I mean they are static throughout, so does it really matter if the lyrics are copied from one site and pasted in some other site?
What do you mean "they are static"? Like any other text, they are copyrighted to the person who wrote them. Copying and pasting them onto your site without permission is copyright infringement, in the same way that copying and pasting an article without permission would be copyright infringement.
Since there is tons of lyrics sites on the Internet, including commercial and fan sites, the fair use license may apply, and/or the well know copyright legend stating that all material belong to their respective owners. Further reading on fair use: www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280b.shtml
Just because lots of people are doing it doesn't make it legal. The copyright holders certainly can go after you for infringement. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm http://www.pearworks.com/pages/pearLyricsDemise.html I'm not sure if you are joking about the "legend" of copyright - if you aren't, you should at least make note that, at least in the US and Europe, it's the law. If the copyright for the lyrics have been registered, that can be sued for damages. Fair use might apply if you were only using a tiny portion of the lyrics and your web site was non-commercial (i.e., no advertising on it).
Joking indeed, you see lots of people doing it, including those who distribute cracked software altering i.e. vBulletin trying to make legit the copyright just by eliminating a word for "this is a free software" when it is not.
Ha, that's true. There is so much of that around here it's hard to tell who's joking and who's serious.
I don't get something... The lyrics of a song are always the same... So, how would the initial person who wrote them know if they are copied? You can just copy them and noone would know
I still don't understand. Lyrics are "static" in the same way an article is "static". If I wrote lyrics or held the copyright to lyrics, I would certainly know if I gave you permission to have them on your web site. If I didn't catch you, I wouldn't complain, obviously, but that doesn't make it any less wrong. However, if I wanted to find who had taken my lyrics without permission, a simply Google search would do it. The big music companies do have people (and special software) searching the internet for infringers. Finding you would be no big deal. Why not have a web site where songwriters submit their lyrics instead? or at least get permission to publish the lyrics?
You're all misunderstanding his question. He's asking if he can copy lyrics from OTHER lyrics sites, since it's one song and the lyrics never change, therefore they wouldn't notice. If you ask me, it's no problem if they don't know. And I don't think the musicians have any problem with it, considering there have been no lawsuits suing lyrics sites, which are abundant all over the internet, so far. Why would they have a problem with it, anyway? It's just promoting their song. If the webmaster has advertisements on the same page, big deal...they're to support the site and thus continue promoting the musician. So to answer your original question - since lyrics never change, there shouldn't be any harm in copying them. But you may want to fix misspellings and clean them up a bit. If you search around the internet, you'll find the same copy of song lyrics all over the place.
Oh, that's different. No, I'm sure the other lyrics sites won't care. That doesn't shield you from the copyright owners, though. Actually, if you looked at the links in my first post in this thread, music publishers have started going after lyrics sites. A big site, pearLyrics, was essentially shut down. The popular music writers (who are often NOT the same people as the musicians) probably have little to do with it, if they are under contract to one of the big boys like Warner music.
It is indeed illegal if you do not obtain permission from the publishers of those lyrics. I did that with my lyrics site so I didn't have to worry about any legal actions being taken against me. On the same hand, yes, everyone is doing it, but the music industry could just as easily come after everyone doing it all at once and make themselves some major bucks. Might be a viable option since they have been losing so much money lately to online sales.
Copying lyrics is something that I believe is frowned upon, but not well enforced. Just like fireworks on the 4th and what not.
but i was like wondering supposedly i put metallicas lyrics(for example), would i have to contact metallica and actually ask them and then ask other bands like this?This will take forever, im sure none of the lyrics sites do that, it would take some years only for permissions .What do you guys say
If you want your lyrics site to not infringe copyright, you would have to get permission from whoever holds the copyright to Metallica lyrics. Just because other sites don't do this doesn't mean that you would be shielded if the copyright owners decided to sue you for infringement.
Getting the rights to something does not take that long. I get permissions to copy things all the time and the time it takes is really minial compared to my piece of mind. Many places are set up with divisions and a host of staff to handle the requests for use.
I can show you a list of permissions from a site the does the grateful dead http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/permiss.html see how many permissions they have. You could ask other sites that have the lyrics for permission to reprint and if they say no..then simply ask where they got there permission and do the like thing.