Music Publishers Association Seeks to Crush Free Promotion for Itself

More stupid copyright butt-clenching inanity:

millions of people around the world have wasted thousands of man-hours pondering over the exact wording of songs, probably ever since the invention of the record player.

The good news is that the internet has come to the rescue: over the last few years dozens of websites and discussion groups have sprung up devoted to speculating on what thousands of mysterious song lines, or single words, might be.

Most also offer lyrics to entire songs, transcribed and contributed by visitors to the sites, and for those driven to distraction by a line from a song buzzing round their heads - with no way of identifying what the name of the tune is - help is at hand in the form of search engines which take the words you know and come up with the song that they are from.

There's no doubt that song lyric angst is a major phenomenon - the most popular lyrics sites reportedly get hundreds of thousands of visitors every day - but people want to get their hands on lyrics for many different reasons, according to Darryl Ballantyne, president and CEO of Toronto, Canada-based web site lyricfind.com inc.

....The bad news for anyone with a troublesome lyric on the brain is that most sites are illegal: Sarah Faulder, chief executive of the Music Publishers Association, says that unless the websites have the permission of the copyright owners to display the lyrics (which most do not), they are breaking the law.

LyricFind's Ballantyne says that getting permission is impractical as there is no central body to approach to license lyrics en masse, but Faulder says this is no excuse for breaching copyright.

"Just because there is no central licensing body it doesn't make it right to take lyrics and publish them without permission. It is as frowned upon as the downloading of music illegally, and when publishers know about these sites they follow them up", she says.

LyricFind has now been forced to remove all lyrics from its site, and others will probably close over the coming months. But with so many people so obviously interested in lyrics, more legitimate sites are bound to emerge - if only because there is money to be made from them by the copyright owners. [BBC]

The words are out there, you fools, people are just writing them down to make the world a more distinct place. How is this costing you anything? How will shutting down sites that promote your product help you? Stupid.

Article Author: Eric Olsen

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