Lyrics Site in Copyright Dispute May Go Commercial

January 30, 1999

Lyrics Site in Copyright Dispute May Go Commercial

By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
he combatants in an Internet copyright dispute involving the International Lyrics Server are considering ways to settle their differences outside the courtroom, the site's founder said. One solution may be to take the shuttered Web site, which is likely to return this weekend with limited capabilities, and fully restore it as an authorized resource for music fans.

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The operators of the Switzerland-based site and top officials from the National Music Publishers' Association met Tuesday during a music-industry conference in Cannes, France, to discuss options for ending their dispute over the site's publication of the words to more than 100,000 songs.
One possibility -- perhaps unique in the annals of Internet-copyright skirmishes, where those accused of violations typically shut their sites down or move them to less visible online locations -- is for the Lyrics Server to become an authorized outlet for lyrics, owned or sanctioned by the NMPA, an industry trade group.
An NMPA spokesman confirmed that the meeting took place, but declined to provide details because the matter may still end in litigation.
Pascal de Vries, a network consultant in Basel who founded the lyrics site in 1997 as a labor of love, characterized the two-and-a-half-hour session as "friendly," and said he is now drafting a business plan to submit to NMPA executives.
The New York-based organization will also send a technical expert to Switzerland next week to assess the Lyrics Server's reliability in the event that the popular site becomes an authorized outlet.
"Even some weeks ago," de Vries said, "I never would have thought of this [plan]. But now I am quite enthusiastic."
Under the new scenario, de Vries said, a portion of any advertising revenues generated by the site would go to the NMPA's music-licensing subsidiary, the Harry Fox Agency, which represents 19,000 American music publishers.
Until the Lyrics Server was shut down, the non-commercial venture accepted only enough advertising to offset the fees charged by its Internet service provider. The site received 1 million hits per day from 100,000 visitors, and the unusually heavy traffic cost the operators 20,000 Swiss francs (about $14,500) per month.
The Lyrics Server was closed Jan. 14 when Swiss police seized the site's computers from the Zurich home of its technical consultant, Roger Meyer.

Issues are likely to arise if the site turns legitimate. For example, who is responsible for ensuring that the words to, say, the Aretha Franklin song "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" as submitted by a fan are accurate?

According to an NMPA statement, the police were acting on a criminal complaint filed by the Harry Fox Agency, the NMPA's music-licensing subsidiary, on behalf of several music publishers who accused the site of providing access to song lyrics without the permission of the songs' creators or copyright owners. The Harry Fox Agency also filed a civil suit against the site last year, but de Vries said a hearing on that case has been postponed while the two sides negotiate.
De Vries is planning to relaunch a limited version of the site this weekend. Visitors will be able to find a performer's name using a song title or keyword, but the site will not yield lyrics. The system will run on backup equipment because Swiss police still have the site's primary pair of servers. De Vries said he would not make the full site available until his discussions with the NMPA conclude.
Attending the Tuesday meeting were Edward P. Murphy, president and chief executive of the NMPA, Charles Sanders, the NMPA's top lawyer, the Lyrics Server's de Vries and Meyer and lawyers for both parties.
The session was initiated and paid for by the NMPA, de Vries said. "I was surprised that they called," he said. "They said it was their intention to find a solution that would be acceptable to both sides, that instead of using money for lawyers, we should create a win-win situation."
But de Vries acknowledged that converting the site into a freely accessible but money-making venture might provoke anger from some users, many of whom have submitted lyrics to the site's database.
"That's a big problem," de Vries said. "We'd tried to make Murphy understand that, if the site is totally commercialized, some people will be really [upset]. It's the same as if Linux [a free, user-developed computer operating system] would be commercialized. People would go crazy about that on the Web."
Other issues are likely to arise if the site turns legitimate. For example, who is responsible for ensuring that the words to, say, the Aretha Franklin song "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" as submitted by a fan are accurate? And, since the site contains hundreds of obscurities, will the operators be forced to remove lyrics to songs that the Harry Fox Agency does not license?
De Vries said that after he submits his business plan, he expects that the two sides will reconvene, perhaps in New York. He remains concerned about retaining the Lyrics Server's original spirit of independence.
"I really hope the site can be like it is now," de Vries said, "but these are businessmen. You can't argue about idealism."

Related Sites
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International Lyrics Server

National Music Publishers' Association

Matt Mirapaul at mirapaul@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

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Issues are likely to arise if the site turns legitimate. For example, who is responsible for ensuring that the words to, say, the Aretha Franklin song "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" as submitted by a fan are accurate?