************************************************************** * * * 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: * * * * * ************************************************************** 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.