Techdirt. Stories filed under "lyrics"

Misheard Will Smith Lyrics Results In Arrest Of Student And District-Wide Lockdown

Tim Cushing — Mon, 4 Mar 2013 10:00:00 PST

So, it's come to this: the heightened paranoia surrounding all things kid- and school-related, post-Newtown (but also post- other school shootings as well) has managed to turn nearly everything into a potential menace. It's one thing to be cautious and alert for warning signs or veiled threats. It's quite another to turn a recorded rendition of the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme into a police matter.

Here's how this bit of insanity went down, as delivered by Gideon of A Public Defender. (You may remember Gideon as the Twitterer whose curiosity about a certain unenforceable statement kicked off the Teri Buhl fiasco.):

First, from the increasingly stupid United States of America, a story of how a teen’s life got flip-turned upside down. You see, he was just on the playground where he spent most of his days, minding his own business. You know, chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool and sometimes with this friends he liked to be shooting some b-ball outside of the school.

WAIT. DID HE JUST SAY SHOOT AND SCHOOL IN THE SAME SENTENCE? ARREST HIM! Once you’re done laughing, know that that’s exactly what happened to 19-year old Travis Clawson because a doctor’s office called his voicemail to confirm an appointment, heard the above line, thought he was shooting people outside the school and called cops. Who arrested him first, then spent the 20 seconds it takes to realize it’s the theme song from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. No word on whether Carlton showed up to dance and everyone laughed at him.

A few things to note:

1. This was the teen's voicemail greeting. It wasn't as if he was calling the school and making threats. It's highly doubtful that criminals (or aspiring criminals) are leaving records of their future exploits as voicemail greetings. Gideon doesn't seem convinced this is a thing.

Also: is this a thing now? People leave notes of their criminal intent as voicemail messages? "Hi, you've reached my cellphone. I'm unavailable right now because I'm robbing that Stop-n-Go on Orchard and Willard. Leave me a message and I'll get back to you when I get out in 5-20 years because I'm stupid enough to leave --- BEEP."

2. The police arrested the student for something that took likely less than a minute to explain. Couldn't this have been handled with a little in-person questioning, rather than escalating the situation immediately by arresting first, questioning second? I understand that the word "b-ball" could possibly be misheard as "people" and the receptionist probably did the right thing by notifying law enforcement, but it still seems as though this could all have been sorted out in a five minute discussion.

3. This isn't noted in Gideon's commentary, but the police had the teen's school (along with the rest of the district) go into lockdown mode while they searched for the Will Smith-quoting "gunman." From there, it gets even more ridiculous:

The call to 911 forced the entire district into lockdown for about 30 minutes and police said they detained the 19-year-old student for three hours while searching his locker, before determining that it was all one big misunderstanding.

Never mind what I said about point 2. I know it's often said that we should "err on the side of caution," but, seriously, three hours to "search a locker?" Obviously, no one bothered asking the teen anything about the message until they ran about 2:50 off the clock.

Officer Mike Natale says, "[The teen] was afraid and embarrassed." No kidding. I would imagine more of the first than the second. Three hours being detained by police while under lockdown and not being given any hint as to what started the whole debacle would make anyone, possibly even an actual criminal, "afraid."

In wxpi.com's story, the police officer states that the teen "had learned from his mistake" (towards the end of the video). Really? What mistake? There are plenty of mistakes in this story, but a teen recording one of the most well-known TV theme songs as an outgoing voicemail message isn't one of them.

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$6.6 Million Ruling Against Lyrics Site, Once Again, Shows How Short Sighted Music Industry Is

Mike Masnick — Fri, 9 Nov 2012 19:39:00 PST

For many years now, we've covered how music publishers have gone after all sorts of sites that post song lyrics, arguing infringement. As we've noted time and time again, this whole thing seems short sighted in the extreme. Lyrics sites don't take away from interest in a song, they only increase it. And, yes, publishers have different interests than the musicians or labels, but it still seems counterproductive to sue and take down sites that were increasing interest in the actual music, as lyrics sites do. Unfortunately, lots of lyrics sites have been forced offline because the rates the publishers want are insane. A few years ago, a bunch of publishers went after Brad Greenspan's LiveUniverse for its lyrics offerings. Greenspan -- who was associated with MySpace in the early days as its parent company Intermix's CEO -- has, well, a colorful history. He's spent many years stamping his feet about how Rupert Murdoch should have paid more for MySpace back in the day.

