hello, today i got an email from some lawyer claiming to represent UMG. anyways, he says to desist and cease posting lyrics. i made a website about country singer kip moore. ...... (kipmoore (dot) org) i make about 50$ a month in advertising. i see tonnes of websites posting lyrics and stuff? wondering what your inputs are on this matter. Thanks!
Lyrics can have a copyright, so if you get a letter from a lawyer demanding you take them down, it might be time to take them down. note: This is not really a copywriting issue, but rather a copyright issue. This thread is likely to get reported and moved to the legal section. You might do yourself a favor and report it.
thanks for the input. however, do u think they will go through ,illions to shut down a website that makes just 50$ a month...
Unless you have some reason to doubt that the letter is really from UMG then I would assume it is real. They don't need to spend much at all, but they obviously have in house attorneys who handle these things all the time and it costs them nothing to file a DMCA notice and have that content removed and they also can file a DMCA with Google or Adsense (if you use it) and get your site removed from the program or pages removed from the index. If it were me, I might agree to remove the content and ask if there is anyway you could continue to use the lyrics on your site under some agreement with them. Otherwise, since your site is really limited to a single artist, you probably just need to remove the lyrics section or risk the entire site. No matter what I would agree to remove the content since it is clear someone else owns the copyright to the lyrics, should they insist you do so. You pretty much need to hope for a miracle that they let you keep using it under some kind of license. I see tons of sites are using his lyrics, so I think it is a reasonable question for you to ask them if there is anyway you could continue to use the lyrics with permission since your main purpose is to provide a resource for his fans and your site features future tour dates and lists albums he has done all in an effort to help not harm him - and that tons of other sites that don't care about him are using them too. They may refuse or not. It is really up to them. I would remove them if they refuse since you really do not have a right to just post them. I know it sucks to see other people doing it, but it is like speeding. Some people get caught and others don't. But when you are the one who gets caught you just need to deal with it.