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NMPA Targets Unlicensed Lyric Sites, Rap Genius Among 50 Sent Take-Down Notices
- siegecraft 13y agoI'm glad at least there's a big target (Rap Genius) to hopefully fight this fight for the little guys, even if I don't like the direction the site(s) are going.
- whiddershins 13y agoWhat fight is that, precisely? What exact principle would you like Rap Genius to defend on everyone's behalf? Because at first glance it might seem like you are referring to the right to publish someone else's work for profit without paying them anything.
- vacri 13y agoI know I like to unwind at the end of the day by sitting back with an alcoholic beverage and reading through a nice mixed set of song lyrics. This rationale would prevent providing a cast list for a movie, because you're publishing the casting agent's work without paying them anything.
- chc 13y agoI don't think there is even a reasonable way to pay them something in this case. Am I mistaken?
- anigbrowl 13y agoYou license them from the publishers, as LyricFind did: http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/01/30/lyricfind-gets-the-global-rights-for-song-lyrics-from-all-four-major-publishers/ http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/01/30/lyricfind-gets-the-gl... The Harry Fox agency (harryfox.com) is the industry broker for music publication licensing, virtually everything in the US can be licensed through them.
- Amadou 13y agoYou license them from the publishers, as LyricFind did Looks like LyricFind is owned by Gracenote. Considering that Gracenote got its start by absconding with user-submitted CDDB data, submitted with the understanding that it was GPL'd, that they would pay for lyrics licensing is ironic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracenote_licensing_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracenote_licensing_controvers...
- Amadou 13y agoat first glance it might seem like you are referring to the right to publish someone else's work for profit without paying them anything. The thing is that the value in this case is not in the lyrics themselves but in the transcription and compilation into a central database. The people looking them up already have a copy - they are listening to the song. A transcription is something they could do themselves if they wanted to put in the effort. From a maximalist perspective you are quite correct. But from the perspective of how much the publication affects the market for the lyrics I think it is reasonable to conclude that at worst the impact is marginal and in the vast majority of cases it has none at all.
- whiddershins 13y agoThat's what copyright means. The right to make copies.
- Amadou 13y agoIt is actually the right to exclude others from making copies. It is not an absolute right either. Even the most hardcore maximalists accept that there are some conditions under which that right does not exist, c.f. Jack Valenti's acknowledgement that it would be unconstitutional if the term of copyright was forever. http://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/11/forever-less-one-day/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/11/forever-less-one-day/
- bandushrew 13y agoI am genuinely interested in what you think the artists lose if I have easy access to the written lyrics of their songs? I just do not understand it?
- selmnoo 13y agoI guess it's not really about that. It's that artists (besides mainstream ones) need all they can get from any source they can get it -- they really do, just to get by. The two sides are: artists just can't make it through with a little pay with little sources of revenue, or we don't get our lyrics, tabs, and/or the songs themselves for free. It's a difficult balance where solutions are hard to find. It's worthwhile to basically see lyrics as poetry. Poets get by by selling poetry (well, few, in this day and age), lyricists/songwriters should also ideally be able to get by.
- DerpDerpDerp 13y agoPart of the problem is that there's a lot of good music available to me. Literally more than I can ever listen to, much of it for free online. I think the music industry has to adjust to handouts (eg, donations on their site) and merchandise/performances rather than viewing the song itself as something worth selling. If there's a barrier to me using the music easily, including unavailability of the lyrics, not only am I not going to spend money on things that make them more money (shows, merchandise, etc), but there are a dozen other artists who are all clamoring to make it easy for me to hear their music. The song - and attached lyrics - should be a way to get me to buy other things or given them money after, and not try to be "sold" to me.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 13y agoIMO Rap Genius falls squarely within the fair use safe harbor of copyright law, since it provides educational/critical analysis of lyrics rather than simply republishing them for profit.
- tedunangst 13y agoWhether it's a small portion or the entirety of the copied work is also a factor...
- selmnoo 13y agoNot to mention, the content is the center of all that is RapGenius. It is educational/critical analysis of lyrics, written by people. Would we expect annotated versions of books to be free? No. Would we expect critiques of movies... with the movies themselves to be free? No. That argument just doesn't hold any water.
- anigbrowl 13y agoTrue, but lyrics are only a portion of a musical work, and in general they're a pretty small amount of text (compared to, say, the median news article). I think RG would respond by pointing out that the volume of commentary frequently dwarfs source material.
- tedunangst 13y agoThe lyrics are copyright as a separate work. The lyrics are the entirety of that work. The recording, the music, etc. are all separate.
