Forum Moderators: not2easy
However, personal sites that post song lyrics crop up like weeds, and ASCAP is probably focused on uses of song lyrics where someone is actually making money from them. So concluding that lyrics sites are safe, and building a site designed to make money from them, might land you in some pretty serious trouble.
The standard get-out "Copyright belongs to the writer", has no value in law, unless permission to republish has been sought and granted.
In practice, I never heard of a publisher prosecuting or suing, likely because the costs would not justify the action. But it's only a matter of time before the 'big sites' start getting closed down, just as napster did for mp3.
Lyrics are copyright protected in most countries of the world, and a 'home page' with a favorite lyric is committing theft just as much as the MFA 'lyric directories' which list tens of thousands of lyrics.
Just want to point out that it isn't commiting theft, it is commiting copyright infrigment. 2 totally different things.
Yes song lyrics are copyrighted...... but that doesn't mean you can't post song lyrics to a website as a source of information. Fair use/dealing clauses do exists and making a copy for the purposes of archiving is something that is allowable.
If you want to create a library of song lyrics then I think you might be ok. It all depends on if you are profitting from the works of others and other factors all come into play to determine what fair use you have.
Always though the best thing to do in this situation is find a lawyer who knows about copyright law... pay him for a couple hours and run this all by him.
EDIT: to try to get quote working
[edited by: Demaestro at 7:54 pm (utc) on Aug. 21, 2006]
[edited by: engine at 5:25 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2006]
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Fair use/dealing clauses exist, but do not allow for lifting someone's work in it's entirety.
Making a copy for the purposes of archiving is something that is allowable - under certain conditions. Conditions that do not include earning adsense or other revenue at the songwriters expense.
If you want to create a library of song lyrics, then ASK the songwriters or their publishers
It does not depends on if you are profitting from the works of others - copyright theft remains theft. And that applies to using anything subject to copyright that you do not own, unless you have permission.
fair use would certainly allow a line or two to be quoted; and you can print a copy for personal use.
Pretending to archive so you can ripoff artists is illegal.
Copyright infringement is NOT theft.... give it up, it isn't. Copyright theft is something that you made up and doesn't exist.
If I copy your song you won't wake up in the morning... go downstairs to see your song... only to find it is gone.
You have the sole rights when it comes to copying content that you created. If someone copies your content then they have infringed on your rights as the sole controller of copying content. They have stolen nothing.
It is like if you own property and you exersice your right to not have people come onto your property, if they do trespass they have infrigent on your right to not allow people on your property... they haven't stolen your property, they haven't committed trespass theft.
I am glad you want to champion copyright laws. But get it right if you are, your last post sounds like RIAA propoganda, which it may interest you to know they tried to have copyright infrigement classified as theft but got laughed out of court, so you can say what ever you want but in the real world where we all live then it isn't theft. No matter how bad you want it to be.
I am not sure how you can "pretend" to archive something. That would be a neat little trick. You have sudo code for that?
Copyright is required in this day and age but it has gone way to far. If someone asks what the lyrics are for a song in a forum then I will post the lyrics as an answer. There should not be anything wrong with that.
If I want set up a fan website for a band and post all that bands song lyrics as a point of reference for fans, an archive if you will, then I will do so. No adsense.... no selling items..... just a fan's website. Any attempts to stop me will land you in court for infringeing on my personal freedoms. (Notice how I didn't say steal my freedom)
People still do have rights over corporate entities. This year anyway, and I for one would like to keep it that way.
[edited by: Demaestro at 9:41 pm (utc) on Aug. 21, 2006]
The caveat to all of this is that it is the responsibility of the copyright owner to enforce and protect their copyrights. If a song's owner decides to ignore sites that republish their lyrics (for profit or not) that is their business.
Anyway there are more exceptions then listed. For example I can have lyrics listed and do a line by line critisms of the lyrics. This would be allowed under Candian and Austrailia fair dealings clause.
It depends where you are. Australia has a different set of rules then Canada and Canada has a different set of rules then the USA and the UK has a different set of rules then all of them.
This is hardly a cut and dry issue.....which is why my original advise is to seek out a lawyer well versed in copyright law and go over what you want.
Based on what some are saying here then it would be copyright infrigment if I walk down the street signing a song aloud that is stuck in my head.
