Music giant stamps on song lyric search app --The Register


By Tony Smith
Published Thursday 8th December 2005 13:13 GMT

The developer of a song-lyric search utility has been forced to kill the application after being threatened with legal action by UK music publishing giant Warner/Chappell.

Walter Ritter, creator of the Mac OS X-based pearLyrics, was this week sent a cease and desist letter by the publisher. The company claims pearLyrics "enables people to copy and download lyrics. Inevitably this will enable people to download lyrics owned or controlled by this company, Warner/Chappell Music Ltd.", the latter states.
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As a precedent, the letter, seen by The Register, cites the US Supreme Court's June ruling on the movie industry's legal battle with P2P software companies. This is rubbish, of course: Ritter is based in Austria, and the Warner Chappell's letter comes from the UK - neither territory falls within the US Supreme Court's jurisdiction.

However, by reproducing a song's lyric, even though the words are all easily accessible through any web browser and a half-decent search engine, pearLyrics is arguably contributing to the infringement of Warner/Chappell's copyright. A song's words, music tabulation and guitar chords are all as well-protected by copyright law as the sound recording they're heard in. Copying the words out of a CD booklet and posting them on the net is as much an infringement as ripping the tracks and posting them, though arguably less harmful to the artist concerned.

Ritter isn't alone. His application shipped with a Widget for Mac OS X's Dashboard tool, and a number of other lyric-displaying Widgets have been pulled of late from Apple's download directory.

Of course, if pearLyrics is guilty of contributory infringement, so is Safari, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer, but we haven't heard that Warner/Chappell is pursuing Microsoft for allowing its users to seek out stolen lyrics.

We attempted to contact Warner/Chappell to discuss the matter, but the company did not respond to our request for comment. ®

Next week, several people sued for whistling copy protected tunes. Instrument manufacturers Fender & Gibson ordered to cease and desist since thier products are contributing to the infringement of Warner/Chappell's copyright.

This is insane.

Insanity rules the day, and insanity rules the waves (on the high seas - piracy, you know)!

hundreds sued after thinking about copy protected songs

Don’t these people have anything better to do? “sued for whistling copy protected tunes.”

The music cartels shouldn't be sending C&D notices to Ritter, they should be offering to hire him!

How many times do people hear a song, pick up part of the lyrics, but never hear the name of the artist or title of the song? That has happened to me too many times to count. Often, I would like the song enough to consider purchasing the artist's CD...but, how do I find it? A search engine like this would allow me to find enough information to pave the way to a sale.

The labels are so trigger-happy when it comes to screaming, "Piracy! Piracy! Piiiiiiracyyyyy!!!", that they don't know a good thing when it slaps them in the face!

Of course, it wouldn't make much difference to me now, since I quit listening to the radio and buying RIAA CDs long ago.

If you let people find the lyrics and the chords, someone might actually play the song correctly. That would be a terrible consequence. Those damn pirates!

A quote about what's wrong with copyright:

"Why should copyright holders be given protection for their creation for life plus ? Their end effort produces a product of no value.

Drug companies spend years developing a drug that saves or improves life, yet are protected for only twenty years.

Farmers spend millions and get payed at rates that their grandfathers were payed.

The man who repairs your car does not get payed each time the car starts after a repair.

The plumber does not get payed each time you flush after a repair.

When Girl scouts sell you a cookie it's yours.

When you buy a car, the manufacture does not have the right to tell you how to drive it.

If no music was played from this day on:

People would not die from its loss
There would be food to eat
there would be cloths to wear
there would be water to drink
there would be homes to live in
there would be cars to drive
there would be air to breath
there would be planes to fly
Life would change very little if at all, music is nothing more then fluff, how it's become a top priority for the government is beyond me.
The fluff salesman has done their job well i guess."

A product of no value? Life would change very little without it?

TrueAudio, you said it's a quote. Who said that, please?

"...We are being led to believe that sharing information is illegal."

http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/go_to_jail_for_sharing_song_lyrics.htm

Song sites face legal crackdown

By Ian Youngs
BBC News entertainment reporter
Friday, 9 December 2005, 17:55 GMT

The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics.