According to a story in the London Telegraph, the UK music industry (led by the publisher Warner Chappell)has targeted Internet song lyrics websites for copyright infringement actions. “We’re fed up with internet entrepreneurs ‘ripping off’ songs – from perennial favourites such as Happy Birthday and Rhapsody in Blue to the music of Madonna and Sir Elton John,” a Warner Chappell spokesman was quoted as saying, and the firm has apparently already been successful in closing down an Australian-based lyrics website (pearLyrics.com).
It’s a sad business. As a musician, I find these lyrics sites — the ability to pull up, in 2 seconds, the lyrics to damned near any song one might want to sing — to be one of the true marvels of the Internet. The impact of these sites on creators’ incentives is, in the vast majority of cases, either (a) nonexistent, or (b) positive; there is no substantial market for song lyrics independent of the music they’re attached to that can be harmed by these sites, and most artists benefit from the additional exposure they get from having listeners who can connect directly to their lyrics. It’s true that copyright law as currently configured makes it an infringement to post song lyrics — but the problem, imho, is not with the posting of the lyrics, but with the copyright law that defines this as infringement.
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