I really don't like people calling people theives when they aren't.
Ken you are right about it being silly argument but I really don't like people calling people theives when they aren't.
If the song's copyright owner has a profit sharing deal with some site to publish a song's lyrics on an ad supported site, anybody who is republishing the lyrics on other sites without permission is creating an illegitimate and competing copy of the lyrics that reduces the legitimate copyright owner the ability to earn revenue from their creation so yes the copies are stealing from the artist.
Anyway there are more exceptions then listed. For example I can have lyrics listed and do a line by line critisms of the lyrics.
It depends where you are. Australia has a different set of rules then Canada and Canada has a different set of rules then the USA and the UK has a different set of rules then all of them.By international conventions, the copyright laws of these countries are actually very similar. The only big difference is the DMCA and it's safe harbor provisions in the U.S.
This is hardly a cut and dry issue.....which is why my original advise is to seek out a lawyer well versed in copyright law and go over what you want.
Based on what some are saying here then it would be copyright infrigment if I walk down the street signing a song aloud that is stuck in my head.
The caveat to all of this is that it is the responsibility of the copyright owner to enforce and protect their copyrights. If a song's owner decides to ignore sites that republish their lyrics (for profit or not) that is their business.
What happened to individual's responsibility not to steal?
Who is the victim here? the thieves who prefer to not be called that, or the artists whose work is stolen?
Just because the copyright owner doesn't spend thousands inlegal fees for a few cents of royalties does not make theft cease to be illegal.
Singing a song is not illegal; reproducing anything that is not your property is; the difference is not rocket science.
The rules do vary, very slightly, from country to country; the principle is the same in all civilized countries, who agreed an International Copyright Convention (go search) to protect artists from copyright theft.
By all means continue to play word games; it will not change the facts, or the law. Or my respect for the creators of original work.
This post copyright 2006, Quadrille ;)
[edited by: Quadrille at 11:10 pm (utc) on Aug. 21, 2006]
What happened to individual's responsibility not to steal?Who is the victim here? the thieves who prefer to not be called that, or the artists whose work is stolen?
Just because the copyright owner doesn't spend thousands inlegal fees for a few cents of royalties does not make theft cease to be illegal.
You won't get any disagreement from me, I'm simply pointing out that the burden of enforcing copyrights falls on copyrigh owners, not government. As a copyright owner, it dismays me to have to spend so much time and money tracking down copyright infringements of my copyrights, but that is the way it is.
In an ideal world people would respect the copyrights of others, but we all know that the Internet is not an ideal world, otherwise site scrapping sites would not exist.
As a copyright owner, it dismays me to have to spend so much time and money tracking down copyright infringements of my copyrights, but that is the way it is.
That's exactly right; and with legal fees what they are, individual artists cannot protect their intellectual property.
Maybe now Michael Jackson is getting short on cash (according to rumour, I emphasise!), he'll start chasing the royalties on Lennon-McCartney's early stuff - and put some fear into the pirates. More seriously, most music publishers are now owned by very large companies; Universal, Sony, etc; they have the resources to do something ...
... but I'm not holding my breath :)
But do remember that your "opinions" are just "opinions." Often you post them as if they were fact and many gullible new posters here who need but a single comment from someone here to approve the dangerous copyrights breech they engage in will often feel secure reading your posts.
I'd suggest that you place a disclaimer above your comments telling people that the comments you express are your opinions and not current law interpretations. I do so myself.
Many junior Webmasters are lazy and they'll say "well I read it off the Internet and they said it was ok." A lot of the questions related to copyright law they already know the answer - which usually is "no you can't do that" but still they try looking for validation.
I value WebmasterWorld very much and although different opinions are welcomed here, one of the goals of this place is to offer the most pertinent information that can help Webmasters improve. I feel that many of your comments on copyrights do not help Webmasters and can induce them in false security and legal trouble.
In the past, others have debated with you the validity of your comments. I won't go in details or argue points with you. I'm just hoping you'll clearly tell people that your comments are your personal interpretation of copyrights law and not the accepted and established interpretation used by jurists.
There are several other Webmaster boards where the information is often questionable. I don't own or am related to WebmasterWorld but I don't want to see its value go down and people saying "WebmasterWorld said it was ok to do copyrights infrigement #6."
