The US music publishing sector’s trade group, National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), has worked for a partnership between songwriters and lyric websites, through licensing agreements, since 2006. In November 2013, they reached out to 50 unlicensed lyric websites to reach an agreement. Of these, 11 websites have licensed, 11 have removed the infringing content and others are still working on potential solutions.
Unless a license has been agreed upon, producing lyrics is a copyright infringement. NMPA has sent takedown notices to several unlicensed lyric sites, and have recently filed lawsuits against Seeklyrics.com and LyricsTime.com. The unlicensed lyric websites profit from advertisement-generated revenue but the songwriters, whose lyrics are available on the sites, do not get compensated. There are over five million searches for ‘lyrics’ on Google every day and over 50% of the available websites are unlicensed. Many of these have well-established advertising schemes, bringing in significant amounts of money each year.
David Israelite, president and CEO of the NMPA, says that the goal is for lyric sites and songwriters to become partners through licensing agreements and that litigation is the ‘last step’. The actions taken are not against personal blogs, fan sites, or the many websites that provide lyrics legally but against sites which engage in obvious illegal behaviour, affecting songwriters’ ability to get paid for their work.
NMPA has brought successful litigation processes against LiveUniverse and LyricWiki and has, in total, received judgements of more than $7 million on behalf of its members.
This article was written by Malin Persson who is on work experience and is currently studying at Southampton Solent University. If you have any questions concerning this article please contact Michael Coyle at info@lawdit.co.uk
Source:
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=174296
