stories filed under: "lyrics"
Japanese Collection Society Wants To Charge You For Tweeting Lyrics
from the you-can't-be-serious dept
One of the earlier fun things on Twitter was the lyric of the day bot @lotd. Basically, if you sent a Twitter message to lotd, it would automatically repost the lyric for other lotd fans to read. Neat! But is it copyright infringement? Well... we've seen claims that lyrics online need to be licensed, and there have been a few discussions around whether or not you can copyright a tweet, but would anyone seriously try to collect royalties on Twittered lyrics?Apparently the answer may be yes. Reader Anshar points us to a story claiming that Japan's collection society JASRAC is putting together plans to collect royalties on Twittered lyrics. Honestly, the whole thing sounds so ridiculous that I'm hoping the original report is coming from the Japanese version of The Onion (please, someone tell me that's the case). But this is JASRAC we're talking about -- which attacked YouTube quite early on for not stopping all copyrighted songs from appearing on the site.
According to the report, JASRAC said: "We want everyone to recognize that Internet is not your private place," in defending the plan to charge royalties for such lyrical tweets. No, it's not your private place, but that also means it's not the industry's private place to automatically demand the right to collect money any time anyone utters a snippet of a lyric. Japan's copyright law is a lot less well developed than the US, and it doesn't really have fair use within the law (notably, Japan has been a big supporter of ACTA).
Either way, if this story is true and not just some joke (please, please, tell me it's a joke), it's really quite ridiculous. People tweeting lyrics are not harming anyone by any stretch of the imagination. They're fans. They're encouraging more people to find out about a song or to remember an old song. They're not taking away licensing rights or revenue or anything. They're sharing lyrics, which is something JASRAC should be encouraging.
Filed Under: japan, lyrics, royalties, tweets
Companies: jasrac, twitter
Music Publishers Force Another Lyric Site Offline
from the careful-what-you-sing-along-to dept
Back in August we wrote about the ridiculous situation with the National Music Publishers Association suing a bunch of lyrics sites for not paying up to help promote songs. This action helped push at least one of the sites, LyricWiki -- which was user generated lyrics -- to shut down (though, Wikia picked up the project and paid up to the NMPA). Now it appears that the NMPA has forced another one of these sites to shut down and hand over all of the money it made. Once again, be careful singing along to or quoting any lyrics. The songwriters and publishers want to get paid every time you do.Eddie Vedder Sued For Changing Lyrics On A Song
from the what's-infringing-about-that? dept
Usually when you see copyright infringement claims, it's for copying something that someone else held a copyright on, but THREsq points us to a case where Canadian songwriter, Gordon Peterson, is suing singer Eddie Vedder for supposedly changing lyrics in a version Vedder did of Peterson's song "Hard Sun." Assuming that the song was properly licensed (which is also in dispute, but that seems to be a separate issue), it's difficult to see what sort of copyright infringement claim there would then be for modifying the song. After all, the modifications wouldn't be covered by Peterson's copyright at all. But, alas, this is what you get with today's "ownership culture," where people just assume more ownership rights over something than they actually have under the law.Filed Under: copyright, eddie vedder, gordon peterson, lyrics
Music Publishers Push LyricWiki Into Wikia's Arms
from the is-singing-along-without-a-license-the-next-to-go? dept
In August, we wrote how music publishers were suing lyrics sites (and their owners) for daring to "profit off the backs of songwriters." That, of course, makes no sense. People go to find lyrics to music because they already like it and want to find out more about it and the creators behind it. It's good advertising. And yet, publishers have been going after lyrics sites for years. Apparently, the guy behind LyricWiki worked out a deal whereby technically he's shutting down LyricWiki (found via Fan History) but is instead rebuilding the project for Wikia (the company associated with Wikipedia). Wikia has purchased a license from the publishers. While it's good that a lawsuit is being avoided and that the project will continue (sort of), it's still rather troubling that the publishers were able to force LyricWiki into Wikia's arms. Apparently, independently repeating lyrics of a song you like isn't allowed unless you buy a license. Careful singing along... that'll be next.Filed Under: lyrics, music, publishers
Companies: lyricwiki, wikia
Music Publishers Now Suing Lyrics Sites And Their Execs
from the and-on-it-goes dept
Last week, we noted that LyricWiki had been pressured to kill its API after music publishers threatened it with a lawsuit. In the comments to that post, someone insisted that there haven't been any lawsuits over lyrics online. If that's true, it just changed. Apparently the removal of the API wasn't enough, as the parent company of LyricWiki, Motive Force Web, along with LiveUniverse (the site run by former MySpace exec Brad Greenspan) have both been sued by a group of music publishers, who are insisting that such sites are unfairly "profiting on the backs of songwriters." I'd really like to see them prove that. These sites aren't profiting off the backs of songwriters, they're helping more people find and understand the lyrics of songs they like. That gives fans a closer connection to the music and more reason to buy things which will actually bring songwriters money. It's stunning how shortsighted and backwards the music publishers are being here.Even worse, the music publishers didn't stop at just suing the two companies here. They also sued the individuals behind them personally. This is a trick that the record labels have been pulling lately as well. It's legalized bullying. These companies realize that by suing execs of these companies personally, it puts that much more pressure on those execs to settle, even though there's no basis whatsoever to go after those execs personally.