Moderators, do what you want with my post.
Rant over - Harry feels better now.
A very fair rant, I am guilty of ranting myself. I too love WebmasterWorld, I post in the database and technologies section more then this one and I do actually know what I am talking about in those areas.
I will admit I do have a distaste for a lot of copyright rules, but I am not ignorant about the laws. I just wish more people would challenge them, the fact that many of these "laws" haven't been challenged is the reason they are still on the books.
Your suggestion about disclaimers is a very good one and I will try to be more obvious about weather or not I am speaking fact or opinion.
However to be fair to me... The question was... Are they copyrightable?...... My answer was yes they are.....and if you re-read 2 of my 3 posts in this thread....my advise is to contact a laywer, and then I go on to give my opinion.
My advise.... ask a laywer.
My opinion.... Intellecual Property is a farse.
My hope.... people will start to call bull#*$! on other people claiming to own a collection of words that form a couple sentences and then claiming they are the only ones who are now allowed to put those words to paper in that order because they used them in a song.
Fact.... Copyright infringement is not theft
**Warning the following is all IMO**
Writing a few sentences in a song shouldn't give you excluse rights to reproduce that sentence. Sooner or later all the sentences will appear in songs and then how will we ever be able to put anything anywhere?
[edited by: Demaestro at 3:46 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2006]
My hope.... people will start to call bull#*$! on other people claiming to own a collection of words that form a couple sentences and then claiming they are the only ones who are now allowed to put those words to paper in that order because they used them in a song.
While the exact definition of "short" is not defined, in general, a short phrase or sentence (e.g. article title) is not copyrightable. With that said, songs are a form of poetry and is a form of creative expression which is (and in my opinion should be) protected by copyrights.
Intellectual property rights don't just protect the big companies, they also protect individuals. Without IP rights, large companies could more easily usurp and profit from the creative works of individuals without compensating the individual for their creation. Yes IP rights can seem cumbersome to the individual, however, they also protect the individual and even the founding fathers of the United States saw the importance of IP rights when they wrote our first laws.
Everyone on here is fine with Google making a copy of thier content without asking because they feel it benfits them.
Yes a robots.txt entrie will prevent Google from doing this, but they aren't asking for permission, you are asking them to cease. Which turns the whole order of how things are supposed to work on it's ear.
It always comes down to this for me.
Why can Google place your content on their site until you ask them to stop but I can't?
Why is Google so great and I am so meager? IMO I am easier to contact then Google if you want something removed so why do people ignore that Google has millions of copyrighted works on their cached pages. Pages that if I view on their cached pages "rob" the author of Ad revenue, page impressions, all the things mentioned as "stealing" revenue.
Why can they and I can not?
Deliberate copyright infringement is theft of intellectual property. you dress up a thief in top hat and tails, he remains a thief. We both know that.
You may be too young to remember, that George Harrison's greatest hit "My Sweet Lord" infringed the copyright of the Ronettes hit "He's so fine" - the melody of that one line was found in court to have infringed, and George had to pay millions to the original composer.
Yes, I know, we're talking about lyrics and that was a melody; same rules apply, and if I can up with a lyrics example as short and sweet as that, I'll be back.
So why do I say infringed when I've been warbling on about theft? Simple, Demaestro, simple.
The court accepted that George Harrison did not deliberately reuse that melody; while the court found against him, there was no suggestion of deliberate action. Maybe subconscious, who knows.
But what this thread has been about is knowingly and deliberately taking items you know full well are the property of another, and using them as if you owned them
That's theft. Period.
If you really, really, cannot tell the difference, why don't you spend a little time with a lawyer - or maybe Google? - before you post innaccruate statements here.
Thanks ;) - And I've said enough; I'll begone before I bore readers to death ;)
[edited by: Quadrille at 5:36 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2006]
It always comes down to this for me.Why can Google place your content on their site until you ask them to stop but I can't?
Google and the other search engines do "ask" by looking for a robots.txt file and obeying meta instructions (e.g. <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE"> ). They don't require SE specific instructions, rather they obey generic instructions and properly disclose their indexing activities by properly identifying themselves via user agent strings.
