Lyrics Site May Go Commercial

Secret Asian Man writes "In this New York Times article, entitled Lyrics Site in Copyright Dispute May Go Commercial" it appears that the International Lyrics Server might go commercial in order to reopen, and share the profits with the music industry. Rather strange story. Even mentions Linux, as an aside. " The NYT Article requires a free login. Hope this all works out, else I'll never get the words right to any of the songs I sing loudly and offkey. Now what about OLGA?

CDDB

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did so few people care when CDDB went commercial? CDDB profited off our hard work, and with a properly distributed network, would have required nothing of it's orignal authors.

Now they just take away our freedom to easily download the whole DB.

Retro-history

[gavinhall]

Posted by K8_Fan:

It's a minor point, but the Lyrics Server didn't just appear out of thin air in 1997. ftp.uwp.edu had been around for a long time before lyrics.ch.

Dave Datta started it back on a 64k link to try to generate enough traffic to convince the university to get a T1 (this was a while ago). He was shut down by a letter from the Harry Fox Agency as well.

Hell, let's make an archive of the lyrics database, but do it as a Gopher site. The lawyers will never figure that one out.

How revolting.

[nickm]

sharing the profits with the music industry

Of course, this does not mean that the authors of these lyrics will ever see a dime--it'll all go to producers, lawyers, and accountants.
--

This is sick...

[Millennium]

In other words, the music industry wants to cash in on this lyrics server. They cared nothing about their so-called "intellectual property" anyway; this does, I believe, fall under the category of fair use.

Time, perhaps, to start another server? Not with anything from Lyrics.ch; it'd be too risky. That means a lot of work, but hopefully someone's up to the task...

:-_

[bgue]

LOL

Should Charge HFA for Services Rendered

[Seumas]

In addition to any 'Profit Sharing' from the lyrics server, the Harry Fox Agency should be billed for the work that was put into creating the website. If they had pursued such a venture themselves, they would have paid someone to design, compile, and maintain it.

backup.lyrics.ch?

[Cid Highwind]

corrected:

As soon as lyrics.ch goes back up, someone or some group should copy *EVERYTHNG* onto multiple remote servers (hopefully in a country with very loose IP law). That way, the "internation lyrics server" will become the "immortal lyrics server"!

now where the hell did that bit about pockets come from?

backup.lyrics.ch?

[Cid Highwind]

As soon as lyrics.ch goes back up, someone or some group should copy *EVERYTHNG* onto multiple remote servers (hopefully in a country with very loose IP law). That way, the "internation lyrics server" will become the "immortal lyrics server"! deep pockets in the way.

OLGA

[bgarland]

While http://www.olga.net/ is down, you can still find the same tabs at many of their mirror sites. I wont divulge their addresses here (in case the HFA/FEDS are reading) but rest assured they are easy to find with some searching.


Ben

Disgusting

[Lupus Rufus]

This is gross. Whatever happened to freedom around here, anyway? Lyrics.ch provides a wonderful service to the rest of us (its owner devoting a shitload of time and money to the project, I might add, without so much as a cent in profit) and then out of the blue, this poor man's sweat and tears are appropriated by a couple of New York suits with bills bursting from their pockets.

I suppose this would be all well and good if the lawyers would let the guy do things the way he always did them, even if that required a contract with the NMPA. But (as noted in the article) what about censorship? Record companies self-censor all the time, and a profit-sharing (read, profit-forcing) deal would probably include such a clause.

A multinational corporation is like a great, globe-spanning amoeba, consuming anything and everything that comes in its path. What does it show for it? It gets bigger and bigger and bigger...

Greed drives the corporate world, and greed will tear the rest of us apart.

LONG LIVE LYRICS.CH!

Copyright expired?

[qseep]

How old is that song? Hasn't the copyright expired by now?

Not the whole issue

[Kirth]

With Lyrics negotiating with the NMPA and the Harry Fox Agency, thw whole thing hasn't been solved. There's still a lawsuit hanging, however probably with not much effort on the side of HFA. But this is not a civil law, this is criminal law, so the state attorney will have to investigate it now.

Not only this, but Lyrics Internet Service Provider, cyberlink [cyberlink.ch] whose Sysadmin I happen to be has been accused as well. If ISP's can be held responsible for potential illegal actions done by their customers we'll be facing a very dark future for the whole internet.

Further remarks by me on this topic (in german language) may be found at www.sonicnet.ch [sonicnet.ch], dated 27.1.99.

Have a nice day
Peter Keel

deal won't help him

[bug]

This deal will only protect the site from the Harry Fox Agency. All lyrics to songs not owned by the Harry Fox Agency and those they represent are still wide open to lawsuit. And this could very well be hundreds of other agencies that we're talking about, all capable of attacking the site one by one.

I suspect that this deal being offered by HFA represents a backing down more than anything. Even if the site were to go commercial, and HFA would receive a certain percentage of the profits, the profits received by the site from advertising would be so low as to be ridiculous. HFA would not gain a great deal of money from this deal, it is simply a way for them to back down while saving face. Attacking a fan site like this is quite simply a mistake. I doubt that this site has done anything except *encourage* the purchasing of music. Perhaps HFA has finally realized this and wants a way out while keeping some shreds of dignity.