Let Them Sing... About Copyright?
from the infringing-or-not? dept
Shocklee points us to an awesome little app that lets you type in whatever lyrics (or, well, words) you want, hit play, and whatever you type will be sung for you, using clips from various famous songs. It's a really fun little app (though, I was amused that they have no clip for the word "lyrics" despite the service being all about lyrics) and can get pretty addictive. In fact, if you want to hear this entire post sung outloud via this system, just click here (please note, this will take a really long time to load, but it's totally worth it). However, like with many other cool music projects, I'm left wondering whether or not some would consider this to be copyright infringement. All of the clips are tiny -- one word, or in many cases, less than a full word, but they do seem to come from various popular and well-known songs. It's not hard to identify some of them. I have no idea if the company behind this service cleared all the licenses (it's possible), but if that's the case, you'd have to imagine that this service would get ridiculously expensive very quickly. If a simple lyric of, say, 8 words, involves a dozen clips, with royalties needing to be paid for each, such a service would quickly become impossible. Doesn't it say something when copyright law would effectively outlaw an awesome and fun app like this one?
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Filed Under: automation, copyright, singing, songs
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Please Sir, May I have some More?
As for the story, I'd like to ask why do all the cool things come from Sweden?
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Re: Please Sir, May I have some More?
I asked this elsewhere. Consensus seems to be "Long Winters."
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Re: Please Sir, May I have some More?
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Re: Re: Please Sir, May I have some More?
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Isn't this covered by fair use?
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Probably not fair use.
http://en.wi kipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_case_law
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Sample trolls.
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No fair use in Sweden
Works that are protected by the full copyright (life+70 years) need to reach a certain standard in order to be protected by the law. However, recorded works like movies and music don't have any such requirement. So if you make a very strict interpretation of the law here even a very short clip would be covered by copyright and represent an infringement unless you have the permission of the rights holder to publish it.
It's interesting how this relates to file-sharing via bittorrent btw. I suspect that if you share an e-book then someone would need to prove that those exact pieces of the book that you shared meet the standard needed to be covered by copyright. But if you share an audio book in the same way the proof burden is much lighter since every piece that you share is copyrighted (assuming that it's big enough to be unique for the song at least).
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Yes, it says that you can't make a profit off the backs of others, same as it always says.
Nice attempt at another moral outrage stand.
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Re:
Perhaps you were referring to something else?
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Nice attempt at being an idiot, you succeeded. seriously, did you even think about that comment before you said it?.
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Oh? So every business exists in a vacuum?
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Imagine the panic that will ensue when someone uses the app to sing words from copyrighted material.
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Novelty songs and Carol Burnett
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Swedish Radio can do this
2. The Swedish Public Radio, who seems to behind this, _HAS_ cleared all the licenses. All of them.
They do actually have a database of all the music they ever played, too, so creating this was probably a rather fun excercise.
Just another note: The problem in the US does not actually seem to be so much was with the copyright law itself, as the way your courts interpret it. And they of course do it as the lawyers ask in the lawsuits. It's not copyright or copyright law that stifles innovation, it is the litigation culture...
PS: I have to agree on the quality of the clip.
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