Lyrical content can't be "sold" to consumers - it can only be used in promotional material. I can't imagine how anyone would be able to calculate damages for punitive action, but I can't imagine that it's very easily demonstrable, except directly to the licensing company who would supposedly otherwise be paid the licensing fees.
To me, this resembles a flailing music industry fishing for revenue.
At the same time, the published material itself is certainly copyrighted.
Does anyone believe these sites are, in any way, not helping the artists?
Since the near total majority of people who will be reading the lyrics already posses a copy in audio form it seems unfair, in anything other than a maximalist context, to pay for them twice.
"obtaining a blanket license to “re-publish” lyrics online from someone like musiXmatch starts around $20k/year."
Doesn't sound too bad for a company that raised 17M.
Beyond that RG still has a ton of room to expand into other areas.
Each of the annotated Rap Genius lyrics are used to explain and understand where the original artist is coming from and the point of the site isn't just to let people know the lyrics (which is at best half of the work being used, if you were concerned with the 3rd of the criteria on fair use) but to provide original content that explains everything. I don't think they would have a problem winning, but the will and money to win might be a problem :s
I'm not aware of any more recent case law that might supersede this as it has been a few years since I've been in an IP Law class. Anyone know more?
I'm not clear what you mean by "at best half of the work being used" regarding lyrics, since the full lyrics are reproduced.
Also, with "at best half of the work being used" I was referring to the fact that it is just lyrics and doesn't include the other elements of the song.
Also, the entire work includes the beat. I'm guessing Kanye would argue the beat to "2 Words" was pretty important too.
Please change it back:
http://subimage.com/blog/2013/11/12/startup-rapgenius-among-...
> If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead.
EDIT: Nevermind, I found it in this paragraph:
Don't abuse the text field in the submission form to add commentary to links. The text field is for starting discussions. If you're submitting a link, put it in the url field. If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.
It is already at least the second submission of this story in the last 24 hours. The previous one is here:
1 - The Pitchfork article didn't mention any numbers relating to what the license cost. 2 - I gave context into who David Lowery is 3 - The headline included RapGenius, which most people find news on interesting
That information was provided by me, after discussions with song publishers & research. Changing the title & URL is extremely disrespectful.
I don't think it's realistic to expect to get the lyrics for free.
http://subimage.com/blog/2013/11/12/startup-rapgenius-among-...
And a mobile app that uses licensed lyric content: http://musixmatch.com/apps/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6723445
Thank you!