Unfortunately, colorful and extreme CEOs aren't necessarily what you want in a lawsuit that involves a number of important issues. From the look of it, Greenspan did a lot more harm to himself in this lawsuit with his actions, so it's little surprise that he lost and was told to pay $6.6 million a few weeks ago:

Greenspan went through three law firms. One withdrew, citing a "personality conflict." Another withdrew, citing nearly $85,000 in owed fees and a "breakdown in the attorney-client relationship." At times, he showed up in court, representing himself and failing to obey proper procedures in submitting motions. At other times, depositions were ignored upon "medical emergencies."

Later on, after the court ordered an injunction, Greenspan ignored it -- a big no-no. As a result, it's almost surprising that the final ruling was only $6.6 million. The judge, thankfully, more or less realized on his own that the $100,000 per song that the publishers were asking for was crazy talk. He specifically asked about what actual licensing rates would have been, "to avoid a ridiculously disproportionate damage award" -- even though statutory damages don't require any indication of "actual" damages. Of course, they still ended up with $12,500 per song for 528 songs, leading to the $6.6 million verdict embedded below.

The whole case, however, reminds us once again how shortsighted the legacy players in the industry are. They seek to get cash out of every single use, even if those uses make the overall work more valuable. The end result is fewer people engaging with lyrics. It's just too expensive, and that serves to generate less interest in the music as a whole. But, it gets some publishers a short term big check, and that seems to be the extent of strategic thinking in parts of the legacy industry these days: "how can we get them to pay us right now?" rather than "what actually makes the most sense?"

That may sound like an exaggeration, but it's not. Remember, when now-Sony Music (then Universal Music) boss Doug Morris basically made exactly that statement? When asked about increasing value to benefit down the road, Morris responded by telling a reporter that this just meant that:

"someone, somewhere is taking advantage of you."

The legacy music industry needs long term strategic thinking. And instead it just looks for who it can sue.

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Beach Boys Lyricist Goes After Artist Who Dared To Paint Works Inspired By Beach Boy Songs

Mike Masnick — Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:50:34 PST

Peter Friedman alerts us to yet another ridiculous copyright claim (of which there have been a few) from a member of The Beach Boys. You may have heard that, last year, the Beach Boys' Smile album was finally released, despite being recorded in 1966. An artist, by the name of Erik den Breejen, found out about this, and he (a lifelong Beach Boys fan) set out to create a series of paintings inspired by the songs on the album. Sounds good, right? Art inspiring art. Not so much. After completing the works and getting set up with a gallery show to display the works, den Breejen reached out to Beach Boys lyricist Van Dyke Parks, who he figured would like to know about this. Turns out... that wasn't true. Instead, Parks shot back a cease-and-desist.

Instead of fighting back with lawyers, den Breejen and the gallery have approached Parks himself to try to negotiate some kind of out-of-court agreement. Parks was already credited in the exhibition’s press release and in a booklet den Breejen distributed at the gallery, but soon he could be considered a collaborator — entitling him to a percentage of the proceeds. (Van Dyke’s manager did not respond to a request for comment.)

Until the two sides settle their differences, the gallery has put on hold at least two sales inquiries

It's difficult to see how this is not fair use, but since we live in a world where fair use isn't determined until after an expensive court process, we'll never know in this case.

Update: Just some clarifications, as per the comments. Parks was a lyricist for the band, rather than a direct member. Separately the paintings do include lyrics from the songs, which should have been made clear. I don't see how either point really changes the overall analysis, however.

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Copyright As Censorship: After 22 Years, Joyce Estate Finally Lets Kate Bush Use Lyrics She Wanted

Mike Masnick — Wed, 6 Apr 2011 02:07:29 PDT

It's no secret that the James Joyce estate has been ridiculously overprotective when it comes to Joyce's copyright. Of course, a lot of Joyce's works are quickly approaching the public domain in various places (and some are already there), and so the estate may be losing its control. Still, it's nice to see that the estate finally "agreed" to one usage. Glyn Moody points us to the news that after an astounding 22 years of asking, singer Kate Bush has finally been allowed to use Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy from Ulysses as lyrics for a song. She had first asked in 1989... and was denied. She wrote different lyrics instead, but kept asking the estate. Perhaps realizing that (in the UK) the work was going into the public domain next year, the estate finally relented.