The purpose of a search engine is to drive traffic to the orignal website, not create competitive copies of copyrighted works. The website owner is in complete control of what the search engine is allowed to index AND even when cached versions of pages are made available via search results, the SEs DO NOT place their own ads on the cached page.
[edited by: KenB at 6:06 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2006]
are we playing with words now? Steal CD at the store = Theft. Download it at (what was once) Napster = Copyright infringment. Pretty much the same thing.
If you post lyrics without permission (fair use not included), you are essentially stealing since you are not paying the owner what is due to him--regardless of what you call it. It may not be criminal, but the owner can you sue you to recover his damages.
That's theft. Period.
Steal CD at the store = Theft. Download it at (what was once) Napster = Copyright infringment. Pretty much the same thing
Must be nice to live in such a simple world...
Legally, these opinions are flat-out wrong--theft and copyright infringement are legally distinct.
Nobody in this thread has really tried to claim that copyright infringement is justifiable--though many people do think modern intellectual property laws are rather problematic [google.com]--all anybody has tried to do is point out the difference, legally speaking, between violations of copyright and theft. This is why people are always trying to insist that copyright violations do not constitute theft--the protestations of the RIAA et al notwithstanding. It's a fair point to make since copyright itself is a legal concept.
What your moral intuitions might say about the issue is not really the subject of discussion here, and I don't see anyone in this thread actually denying that re-use of copyrighthed material without written permission is, outside of certain fairly narrow circumstances, illegal.
-b
But someone else replied that one better than me.
If you need to complain about current copyrights law, complain about the extensions large companies try to get from the Government to stop works from being released to the public domain after a reasonable amount of time. This is where you should focus as this is where the RIAA and its siblings are breeching everybody's rights.
Under the normal course and flavour of the law, 40 years after the death of the creator, all rights are released to the public domain. The copyrights in such a case allow the individual to enjoy the fruits of his work during his life time and allows his direct descendants from doing so too. People can always make up new lyrics, they will eventually be released and available to all - 40 years after the death of its creator.
But some companies, who have bought back all the rights from the creators are trying to increase the period of ownership, past the death of the originator indefitely. In such a scenario, they stop the public from benefiting reasonably from the creations.
A lot of Hollywood's contents should have been released years ago in the United States. It's not because companies corrupt (my opinion) the original intents of the law.
The only thing I do not know is of those copyrighted works are released in other countries where there were no arbitrary extensions.
I am sorry but you are incorrect. Robots.txt is an opt out. Not a response to a request for specific content. Th onus is put on you the webmaster to "opt out". Basically the difference is Google gets to assume it can copy your content unless you are wise enough to know about robots.txt entries.
But let's say you are right and I go to a site that has authorised content I want to copy and there is no robots.txt entry for that page. From what you are saying I can take that to mean I have permission to copy it. What you are saying is that a robot.txt entry is a "Please do not reproduce my copyrighted material" entry.
robots.txt entries are not required to be followed and are done as a courtesy not as a matter of copyright law.
I am not going after Google or Yahoo, nor do I want to. Google has been fighting copyright laws and I love it. The book archive is a great example of them challenging. I just want the same freedoms.
I have a great laywer and he always say to me
"You think you have rights, I the guy who tells you you don't"
And this is at the heart of all my arguments is just because the wind is blowing one way doesn't mean you can't do what you feel is right and fight for your rights to sign Happy birthday in a restaurant without them worrying about getting sued (yes that happened and they can't sign happy birthday there anymore).
Companies keep pushing the laws and we keep losing more freedoms. Like you said it used to be that after X amount of time of your passing your content would enter the public domain, but now you can leave your copyrighted works to someone and that extends the copyright.
It makes me upset to see the prevailing thinking to just lay down and accept it.
But let's say you are right and I go to a site that has authorised content I want to copy and there is no robots.txt entry for that page. From what you are saying I can take that to mean I have permission to copy it. What you are saying is that a robot.txt entry is a "Please do not reproduce my copyrighted material" entry.
Your argument is a straw man. Don't put words in my mouth this is not what I said or meant and you know this. Your line of arguing trying to compare how legitimate SEs like Google operate with site scrappers and content thieves is a red herring and you know it. You are trying to compare someone republishing someone else's lyrics on their website to search engines indexing webpages, which is a completely bogus comparison.
