Two days ago, the EFF distributed an open letter by Fred Von Lohmann that slammed Warner/Chappell Music for bullying PearLyrics into shutdown. The helpful little app acts like a specialized web browser. When you’re playing a song in iTunes, PearLyrics automatically scours the internet for lyrics, then adds that text to the song file’s metadata (and as every digital music fan knows: mo data, mo betta).
Today, W/C chairman Richard Blackstone and Jane Dyball, who handles the label’s legal affairs in Europe, apologized to the Austrian programmer who created PearLyrics. Snip from Billboard analysis:
W/C’s apology was the right move, but may have come as a result of a publicly posted argument from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Not only was [Walter] Ritter’s application probably legal in the United States, reasoned the EFF, but such threats against U.S. developers could open Warner Music Group to federal liability.
The music industry might want to think these actions through more thoroughly, and not just to avoid legal strife. Dyball’s letter to PearLyrics was copied to Kevin Saul, an Apple Computer lawyer, and links to similar applications quickly disappeared from the Apple Web site.
This was two opportunities lost. For one, by taking the text from illegal lyrics sites, applications such as Ritter’s–which seek no revenue and are, at least arguably, legal–were taking eyeballs away from, and thus diminishing the ad revenue of the very illegal, very revenue-seeking sites that archive and distribute unlicensed lyrics.
Major rights holders confronted with these grass-roots software developments might also consider embracing them as possible new business models as aggressively as they have been in recent years about shutting them down. How many casual music fans currently pay for lyrics?
Previously:
Warner Music attacks specialized web-browser
PearLyrics shutown: EFF’s open letter to Warner Music
Update: Walter Ritter has posted the joint announcement on his website, along with his thoughts on the debacle, and his thanks to the EFF. Link. And incidentally, Friday is Mr. Ritter’s birthday.