, must use. The production of the karaoke CDs comes under Mechanical Rights which is a flat fee for each "product" involving a cover of a song. Basically, for every time you stamp a CD with the cover of a song, or have a track downloaded (whether you sell it or offer it for free), you are compelled to pay a small fee to the licensing company, about 9 cents IIRC. You are allowed to license any song in this manner whether the publisher wants you to or not. The lyrics, on the other hand, are under stricter copyright laws and are not legally associated with the music. To publish lyrics, you have to license it from the copyright holders, who may or may not be the same people who have the license on the music. And, interestingly enough, lyrics can be withheld whereas music cannot.

As for karaoke and drunk people... yeah, it generally takes alcohol for people to have the courage to get up there and, quite frankly, I've found that it generally takes alcohol to make listening to some of them bearable. Every year, I give up alcohol for Lent and I find that going to karaoke during that time period is actually rather painful...

As a side note, it's kind of a shame that karaoke is largely only offered in bars. If they offered it in a location more conducive to voice health like maybe a coffee shop, you might get more talented singers up there. As it is, anyone with a trained voice generally avoids those smoke-filled dens like the plague.

Re:Will this pertain to TAB sites too?

[Millard Fillmore]

Ah, yes. I actually still have the t-shirt I bought to support OLGA's [olga.net] legal defense in the Harry Fox matter. As long as the lyrics weren't with the tabs, they were OK with it, correct?

Re:That makes sense

[dlZ]

The whole Napster thing put my old favorite local record store out of business, too. Same thing, walking distance to the local campus, and he sold lots of new and used CDs. Large amounts of vinyl, too, which kept me quite happy in small releases of punk and hardcore. The owner moved on to other business ventures (not another store, though.)

We now have a small chain retailer (it's 3 stores, all within a 3 hour drive, the closest being about 15 minutes from me.) They're great, and have a lot of the same types of items the other store did, in addition to a lot of hard to find DVDs. They adapted to the changing market better, by expanding their selections and really doing a local push where the other store didn't. It worked, and we still have a music retailer locally that isn't some huge Wal-Mart type store.

I still buy music, but I refuse to buy anything that's RIAA related. Funny thing is, I don't have any trouble with that, because of the type of music I listen to (and I listen to a very varied range, not just the above mentioned punk and hc.)