As Lyrics Sites Prosper, Copyright Issues Arise
Web sites that publish lyrics are practically a dime a dozen: Type "lyrics Royals" into Google and you'll get tons of sites that have complete lyrics to Lorde's megahit single. All these lyrics floating around are actually under copyright -- and only a few of those actually pay the licensing fees to reproduce them.
And while this practice has gone on for years, as these sites grow in popularity they also attract advertisers -- and that's when the publishers take notice. Recently the National Music Publishers Association has filed takedown notices on a bunch of these unlicensed sites.
In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Jonathan Reichman, an intellectual property lawyer known as the Copy Cat, delves into the details of musical intellectual property surrounding these lyrics sites.
Reichman explains that the site Rap Genius is making a compelling argument that they've transformed the copyrighted work into something new. With its crowd-sourced Wikipedia-style information, Rap Genius might squeeze by with a claim of fair use, something Reichman guesses will happen with most of these sites.
