

NMPA Targets Unlicensed Lyric Sites, Rap Genius Among 50 Sent Take-Down Notices - titlex
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/5785701/nmpa-targets-unlicensed-lyric-sites-rap-genius-among

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bonemachine
Certainly 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."_

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rplas
Part of me hopes putting '50 sent' in the title wasn't just a coincidence.

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anigbrowl
Rap Genius will be fine, but most lyrics sites are just ad traps and I won't
shed any tears about their disappearance.

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officemonkey
I'll shed a tear. Some of those ad traps provided exactly what I wanted:
lyrics for a song.

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mjn
They'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.

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mindslight
What 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.

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benologist
"No Adsense" would probably come close to a spam-free search engine.

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beedogs
This 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!

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sanswork
So you don't believe song writers are entitled to a portion of the profits
made off their work?

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beedogs
They already get that. Lyrics sites are not cutting into the profit made from
the sale of music.

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sanswork
Thats a different matter though.

The lyrics sites are profiting by distributing someones work. That person
deserves a share of the profits.

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harvestmoon
I'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?

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zmitri
I've posted the article to Rap Genius [http://news.rapgenius.com/Alex-pham-
nmpa-targets-unlicensed-...](http://news.rapgenius.com/Alex-pham-nmpa-targets-
unlicensed-lyric-sites-rap-genius-among-50-sent-take-down-notices-lyrics)

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.

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alaskamiller
RG'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.

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zmitri
You 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.

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zmitri
Here's the google trends link btw
[http://www.google.ca/trends/explore?q=twitter#q=twitter&cmpt...](http://www.google.ca/trends/explore?q=twitter#q=twitter&cmpt=q)

You can see that Twitter survived off blog hype and early adopters for 2
years.

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siegecraft
I'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.

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whiddershins
What 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.

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Amadou
_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._

The thing is that the value in this case is not in the lyrics themselves but
in the transcription and compilation into a central database. The people
looking them up already have a copy - they are listening to the song. A
transcription is something they could do themselves if they wanted to put in
the effort.

From a maximalist perspective you are quite correct. But from the perspective
of how much the publication affects the market for the lyrics I think it is
reasonable to conclude that at worst the impact is marginal and in the vast
majority of cases it has none at all.

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whiddershins
That's what copyright means. The right to make copies.

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Amadou
It is actually the right to exclude others from making copies.

It is not an absolute right either. Even the most hardcore maximalists accept
that there are some conditions under which that right does not exist, c.f.
Jack Valenti's acknowledgement that it would be unconstitutional if the term
of copyright was forever.

[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/11/forever-less-one-
day/](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2003/11/forever-less-one-day/)

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piratebroadcast
My brain read that as "50 Cent". Carry on.

