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NMPA Targets Unlicensed Lyric Sites, Rap Genius Among 50 Sent Take-Down Notices
- 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.
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- twelvechairs 13y agothey aren't going to disappear. the harshest possible outcome would be that they all end up operating from outside the USA.
- 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.
- rplas 13y agoPart of me hopes putting '50 sent' in the title wasn't just a coincidence.
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- 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?
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- 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.