NMPA Targets Unlicensed Lyric Sites, Rap Genius Among 50 Sent Take-Down Notices

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/5785701/nmpa-targets-unlicensed-lyric-sites-rap-genius-among

by titlex • 13 years ago

43 43 13 years ago

billboard.com

bonemachine• 13 years ago

Certainly 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."

anigbrowl4• 13 years ago

Rap Genius will be fine, but most lyrics sites are just ad traps and I won't shed any tears about their disappearance.

officemonkey• 13 years ago

I'll shed a tear. Some of those ad traps provided exactly what I wanted: lyrics for a song.

mjn• 13 years ago

They'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

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.

siegecraft2• 13 years ago

I'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.

whiddershins3• 13 years ago

What 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• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

I don't think there is even a reasonable way to pay them something in this case. Am I mistaken?

Amadou3• 13 years ago

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.

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.

bandushrew• 13 years ago

I 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?

anigbrowl4• 13 years ago

IMO 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.

siegecraft2• 13 years ago

As 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.

rplas• 13 years ago

Part of me hopes putting '50 sent' in the title wasn't just a coincidence.

harvestmoon• 13 years ago

I'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• 13 years ago

They don't, thus lawsuit.

lowboy2• 13 years ago

Actually I think they do. Check out Fair Use[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

zmitri3• 13 years ago

I've posted the article to Rap Genius 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• 13 years ago

RG'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.

lowboy2• 13 years ago

Fair Use[0] would cover it, I should think. The primary use of lyrics on RG is educational in nature - that is, explaining the meanings behind the lyrics.

Lyrics are a very small part of the completed music as a whole. It's not even the same medium as music, let alone just a small part of the same medium.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

whiddershins3• 13 years ago

1) In order to mount a fair use defense, you must admit that you are infringing on copyright. It is kind of like an insanity murder defense in that way.

2) Fair use for education and commentary is most often used to protect the publishing of excerpts, such as in book reviews or textbooks discussing a type of work.

3) Or you can do fair use transformative commentary or parody. But in this case, the work must be significantly altered (transformed). And you must demonstrate you could not make the point you were making without using that specific work as source material, usually because your commentary was about that work. In my non-attorney opinion this is closest to Rap Genius's scenario, but if you try for this and lose, your work can be considered derivative work and is wholly owned by the original copyright holder.

4) In general, it makes you less sympathetic when you mount a fair use defense while profiting from republishing the work, although that isn't a strict identifier.

5) As mentioned elsewhere on this thread, Rap Genius and other lyrics sites aren't publishing the lyrics to just one song, the lyrics are the core content of the site. That could make fair use more difficult to argue.

piratebroadcast• 13 years ago

My brain read that as "50 Cent". Carry on.

beedogs2• 13 years ago

This 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!

sanswork2• 13 years ago

So you don't believe song writers are entitled to a portion of the profits made off their work?

beedogs2• 13 years ago

They already get that. Lyrics sites are not cutting into the profit made from the sale of music.

NMPA Targets Unlicensed Lyric Sites, Rap Genius Among 50 Sent Take-Down Notices

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