James Delahunty
8 Dec 2005 11:49
Walter Ritter, creator of the Mac OS X-based pearLyrics has been forced to kill the application after being threatened with legal action by UK music publishing giant Warner/Chappell. He received a cease and desist letter this week from the publisher. The company claims pearLyrics "enables people to copy and download lyrics. Inevitably this will enable people to download lyrics owned or controlled by this company, Warner/Chappell Music Ltd."
Amusingly, the letter cites the U.S. Supreme Court "Grokster" ruling, which is ridiculous as Ritter is based in Austria and the publisher is based in the UK where the U.S. Supreme Court has no jurisdiction. However, by reproducing song lyrics, pearLyrics is arguably infringing on Warner/Chappel's copyright. A song's words, music tabulation and guitar chords are all as protected by copyright law as the actual sound recording.
Of course, one can find song lyrics in a few seconds using Google and an Internet browser. Also, under Warner/Chappel's argument, Microsoft and Mozilla could be sued for their browsers contributing to copyright infringement, yet you wont see the publisher pursue Microsoft on the matter.
Source:
The Register