[Macworld.com]

Dan Miller revisits the story of pearlyrics, the Dashboard widget that received a cease-and-desist letter from a major music publisher. [more]

[sjohnson11]

Why doesn't ITMS provide us with lyrics when we download a song/album?

[LRCarter]

Thanks for the follow up. It's great to see common sense in action and I appreciate your staying on this story!

[Nobody]

We want lyrics. Otherwise, we DO NOT buy music. Full stop.

[machelpdesk]

There are more than a few AppleScripts for iTunes that will 'grab' lyrics off the web. Go here for more info - http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/.
I've been using the 'Google Lyric Search' forever. No problems!

[bastion]

Because that would require a whole 'nother round of licensing that would delay - and possibly preclude - the release of songs and likely increase the cost to all users for something that a fair percentage of users may not actually care about.

[Moof_in_Charge]

So let me get this straight... someone writes a song... someone else posts the words in to a website and someone else creates a way to deliver the posted message to my desktop... somehow we get in to a legal .tiff because some law school drop-out thinks they own the words to a song someone else wrote and decide to forfeit "Fair use". I am really starting to hate lawyers.

[Netizen_Kane]

IP rights are fine, but Warner is just off the deep end. They're just lyrics, not sheet music or anything. What can you possibly do with printed lyrics? Anybody can write them down by listening to a song. Do they think they can stop people from singing them just by making them hard to find? Would it be better if people always kept their memories of misheard lyrics?

[bigpoppa]

What most people are missing is that some of these "lyrics" sites were providing guitar and musical tabular also which does get into murky water.

[derkathon]

"...Our solution will adhere to our shared belief that songwriters must be fairly compensated for their work and that legitimate web sites with accurate lyrics must not be undermined by unlicensed web sites.
We look forward to working together, and to helping to advance the evolution of the music industry cooperatively for the benefit of consumers and artists alike."
Personally, terminology such as "legitimate web sites," "accurate lyrics," and "unlicensed web sites" makes me think that they're not quite done with this yet. If anything they're probably backing off in order to recoup. My first guess was that they will try and push a la carte lyric sales and as being the only "accurate" source of lyrics on the web. After thinking about it, lyrics would be much harder to sell, especially since my guess is a lot of people who own cds still go to lyrics sites because it's easier to search and cut and paste. If I had to start paying for them, I'd be more than willing to pull out the cd case and read or type them. A smarter idea in my opinion would be for them to create their own lyrics site, promote it as the only "licensed" lyrics web site, and acquire money through online advertising.

[MacGod]

In reply to:

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Finally if you were a lyricist and if getting paid for your work resulted in your being able to feed your family and not getting paid resulted in living on the streets, would you not want to be paid? Would you not feel your deserved to be paid and resent the pirates who are stealing food from the mouths of your very own children?

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OK, this really seems to be stretching things! Songs, and songwriters, I can see being denied funds by pirating. But I don't think anyone has ever lost money due to the websites listing song lyrics. Think about it: if I download a song from a P2P network, I may well deprive the songwriter (and label etc.) of money, if I then decide not to buy the CD or iTMS song. But, if I look at the lyrics on a website (or even copy them somewhere) that's not going to prevent me from getting the song. In fact, if anything, it'll make me want to listen to the song even more. Having the lyrics printed out merely augments my listening experience, it doesn't replace it the way a download of the song itself would.
I honestly don't understand why the labels have such an issue with lyric websites. Do they really think I'm going to go to the site and say to myself "Ah. Now that I know the words to that song, there's no need to buy it!"?

[bastion]

In reply to:

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They're just lyrics, not sheet music or anything. What can you possibly do with printed lyrics?

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Why are lyrics different from any other written expression like a scientific paper, a novel, or any other poem? Copyright is, quite literally, about who has the right to copy. Going after pearLyrics was overreaching idiocy, but last time I checked the Berne convention is still in effect. Writing down something you heard, for your own enjoyment and reference, is fine. Distributing is not.