- siegecraft 13y agoAs a user, I just want to be able to type some fragment of lyrics into google and see what song it is. I don't care about the underlying ideological issues (at least, not as much as I care about the usability of finding lyrics). I'm a bit annoyed that rapgenius and all its affiliated sites are taking over the top spots in google, but at least their ads are less annoying than all the other lyrics site. If the officially licensed rightsholders of those lyrics would like to also make a site, so be it, but it seems they are a bit late to the party.
- bonemachine 13y agoCertainly portends to be an interest test of the fair use doctrine. However it ultimately plays out, I like Ilan's comeback: Rap Genius Co-Founder Ilan Zechory said his New York company had not heard from the NMPA, "but we can't wait to have a conversation with them about how all writers can participate in and benefit from the Rap Genius knowledge project."
- anigbrowl 13y agoRap Genius will be fine, but most lyrics sites are just ad traps and I won't shed any tears about their disappearance.
- officemonkey 13y agoI'll shed a tear. Some of those ad traps provided exactly what I wanted: lyrics for a song.
- mjn 13y agoThey've definitely added some lyrics to the internet that weren't previously there. Unfortunately, the rise of these aggregated ad-trap lyrics sites has also had the side-effect of crowding out better, more decentralized lyrics. Google seems to prefer these big centralized sites over the long-tail fan sites that provide higher-quality, curated and proofread lyrics. When I search for, say, [joy division atrocity exhibition lyrics], I get 10 generic lyrics sites as my first page of Google results. But what I really want is to get a result more like this: http://www.joydiv.org/shadowplay/joyd/atrocity.html http://www.joydiv.org/shadowplay/joyd/atrocity.html Besides not being piled up with ads, those fan-curated sites typically have fewer spelling errors, actually attribute lyrics to specific versions of a song and note variations, etc. Of course, in the cases where I already know a good fan site, I can either go directly, or do a site: search in Google. But in other cases I have to click through pages of this junk.
- mindslight 13y agoWhat you've said pretty much applies to any topic you can search for. Some search engine (DDG?) really needs to add an option to only return pages with no (or at least fewer) ads.
- benologist 13y ago"No Adsense" would probably come close to a spam-free search engine.
- deleted 13y ago
- rplas 13y agoPart of me hopes putting '50 sent' in the title wasn't just a coincidence.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- harvestmoon 13y agoI'd appreciate if someone could discuss what are the legal issues here. Basically, if I write a song, why does Rap Genius have the right to publish the lyrics on their website?
- TylerE 13y agoThey don't, thus lawsuit.
- lowboy 13y agoActually I think they do. Check out Fair Use[0]. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
- zmitri 13y agoI've posted the article to Rap Genius http://news.rapgenius.com/Alex-pham-nmpa-targets-unlicensed-lyric-sites-rap-genius-among-50-sent-take-down-notices-lyrics http://news.rapgenius.com/Alex-pham-nmpa-targets-unlicensed-... I wouldn't be surprised if in half an hour to an hour a lot of that information is annotated for you. It's hard to see the power of Rap Genius unless you use it, but once you do, you realize it's very much a new protocol in the same vein that pg called Twitter a new protocol in 2009. What's special is that a company owns that protocol, and you don't feel like it's owned by someone else.
- alaskamiller 13y agoRG's only power comes from breaking escape velocity and accumulating a community of people willing to spend time clicking on a string of text and adding more text. They have to grow as fast as they can into everything because in just one cycle they can easily retreat and end up as just another features company.
- zmitri 13y agoYou could argue the same thing about twitter. Most twitter users don't tweet, they just follow. Getting the big users on board and figuring out they everyday people don't need to tweet was one of the big epiphanies. If you look at the google trends, they were basically stagnant until 2009 when they made that realization and focused on activating users by getting them to follow a certain number of consistent tweeters. With consumer stuff, nothing is ever cemented, but I can assure you that RG is doing quite well wrt to growing that community.
- piratebroadcast 13y agoMy brain read that as "50 Cent". Carry on.
- beedogs 13y agoThis shit needs to stop. Every few years these assholes sue a bunch of lyrics sites. People transcribe your lyrics. So fucking what? Get over it!
- sanswork 13y agoSo you don't believe song writers are entitled to a portion of the profits made off their work?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- whiddershins 13y agoIf considered derivative work, Rap Genius's entire site would be owned by the original copyright holders. I assume they will argue it is fair-use commentary, not derivative work.
- beedogs 13y agoThey already get that. Lyrics sites are not cutting into the profit made from the sale of music.
- sanswork 13y agoThats a different matter though. The lyrics sites are profiting by distributing someones work. That person deserves a share of the profits.