So, nice job Peermusic, Warner/Chappell, Bug Music and your lobbying buddies at the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), you've pissed off more music fans, made them less likely to find or be interested in music of the songwriters you represent, and have filed misguided lawsuits against individuals who dared to try to provide useful information to the public.
Filed Under: apis, copyright, lyrics, lyricwiki, music publishers
Companies: bug music, liveuniverse, motive force web, nmpa, peermusic, warner/chappell
Music Publishers Force Lyrics API Offline; How Dare Anyone Make Lyrics Useful
from the lame dept
For many years, music publishers have always hated online lyrics sites. Rather than realizing that such sites help people connect better with songs, the publishers only thought in terms of "copyright infringement." Over the years, they've forced a number of such sites to close down. Chris Takacs points us to the latest such move. At the very least, they're not forcing an entire site offline, but they've forced the owner of a lyrics site to shut off its API. LyricWiki had a nice little API that would allow programmers to embed lyrics from the wiki within their programs... but the music publishers freaked out that people might actually read lyrics without paying for them and sent out the legal muscle. As the article above notes, in an era of digital music, where fewer and fewer people are buying CDs with lyrics in the liner notes, online lyrics sites make more sense than ever before. Why are music publishers so against them?Filed Under: apis, copyright, lyrics, lyricwiki, music publishers
Yet Another Copyright Lobbying Group Caught Infringing
from the always-seems-to-happen... dept
These days, it's nearly impossible not to infringe on copyright in one way or another during your regular day -- but it's always amusing when big-time copyright supporters are caught infringing (and it seems to happen quite frequently). The latest is musicFIRST, the lobbying group funded (potentially illegally) by the recording industry, which has been pushing a campaign claiming that radio is piracy and demanding that radio stations pay even more royalties than they already do.But, of course, when it comes to licensing or paying royalties itself... well, you know... that's a different story.
Billboard has noticed that MusicFIRST appears to have quoted the entire lyrics to the Beatles song "We Can Work It Out" in a mocking press release it put out earlier in the week -- but failed to get the necessary license. Now, of course, many of us believe that quoting lyrics like that is perfectly reasonable fair use. But... the recording industry (you know, the folks behind MusicFIRST) doesn't believe that, which is why they've shut down plenty of people for posting lyrics on the web and even thrown people in jail for posting lyrics on the web.
But, when they do it? It's fine? Funny how that works...
Filed Under: copyright infringement, lobbying, lyrics, musicfirst
Companies: musicfirst, riaa, soundexchange
Grateful Dead Publisher Prevents Novelist From Quoting Lyrics
from the jerry-garcia-is-rolling-in-his-grave dept
The decades-long success of the Grateful Dead is a perfect example of how a band can make music without relying on the copyright crutch (by encouraging free sharing of the music, while making most of their money on concert tickets and merchandise). In the years since Jerry Garcia passed away, however, the band's name seems to keep coming up in copyright disputes. The band itself sued Wolfgang's Vault for offering videos and concert posters of the band (Wolfgang's Vault is based on the "archives" of famed concert promoter Bill Graham, and each side claims ownership to the rights of promotional materials from the concerts). And, of course, Wolfgang's Vault is hardly an innocent player here, having sued the publisher of a book about the Grateful Dead for using thumbnail images of concert posters. Luckily, the book publisher won that case, but both of these cases show how a system that works (i.e., the Grateful Dead's business model) gets all screwed up when people start asserting ownership rights to content.The latest example is much more ridiculous and much more damaging to creativity. Last week we wrote about how copyright is often used to hold back creativity, and this is a perfect example. Boing Boing points us to this story about how Ice 9 Publishing, the in-house publishing arm of the Grateful Dead has stopped a young adult novelist from using lyrics from their songs in his novel. It sounded like a rather creative use of Grateful Dead lyrics in such a way that would likely help attract a new generation of fans to the Dead's music. In fact, the title of the book was originally supposed to be a Grateful Dead song title, but Ice 9 objected to that, too. Even though it couldn't stop the book from using a song title as the book title, it threatened to not allow the use of other quotes in the book if the title wasn't changed.
This makes very little sense, as it's difficult to see what legal ground Ice 9 and the Dead have to stand on here. The use of these lyrics hardly harms the commercial potential of the Grateful Dead -- and, almost certainly increases it. But, just the threat of potential copyright infringement lawsuits means that this book is not the book the author, J.T. Dutton, intended, and everyone is worse off for it. And, that's yet another unfortunate example of copyright holding back creativity, rather than encouraging it.
Filed Under: copyright, freaked, grateful dead, j.t. dutton, lyrics