Of course, the copyright defenders always claim that cases like this are someone being "uncreative" and "just copying" works. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see them argue that the world is better off because Bush was forced to come up with her own alternative lyrics. But if the song is really better off using Joyce's prose as lyrics here, doesn't that mean that the world was cut off from this cultural work for 22 years? Doesn't that seem like a problem from a cultural perspective? Especially for a law that's supposed to encourage more and better creative output? When, instead, it's used to censor that kind of creative output, shouldn't we all be concerned about what copyright is doing to culture?

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James Earl Jones Reciting Justin Bieber Lyrics On TV... Copyright Infringement Or Not?

Mike Masnick — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 12:56:48 PST

Julian Sanchez points us to an amusing bit of TV where the great actor James Earl Jones recites some Justin Bieber lyrics while a guest on the Gayle King Show. So here's a simple question: is this copyright infringement? Did the Gayle King Show properly license the lyrics from the copyright holder? Perhaps it did, but we've seen music publishers get pretty worked up about various websites posting lyrics online and have heard stories about books not being able to be published because they quoted snippets of lyrics without a license. In fact, given how litigious publishers have been of late, you'd have to think that King's show almost certainly had to go out and "license" the lyrics for this little snippet. Of course, none of this makes any sense. It's silly to think that you should have to buy a license just to have James Earl Jones amusingly read lyrics from Justin Bieber... but, it is the state of today's copyright law.

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WordPress Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Its Famed 'Hello Dolly' Sample Plugin

Mike Masnick — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:39:00 PST

If you've ever installed or used the ultra-popular blogging platform software WordPress, you're quite familiar with the Hello Dolly plugin that is part of the default install. If it's enabled, then you get a short lyric from the song in the corner of the admin-only dashboard. It was basically just a fun simple plugin, mostly used to demonstrate the plugin functionality of WordPress. However, as Craig points out, some folks in the WordPress community are pointing out that, technically the plugin may be violating the composer's copyright. It does not appear that the composer, Jerry Herman, cares or has complained about this, but some in the WordPress community worry that every install of this WordPress plugin may technically be infringing -- and they've filed a bug asking WordPress parent corporation Automattic to indemnify users of the plugin and/or explain if the song has been licensed..

The whole thing, of course, is pretty ridiculous, but seeing as we have seen a growing number of copyright complaints over lyrics sites, you could see a potential lawsuit. Of course, it's hard to see how the use of such lyrics in the plugin -- in any way -- cause any harm to the song or the composer. In fact, chances are it has done the exact opposite. But such is the state of copyright laws today that doing something as simple and as fun as creating the Hello Dolly plugin may have made copyright infringers out of millions of bloggers. Of course, there's a pretty strong argument for fair use in this case, but tragically, due to copyright law customs, you can't know if it's really fair use until after there's an actual lawsuit. Hopefully, this is all moot and no one actually sues. But it's a rather sad statement that a plugin famous for this description:

This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly.

might have to be killed of due to copyright fears. Thanks, copyright, for killing off a symbol of hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation.

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Publishers Still Trying To Squeeze Money Out Of Lyrics Sites

Mike Masnick — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:13:23 PDT

We've covered this silly move in the past by music publishers and songwriters, but they're apparently still at it, and the NY Times is giving them publicity for trying to shut down lyrics sites online. This is ridiculous for any number of reasons, but shows you the state of some parts of the music industry these days. Basically, lyrics -- which, by themselves, generated absolutely no money for songwriters/publishers for pretty much the entire history of the business -- are suddenly seen by publishers as gold, because some people started putting them online. And rather than realize that this is a way to get more attention to songs, more attention to songwriters and more attention to lyrics -- all the publishers and songwriters saw was "hey, people should give us money for repeating the lyrics we wrote!" And since then it's been a constant battle. Oddly, the NY Times article never seems to even present the other side of the argument -- that perhaps it's ridiculous to try to charge people for putting lyrics online. Instead, it seems to think that the idea makes perfect sense. But, then again, this is the newspaper that thinks putting up a big paywall makes perfect sense too...

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Japanese Collection Society Wants To Charge You For Tweeting Lyrics

Mike Masnick — Wed, 3 Mar 2010 12:41:19 PST

One of the earlier fun things on Twitter was the lyric of the day bot @lotd. Basically, if you sent a Twitter message to lotd, it would automatically repost the lyric for other lotd fans to read. Neat! But is it copyright infringement? Well... we've seen claims that lyrics online need to be licensed, and there have been a few discussions around whether or not you can copyright a tweet, but would anyone seriously try to collect royalties on Twittered lyrics?

