|
In one corner stood hopelessly out-lawyered
pearLyrics creator Walter Ritter, an Austrian developer
whose application cleverly searched the Internet for the lyrics to songs playing on iTunes. The application would then
automatically append the lyrics field of the ID3 tag for a particular song.
In the other corner stood more-than-amply lawyered publishing giant Warner-Chappell Music.
Fly, meet Buick.
Suing file-sharers is apparently so 18-months-ago that the music industry, in dire need of
something new to justify their hefty legal retainers, have
taken aim at sites that offer ”unauthorized” lyrics and unlicensed song scores. The
Music Publishers’ Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, said it will
launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006. MPA president Lauren Keiser
told the
BBC that shuttering websites and imposing fines aren’t quite sufficient, saying if authorities can “throw in some
jail time I think we’ll be a little more effective.” Ho, ho, ho.
Ever loathe to let facts get in the way of a good jihad, Warner-Chappell conveniently overlooks
the fact that, rather than reproduce lyrics, Ritter’s software merely searches publicly available sites that do.
So, one cease-and-desist order later, down goes pearLyrics. One wonders how quickly Google would
have folded its cards.
”As a freeware developer I can not afford to risk a law suit against such a big company, although
personally I don’t see where pearLyrics should infringe any copyrights handled by them,” Ritter
wrote. “After all pearLyrics only searches and accesses
publicly available websites, displays, and, at the users wish, caches its content. Something that can easily be done
with any combination of search engine and webbrowser too.”
In an update, Ritter proves himself a good sport:
”Please try to understand Warner/Chappell, they are only trying to ensure that their artists get
compensated for what they are doing - after all, it’s their job.”
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.
| 
