More and more Google sponsored lyrcs sites

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More and more Google sponsored lyrcs sites

Yes, lyrics sites with adsense

fischermx

4:22 am on Apr 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

As far as I remember, lyrics are copyrighted.
And I remember the biggest lyrics site, which I don't recall which it was, was shutdown.
However, these days, testing with any song phrase I found several dozens of lyrics websites, some of them very big.
And all of them are even sponsored by Google Adsense.
Is this correct? Am I missing something?

rocknbil

3:45 pm on Apr 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

I was just thinking about this yesterday, how do they get away with this? There are hundreds of lyrics sites out there, maybe thousands. And now adSense is more or less supporting it?

purplecape

12:48 am on Apr 29, 2008 (gmt 0)

The larger ones may have permission from the rights holders. If not, I can't imagine that ASCAP will leave them alone for long.

ichsie

12:56 am on Apr 29, 2008 (gmt 0)

What is ASCAP?

And does Google shut down sites that are in violation of copyright laws?

And also I suppose quotes & quotations sites are fair use protected by copyright laws?

purplecape

3:00 am on Apr 29, 2008 (gmt 0)

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. They are the trade organization for composers and lyricists, essentially. They run a clearing house for permissions and fees to use songs and lyrics. They are pretty aggressive.

Google can't shut down a site, but they can boot them out of AdSense.

Fair use has its limits! Yes, you can make a short quote from an article or a book and stay safely within fair use guidelines. But a song (or a poem) may be only twenty lines long. If you quote 2 lines, you've quoted 10% of it, and that's a pretty hefty chunk of it.

So a lyrics site, even though it may not seem to be quoting much, is quoting a lot in percentage terms, and that's not going to be allowed under fair use.

Jane_Doe

3:23 am on Apr 29, 2008 (gmt 0)

I was just thinking about this yesterday, how do they get away with this?

I've wondered about that as well. I sure use the lyrics sites a lot though. If I hear a song on the radio I like I just have to write down a few of the lyrics, then find the name of the song on using Google, and then I buy the song on itunes. So maybe if there are enough people like me the lyrics sites actually make more money for the song writers in the long run as they make it easier to identify songs for purchase.

[edited by: Jane_Doe at 3:24 am (utc) on April 29, 2008]

zett

8:48 am on Apr 29, 2008 (gmt 0)

And does Google shut down sites that are in violation of copyright laws?

No. Google just bans that account from the participation in the Google Adsense program (which is probably as good as shutting the services down), withdrawing the ability to monetize the stolen content and thus the main reason for the existance of the sites.