Song sites face legal crackdown

"The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics."

"MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed."

"He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were "completely illegal".

"Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective".

Here's something else getting completely out of hand. First, they lie about the magnitude of their losses from "pirated" music, now they don't even want you to be able to look up the words to songs. This is just pure greed. If not for all the prostitute politicians, they wouldn't succeed in making the whole issue out to be so deadly to the industry. They succeed by pretending that every single person that receives a free copy of some song (and in this case lyrics too), would've bought their copy if they couldn't have gotten it for free, then using inflated estimates to make it seem the industry is about to collapse from piracy. It's all a lie. At often over $20 per CD, music is so over-priced that many can't afford to buy all the music they like. But they're counted as creating a loss anyway. They claim drops in sales are all due to piracy, when in many cases it's the overpricing, the economy, or just music nobody wants. Now it's the MPAs' turn pistol-whip everyone into submission.

This is the kind of unrestrained greed that results when we have lawmakers who cater only to big business. One hundred years ago, it took government intervention to begin putting a stop to big business putting the screws to everyone in sight, and now, at the beginning of another, the restraints have been taken off, and this is just one of the results.

I suspect that even if the MPA succeeds in geting people thrown in jail and paying heavy fines, that there will be little benefit for the sheet music companies. Remember that the recording artists that were supposedly becomming paupers because of piracy, never got a penny from any of the fines imposed as a result of the crusade against easy targets like children.

New technology requires new and innovative ways for businesses to interact with the public. They can't just go around using old methods designed to prevent real criminals from physically copying and selling someone elses product, on those that don't make any profit at all by making virtual copies. They aren't the same, and should not be treated as black marketeers.

Even if it is wrong, there are better ways to deal with the public, than using a sledgehammer. The movie industry went into a panic back when VCRs came on the market, but they learned to join in, working with the public to give it what it wanted, video prices dropped, and both benefitted. But that was back in more reasonable days.