MPA - Evil or not? You decide!

[regeneratorizer]

Two things.

Last Updated: Monday, 12 December 2005, 09:17 GMT
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Song sites face legal crackdown

By Ian Youngs
BBC News entertainment reporter


Unauthorised guitar tabs and other musical scores are widely available

The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics. The US Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.
MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed.
He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were "completely illegal".
Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective".
Bitter battles
The move comes after several years of bitter legal battles against unauthorised services allowing users to download recordings for free.
Publishing companies have taken action against websites in the past, but this will be the first co-ordinated legal campaign by the MPA.
The MPA would target "very big sites that people would think are legitimate and very, very popular", Mr Keiser said.
"The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income," he said. "But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we're taking a more proactive stance."
Music publishers and songwriters will consider all tools under the law to stop this illegal behaviour


David Israelite
National Music Publishers' Association

David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association, added his concerns.
"Unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing," he said.
"Music publishers and songwriters will consider all tools under the law to stop this illegal behaviour."
Sandro del Greco, who runs Tabhall.co.uk, said the issue was not serious enough to warrant jail time and sites like his were not necessarily depriving publishers of income.
Learn
"I play the drums mainly but I play the guitar as well. I run the website and I still buy the [tab] books," he said.
"The tabs online aren't deadly accurate so if someone really wants to know it they'll buy the book.
"But most of the bands I listen to don't have tab books to buy so if you get them online, that's the only way you can really learn it unless you work it out yourself."
The campaign comes after lyric-finding software PearLyrics was forced off the internet by a leading music publishing company, Warner Chappell.
'No alternative'
PearLyrics worked with Apple's iTunes, searching the internet to find lyrics for songs in a user's collection.
"I just don't see why PearLyrics should infringe the copyright of Warner Chappell because all I'm doing is searching publicly-available websites," PearLyrics developer Walter Ritter said.
"It would be different if they had an alternative service that also provided lyrics online and also integrated [with iTunes] like PearLyrics did. But they don't offer anything like that at all."
A Warner Chappell statement said the company wanted to ensure songwriters were "fairly compensated for their works and that legitimate sites with accurate lyrics are not undermined by unlicensed sites".
"We have requested that PearWorks provide us with information regarding the sources of their lyrics, and have further asked that they discontinue the service if these sources are operating without a licence."

RIAA and MPA have filed a joint suit against Microsoft. The suit claims that Microsoft provides a means through their conroversial web browser Internet Explorer, to download song lyrics and then play them back using a Windows feature called 'narrator'. RIAA spokesperson David Nuterballs was quoted: 'Not since Napster, have we seen such blatant use of technology to steal from our artists'. The suit, rumored to be in the trillions, pretrial will begin in July.

I hate the MPA... -.-;

[Roland]

Trillions? That's more than... than... 999 billion.

[Mr.Onion]

Apparently, the C.E.Os of some of these companies are stupid. Also, that last one is even stupider! I can read the lyrics OUT LOUD if I want to. Are you going to call that copyright infringement?

[AtkinsSJ]

Originally Posted by Mr.Onion

Apparently, the C.E.Os of some of these companies are stupid. Also, that last one is even stupider! I can read the lyrics OUT LOUD if I want to. Are you going to call that copyright infringement?

Onion, it's only a matter of time, unfortunately. I'm surprised they didn't try to sue those blokes who invented the Internet. And if the person who invented the guitars was still around, or whoever invented singing, they could sue just about everyone.

[PlasmaCannonsRule]

This just isn't good. Period. Also, Microsoft is innocent! It's the people sneaking under Microsoft's noses and posting illegal junk! And narrator is probably to play liscenced music.

[AtkinsSJ]

If it's what I think it is, Narrator is simply a text-to-speech program. In other words, it reads aloud any text put in it. That's hardly going to sound like the real thing.

[Deciple_of_Dumb]

I agree that the copyrighted lyrics thing is going too far. There are many music CDs I've bought that don't come with lyrics and so I use the Internet lyrics to figure out what's being sung.
However, I understand why MPA is getting angry at those who put sheet music on the Internet. It has nothing to do with copyrights; the MPA buys the rights to publish songs and they won't be able to make any money if nobody will buy the books they publish.
I'm surprised that book publishing companies aren't getting angry and the people who type up the contents of a book and put it online (maybe they are and I just haven't heard about it)

[Jamul]

The second story is very clearly a joke. Ah, I see it's a slashdot commenter, so "troll" may be more accurate. Regardless, it's completely false, and silly.