Apparently the answer may be yes. Reader Anshar points us to a story claiming that Japan's collection society JASRAC is putting together plans to collect royalties on Twittered lyrics. Honestly, the whole thing sounds so ridiculous that I'm hoping the original report is coming from the Japanese version of The Onion (please, someone tell me that's the case). But this is JASRAC we're talking about -- which attacked YouTube quite early on for not stopping all copyrighted songs from appearing on the site.

According to the report, JASRAC said: "We want everyone to recognize that Internet is not your private place," in defending the plan to charge royalties for such lyrical tweets. No, it's not your private place, but that also means it's not the industry's private place to automatically demand the right to collect money any time anyone utters a snippet of a lyric. Japan's copyright law is a lot less well developed than the US, and it doesn't really have fair use within the law (notably, Japan has been a big supporter of ACTA).

Either way, if this story is true and not just some joke (please, please, tell me it's a joke), it's really quite ridiculous. People tweeting lyrics are not harming anyone by any stretch of the imagination. They're fans. They're encouraging more people to find out about a song or to remember an old song. They're not taking away licensing rights or revenue or anything. They're sharing lyrics, which is something JASRAC should be encouraging.

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Music Publishers Force Another Lyric Site Offline

Mike Masnick — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 19:33:54 PST

Back in August we wrote about the ridiculous situation with the National Music Publishers Association suing a bunch of lyrics sites for not paying up to help promote songs. This action helped push at least one of the sites, LyricWiki -- which was user generated lyrics -- to shut down (though, Wikia picked up the project and paid up to the NMPA). Now it appears that the NMPA has forced another one of these sites to shut down and hand over all of the money it made. Once again, be careful singing along to or quoting any lyrics. The songwriters and publishers want to get paid every time you do.

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Eddie Vedder Sued For Changing Lyrics On A Song

Mike Masnick — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:14:00 PST

Usually when you see copyright infringement claims, it's for copying something that someone else held a copyright on, but THREsq points us to a case where Canadian songwriter, Gordon Peterson, is suing singer Eddie Vedder for supposedly changing lyrics in a version Vedder did of Peterson's song "Hard Sun." Assuming that the song was properly licensed (which is also in dispute, but that seems to be a separate issue), it's difficult to see what sort of copyright infringement claim there would then be for modifying the song. After all, the modifications wouldn't be covered by Peterson's copyright at all. But, alas, this is what you get with today's "ownership culture," where people just assume more ownership rights over something than they actually have under the law.

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Music Publishers Push LyricWiki Into Wikia's Arms

Mike Masnick — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:55:00 PDT

In August, we wrote how music publishers were suing lyrics sites (and their owners) for daring to "profit off the backs of songwriters." That, of course, makes no sense. People go to find lyrics to music because they already like it and want to find out more about it and the creators behind it. It's good advertising. And yet, publishers have been going after lyrics sites for years. Apparently, the guy behind LyricWiki worked out a deal whereby technically he's shutting down LyricWiki (found via Fan History) but is instead rebuilding the project for Wikia (the company associated with Wikipedia). Wikia has purchased a license from the publishers. While it's good that a lawsuit is being avoided and that the project will continue (sort of), it's still rather troubling that the publishers were able to force LyricWiki into Wikia's arms. Apparently, independently repeating lyrics of a song you like isn't allowed unless you buy a license. Careful singing along... that'll be next.

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Music Publishers Now Suing Lyrics Sites And Their Execs

Mike Masnick — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:32:00 PDT

Last week, we noted that LyricWiki had been pressured to kill its API after music publishers threatened it with a lawsuit. In the comments to that post, someone insisted that there haven't been any lawsuits over lyrics online. If that's true, it just changed. Apparently the removal of the API wasn't enough, as the parent company of LyricWiki, Motive Force Web, along with LiveUniverse (the site run by former MySpace exec Brad Greenspan) have both been sued by a group of music publishers, who are insisting that such sites are unfairly "profiting on the backs of songwriters." I'd really like to see them prove that. These sites aren't profiting off the backs of songwriters, they're helping more people find and understand the lyrics of songs they like. That gives fans a closer connection to the music and more reason to buy things which will actually bring songwriters money. It's stunning how shortsighted and backwards the music publishers are being here.

