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*                                                            *
*                         CYBERSPACE                         *
*         A biweekly column on net culture appearing         *
*                in the Toronto Sunday Sun                   *
*                                                            *
* Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer                                  *
* Free for online distribution                               *
* All Rights Reserved                                        *
* Direct comments and questions to:                          *
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I knew it couldn't last. One of the few web sites I visit on a 
daily basis, the International Lyrics Server (www.lyrics.ch), 
is down. There goes my new found career as a /norae bang/ (the 
Korean version of karaoke) lounge lizard.

The International Lyrics Server let users search through a data 
base of over 100,000 popular songs, everything from the 
Barenaked Ladies to the '80s punk band X. Lyrics were 
contributed by users, presumably typed in from liner notes.

Although located in Switzerland (the .ch in www.lyrics.ch is 
Switzerland's top-level domain; "ch" being derived from "Swiss 
cheese") American music publishers took notice and took action.

On January 14, Swiss police raided the apartment and the ISP of 
the International Lyrics Server's creator Pascal de Vries and 
seized equipment in pursuit of a criminal copyright violation 
complaint filed on behalf of eight music publishing companies 
including Polygram, EMI, and Estefan Enterprises. 

The International Lyrics Server began operation in February 
1997 and, with little in the way of publicity other than word 
of mouth, built a following of 100,000 users hitting the site a 
million times a day.

The criminal complaint and police raid seemed unusually harsh 
but given the Bern Convention (the international agreement 
covering copyrights) was signed in Switzerland, I guess someone 
had to be made an example of.

De Vries defends his actions by claiming "common carrier" 
status. He merely provided the hardware and software for users 
to share and organize the trading of song lyrics. It's up to 
the individual user to check the copyright status of songs 
traded. I quote '80s song lyrics in my email signature line. My 
personal home page is filled with quotes from Sarah McLachlan 
tunes (I'm a very lonely man). Should my ISP be shut down 
because it's not policing the email and web pages of its 
thousands and thousands of users?

The National Music Publishers' Association, which represents 
the copyright interests of over 19,000 musicians, notes sites 
like the International Lyrics Server severely injure artists by 
widespread, unauthorised use of works. I suppose, but I can't 
see how. 

Besides using the International Lyrics Server to load up my web 
page and email sig line with lyrics in sync with my emotional 
state, it was a great resource for researching an actual music 
purchase. Sometimes you only know a song by the chorus. The 
International Lyrics Server was invaluable for figuring out 
what songs were on what albums.

Signatories to the Bern Convention don't recognize "but we're 
helping you sell more records!" as an airtight defence. 
Ultimately, it shouldn't be. Radio airplay helps sell a lot of 
records but radio stations still pay royalties for songs 
played. Those songs in turn let radio stations sell ads. De 
Vries also started selling ads on his lyrics page. He claims, 
and I believe him, the site wasn't turning anything approaching 
a profit. The bandwidth costs were considerable (more than 
US$14,000 a month). You could count on just your thumbs the 
number of sites that turn a profit selling banner ads.

The music industry is always two steps behind technology when 
it comes to copyright infringement and it always hits back with 
lawyers and legislation. Cheap recordable CD drives have made 
burning perfect digital copies of favourite tunes a popular 
home and office past time. In response, the Canadian government 
is trying to introduce a levy on recordable CDs, similar to the 
one that exists on magnetic tape.

MP3 sound compression technology has made it easier to 
distribute tunes to anyone who has the patience to wait for a 4 
meg file to work its way through clogged Internet lines. The 
music industry recently used the courts to hog tie a company 
that was developing a portable MP3 player.

The International Lyrics Server page promises it will be back 
in operation as soon as possible, although I don't hold out 
much hope. An alternative source of lyrics is the Dejanews 
Usenet search engine. People trade lyrics over the newsgroup 
alt.music.lyrics and Dejanews has been faithfully storing 
everything posted to Usenet for years.

    Source: geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs/text

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