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📖 Read: Dumbest 'Gotcha' Story Of The Week: Google, Genius And The Copying Of Licensed Lyrics (Techdirt.)

“You may have seen this story in various forms over the weekend, starting with a big Wall Street Journal article (paywall likely) claiming that Genius caught Google “red handed” in copying lyrics from its site.”

Techdirt.

There’s a separate issue here worth noting as well: all of this demonstrates just how idiotic the whole “licensing of lyrics” business is — considering that what everyone here is admitting is that even when they license lyrics, they’re making it up much of the time. Specifically, what people are noting is that they license lyrics from the publishers, but the publishers themselves rarely even have or know the lyrics they’re licensing, so lyrics sites try to figure them out themselves and “create” the lyrics file which may or may not be accurate.

But… if the publishers don’t even know they lyrics they’re licensing, then what the fuck are they licensing in the first place? The right to try to decipher the lyrics that they supposedly hold a copyright on? Really?

🤷‍♂

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Quoting: A Century Ago We Killed The Radio Commons; Don't Let The EU Do That To The Internet

“The very structure of Article 13 makes this clear. The demand that everything must be “licensed” on internet platforms makes no sense. Do you “license” content in order to communicate with your friends? Do you license a song to sing? Do you license it when you quote from a book? Licensing is not necessary for communication — it is only necessary for “broadcast.” This is the core problem that the legacy gatekeepers have with the internet. It’s a communications medium, and they come from the broadcast era. Their entire structure is built off of licensing to broadcasters. And rather than recognize that everything has changed, their only play is to try to shove the internet into a similar broadcast structure. “

an author (Techdirt.)
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In a hasty move to try and head off a mountain of bad publicity, the RIAA settled out of court with the mother of the 12 year old girl they sued. The mother now has to pay $2000 in damages, for her daughters’ copyright infringements (and, I guess, promise never to do it again).

Personally, I think it should’ve been dropped all together…

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The RIAA is sueing a 12 year old girl, for “massive copyright infringements through file-swapping”. Under legislation, this could mean her paying “damages” of upto $150,000 per song.

Just when you thought they could go now lower, they pull this one… I hope they get seriously nailed to the wall for it. Surely it can’t be long now before they get investigated by the feds, for what they’re doing?

Either that, or people should wake up and Boycott the RIAA.