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12/10/2005: "Tabcrawler is killing the music industry!"
Soundtrack: The Cooper Temple Clause - See this through and leave
Not content with seeking to criminalise most of it's customer base, or even with infecting their computers with viruses, the music industry now has a new target:
Song sites face legal crackdown - BBC News.
Apparently, sites offering lyrics and tablature are the next great evil (after music cassettes, CD-Rs, Napster, Kazaa, etc, etc) which are going to cause record labels to fold and recording artists to end up penniless. According to David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association:
"Unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing."
So next year we are going to see lawsuits against several popular tab and lyric sites, and they aren't just aiming to shut down websites, they are trying to put site owners in prison.
So where does this end? If I quote lyrics on here (as I do quite frequently), am I depriving the band of the ability to make a living, or am I publicising their music? Are record companies going to storm into tribute band gigs and demand the arrest of the musicians? Am I allowed to sing along to my CDs? What if a signed band puts up tab/lyrics for a song on their own website - as many do in response to requests from fans?
You might think the paragraph above is a bit absurd, but there is an obsession in the music industry with controlling exactly when, where and how we use their 'product', which is completely in opposition to the reason most people listen to music.
I love music. The bands I've listened to and the words they've sung over the years have touched me, changed me, made me who I am. That belongs to the band and it belongs to me. It has nothing to do with record company profits.
We dare you to mean a single word you say/feel free if you've time to try and change our minds/you might wanna duck before you lose your head/it seems we're the ones who've got the guts to bleed/it's not number one who will come out alive/it's the freak in the corner with his eyes on fire/LET'S KILL MUSIC BEFORE IT KILLS US ALL.
Is that a police siren coming up the road?