Even worse, the music publishers didn't stop at just suing the two companies here. They also sued the individuals behind them personally. This is a trick that the record labels have been pulling lately as well. It's legalized bullying. These companies realize that by suing execs of these companies personally, it puts that much more pressure on those execs to settle, even though there's no basis whatsoever to go after those execs personally.

So, nice job Peermusic, Warner/Chappell, Bug Music and your lobbying buddies at the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), you've pissed off more music fans, made them less likely to find or be interested in music of the songwriters you represent, and have filed misguided lawsuits against individuals who dared to try to provide useful information to the public.

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Music Publishers Force Lyrics API Offline; How Dare Anyone Make Lyrics Useful

Mike Masnick — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:26:46 PDT

For many years, music publishers have always hated online lyrics sites. Rather than realizing that such sites help people connect better with songs, the publishers only thought in terms of "copyright infringement." Over the years, they've forced a number of such sites to close down. Chris Takacs points us to the latest such move. At the very least, they're not forcing an entire site offline, but they've forced the owner of a lyrics site to shut off its API. LyricWiki had a nice little API that would allow programmers to embed lyrics from the wiki within their programs... but the music publishers freaked out that people might actually read lyrics without paying for them and sent out the legal muscle. As the article above notes, in an era of digital music, where fewer and fewer people are buying CDs with lyrics in the liner notes, online lyrics sites make more sense than ever before. Why are music publishers so against them?

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Yet Another Copyright Lobbying Group Caught Infringing

Mike Masnick — Fri, 3 Apr 2009 08:48:00 PDT

These days, it's nearly impossible not to infringe on copyright in one way or another during your regular day -- but it's always amusing when big-time copyright supporters are caught infringing (and it seems to happen quite frequently). The latest is musicFIRST, the lobbying group funded (potentially illegally) by the recording industry, which has been pushing a campaign claiming that radio is piracy and demanding that radio stations pay even more royalties than they already do.

But, of course, when it comes to licensing or paying royalties itself... well, you know... that's a different story.

Billboard has noticed that MusicFIRST appears to have quoted the entire lyrics to the Beatles song "We Can Work It Out" in a mocking press release it put out earlier in the week -- but failed to get the necessary license. Now, of course, many of us believe that quoting lyrics like that is perfectly reasonable fair use. But... the recording industry (you know, the folks behind MusicFIRST) doesn't believe that, which is why they've shut down plenty of people for posting lyrics on the web and even thrown people in jail for posting lyrics on the web.

But, when they do it? It's fine? Funny how that works...

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Grateful Dead Publisher Prevents Novelist From Quoting Lyrics

Mike Masnick — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:14:51 PDT

The decades-long success of the Grateful Dead is a perfect example of how a band can make music without relying on the copyright crutch (by encouraging free sharing of the music, while making most of their money on concert tickets and merchandise). In the years since Jerry Garcia passed away, however, the band's name seems to keep coming up in copyright disputes. The band itself sued Wolfgang's Vault for offering videos and concert posters of the band (Wolfgang's Vault is based on the "archives" of famed concert promoter Bill Graham, and each side claims ownership to the rights of promotional materials from the concerts). And, of course, Wolfgang's Vault is hardly an innocent player here, having sued the publisher of a book about the Grateful Dead for using thumbnail images of concert posters. Luckily, the book publisher won that case, but both of these cases show how a system that works (i.e., the Grateful Dead's business model) gets all screwed up when people start asserting ownership rights to content.

The latest example is much more ridiculous and much more damaging to creativity. Last week we wrote about how copyright is often used to hold back creativity, and this is a perfect example. Boing Boing points us to this story about how Ice 9 Publishing, the in-house publishing arm of the Grateful Dead has stopped a young adult novelist from using lyrics from their songs in his novel. It sounded like a rather creative use of Grateful Dead lyrics in such a way that would likely help attract a new generation of fans to the Dead's music. In fact, the title of the book was originally supposed to be a Grateful Dead song title, but Ice 9 objected to that, too. Even though it couldn't stop the book from using a song title as the book title, it threatened to not allow the use of other quotes in the book if the title wasn't changed.

This makes very little sense, as it's difficult to see what legal ground Ice 9 and the Dead have to stand on here. The use of these lyrics hardly harms the commercial potential of the Grateful Dead -- and, almost certainly increases it. But, just the threat of potential copyright infringement lawsuits means that this book is not the book the author, J.T. Dutton, intended, and everyone is worse off for it. And, that's yet another unfortunate example of copyright holding back creativity, rather than encouraging it.

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