Free the Lyrics

“U.S. digital entertainment company Gracenote on Thursday said it obtained licenses to distribute lyrics as music publishers mulled legal action against Web sites that provide them without authorization.”

read more | digg story

Even though Gracenote has a deal to distribute lyrics with digital music, the article doesn’t get into too many details about what they’re going to do about the unauthorized lyrics sites out there. About the only insight they give is “Peer said he hopes the unauthorized sites will seek licenses.” Or else what?

The popular tab site mysongbook.com (the best resource for Guitar Pro tabs) can no longer distribute tabs. Here’s the drawn out explanation from the MPA. Remember kids, looking at guitar tabs is like stealing a guitar from a music store.

read more | digg story

This happened at least a few weeks ago, but I just read about it today.

Best I can tell MySongBook decided to take down their tabs as a precaution, not because they were sued or otherwise forced to. Here’s the message from mysongbook.com

Providing some tabs - even made by ear - of copyrighted music is illegal. In order to respect the law, downloads have been limited to the [Composition] and [Competition] files. We are going to make our best to find a solution to offer music content without infringing copyrights.

“Never heard of SIRA? That’s the way Big Copyright and their lackeys want it, and it’s bad news for you. Simply put, SIRA fundamentally redefines copyright and fair use in the digital world. It would require all incidental copies of music to be licensed separately from the originating copy.”

read more | digg story

The digg link goes to ipaction.org, and paints a grim picture of the proposed SIRA bill. While I agree it has potential for becoming a copyright nightmare, I need to know more about the bill before passing judgment. I can’t find the text of the actual proposed bill, but in the digg comments briguyd posted a link to the U.S. Copyright Office’s summary of the bill.

I read through their analysis, and it seems the bill has potential for being a good thing in streamlining the royalites paid for online downloads and streaming services. The parts about licensing incidental copies appears to have only to do with the stops en route to the consumer such as “server, cache and buffer copies”. Although depending on how the bill is worded, this could apply to any copy, including copies made from computer to iPod, etc.

Then again, the Copyright Office statement indicated that the bill would suggest royalty-free licensing for those incidental copies. The Register of Copyrights has recommended that instead of taking a licensing approach, the intermediate copies should granted a statutory exemption. My opinion is this would establish the intermediate copies as being fair use.

Hopefully those in congress who are considering this bill will take heed to what the Copyright Office has to say.

I was wondering when someone would submit TabAid.com to digg. Looks like someone did.

With a community as united as the digg.com community, if we all sign the petition and support this one unified direction of counter attack, we can at least organize a voice! There’s also a petition which takes about 2 seconds to sign up for. Looks like its well organized and exactly what we need.

read more | digg story

Tab-Archive.com and TABfly.com are still online however both considering what is the best course of action to take, they do not wish to close however will if they are forced too as they cannot afford to pay royalties for the tabs they offer.

read more | digg story

“PearLyrics, the doomed lyrics looker-upper for iTunes, was created not for money nor art, but something else entirely.”

read more | digg story

The human side of the pearLyrics story, this article describes how the software’s author, Walter Ritter, dedicated the application to a would-be girlfriend, whom he was trying to win the affection of.

Besides the love story, the article also points out the latest news in the legal situation.

But so far, the company [Warner Chappell] has still not given the go-ahead for either Ritter or Apple to make the program available again.

An article that summerized the RIAA’s wrongdoings and explains how they choose to violate their customers.

read more | digg story

This digg link isn’t related to the lyrics/tab crackdown, but I wanted to comment about it.

I don’t automatically dismiss a digg submission just because it’s a blog. Some of them have useful information or opinions. This particular link at keyBlog() has neither, is overly long and incongruous, and even worse has some inaccuracies.

“allowed Sony to search through user’s hard-drives for any files”
Where is the proof of this claim? Mark Russinovich, who reported technical details about the rootkit, described how it phoned home with an ID to check for album art updates, but nothing about scanning the computer for files. Read here: Mark’s Sysinternals Blog

That’s just one example. I can nitpick about a bunch of other minor points.

“Eventually Napster was challenged by the RIAA and lost in court and in front of the Senate.”
How does one “lose” in front of the Senate? Shawn Fanning testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of an overall discussion of the “Future of Digital Music” Read here: Napster Goes to Washington

Notice what I’m doing. I’m citing references. Something the blog post at keyBlog() should do.

Overall, not worthy of a digg, but not bad enough to report as lame.

A compilation with commentary of many of the stupid things the RIAA has been doing recently. Kind of funny to see it all in one place.

read more | digg story

I’m referencing this Digg link, because of the following item:

RIAA going after sites that have song lyrics and tablature? What next? Are phrases going to be outlawed for public use. No kids named ‘Jude’, no storing ‘Toys in the Attic’, electricians can no longer use the words AC/DC?

The RIAA may do a lot of unpopular things, but the lyrics/tab crackdown is not one of them. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s the MPA and NMPA that are making those threats.

Is the United States getting increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world where technology matters are concerned?

read more | digg story

This Digg link is an opinion piece about French Parliament’s recent proposal to allow P2P downloading in combination with a tax on ISPs to compensate copyright holders.

I’ve been keeping track of the pros and cons of file sharing, and the “out of touch” criticism goes hand-in-hand with my argument “The Internet is global, and the RIAA is forcing American laws on the world.”

As I understand it, France’s copyright bill is still in progress, so it’ll be interesting to see how this story develops.

Where does it stop? British music cops attempt to say that playing music while trying out an instrument in the shop is a “Public Performance” for which they must be paid. Pretty soon the music goons will want royalty when you remember a song.

read more | digg story

This story makes me think that copyright laws need to be clearer on what’s fair use and what’s not.