Legitimate SEs have standardized ways of operating that allow users to provide exact instructions on how a site should or should not be indexed for search purposes and whether or not showing cached pages is allowed. The failure of a site to use the "noarchive" instruction IS NOT a license to copy their content to your site.
There is also a symbiotic relationship between legitimate search engines and websites. We both need each other and this requires a little give and take on both sides. The purpose of legitimate search engines is to help users find websites on subject matter they are interested in. Legitimate search engines profit by having an opportunity to show their ads next to search results that contain brief (e.g. around 30 words) snips of text describing each web page shown (this falls completely within the fair use clause of copyright law). Website publishers benefit because users find their site. Faux directories/SEs that do not properly obey robots.txt files, show cloaked pages to real SEs and/or hide web links well below piles of ads are parasitic because they are consuming the server resources of victim site by way of crawling/scrapping those sites without providing any real human traffic via the listings they feed to users.
Now I personally use the robots noarchive instruction on my websites so that content thieves can not use this as cover to justify their "caching" of my content.
In the end, if you do not own the rights to a creative work, whether it be a news article or song lyrics, you do not have any right to republish said work outside of a VERY narrow set of fair use clauses and even then you might have to defend your "fair use" in court and risk very serious financial penalties if you lose the case.
If you are trying to build a business model on stolen/misappropriated works, whether it be song lyrics, news articles etc. you are a thief and are setting yourself up for some serious legal consequences.
You said google does ask for permission via the robots.txt.
You don't know what sites I run. You don't know my intentions or my purpose. You can't say it is ok for SE to do it without asking and not me. Or even more to the point you can't say SE can use the robots.txt as a guide as to copying content is allowed or not.
You have no idea what I will be using that content for. You don't know if I run a little SE site or not or a library/archive site. You don't know if there are products for sale or ads on them.
Don't tell me about "Legitimate SEs". They do have standard ways of operating. Like you have me reapeating is it is a courtsey or even an idustry standard to follow the robots file...... not a matter of copyright law.
Tthrowing a blanket statement like..."You can't copy my work" is incorrect as you havn't inquired as to the context. People can copy your work, if they go about it in a resonable, lawful manner.
[edited by: Demaestro at 10:17 pm (utc) on Aug. 22, 2006]
Ken that is exactly what you said. Don't try to change your post.
You said google does ask for permission via the robots.txt.
Don't tell me about "Legitimate SEs". They do have standard ways of operating. Like you have me reapeating is it is a courtsey or even an idustry standard to follow the robots file...... not a matter of copyright law.
Tthrowing a blanket statement like..."You can't copy my work" is incorrect as you havn't inquired as to the context. People can copy your work, if they go about it in a resonable, lawful manner.
"1. the purpose and character of the use (the more transformative defendant's use, the more likely to be fair use, whereas if defendant merely reproduces plaintiff's work without putting it to a transformative use, the less likely this use will be held to be fair; further, the more commercial defendant's use, the less likely such use will be fair),
"2. the nature of the copyrighted work (first, the more creative and less purely factual the copyrighted work, the stronger its protection; second, if a copyrighted work is unpublished, it will be harder to establish that defendant's use of it was fair),
"3. the amount and substantiality of the portion defendant used (did defendant copy nearly all of, or the heart of, the copyrighted work? If so, such use is less likely to be fair), and
"4. the effect of defendant's use on the potential market or the copyrighted work."
In this instance, my use of this clip from Chilling Effects' website would fall under fair use, because I'm using a very small section of the overall document and it is part of a larger editorial comment. Had I copied the entire document, it would not have been fair use, because it would have been more than was necessary to comment on the work AND it could substantially hurt chilling effects rights by creating a competing copy of their work.
Oh and yes this is based on U.S. Copyright law, however, the TRIPs Agreement and the Berne Convention, which is signed by over 100 countries, provides essentially identical copyright/fair use protections in those countries that have signed these international treaties.
For those who want to place loose and wild with other people's copyrights, I strongly encourage you to go over to Chilling Effects' website and spend a lot of time reading their FAQs. It could save you some serious legal headaches.
When RIAA comes after lyrics websites, I know I will not be long and I'm sure I will not be the first.
:)
