Making Music More Enjoyable? Not Allowed!
Found on Techdirt on Monday, 18 April 2005
Among the many clueless things the recording industry has done over the past few years is freak out over people daring to (oh my!) put lyrics online. We've written about a few cases where lyrics sites were forced to shut down due to angry recording industry lawyers, who somehow seem to think that putting up lyrics that make it easier for music fans to enjoy songs is damaging to the industry. It appears that this is still happening, as a bunch of lyrics sites in Germany are being threatened by the recording industry for writing out the lyrics of various songs. It would be interesting to see exactly how the industry thinks they're losing money by having people write out song lyrics online.
Some people I know aren't fluent enough with other languages and like to read the lyrics. Sometimes it is almost impossible to understand the lyrics, thanks to the music. How this is affecting sales (let's face it, the industry just slaps the copyright infringement label on it for legal reasons) is above my head. But then, so is the entire entertainment industry.