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Originally Posted by Martian
I don't see how this is enforcable. Even if the American courts uphold this (unlikely, in my opinion) that doesn't guarantee that it will be upheld all over the world.
Quoting lyrics is like quoting anything else; so long as the source is credited and an individual doesn't try to represent the material as their own work, it falls under fair use.
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This is certainly not the case in the U.S., but I can't speak specifically for elsewhere. For one thing, it's generally impossible to say that a borderline use like this IS or ISN'T fair use until it's been tested in court.
As for determining this, 17 USC Chapter 1 §107 is what establishes fair use in the U.S.:
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Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
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So this case of copying and distributing a copyrighted work we're talking about, song lyrics (the melody and the lyrics of a song have copyright protection), may not fall afoul of factor (1), though it's not exactly educational either, but certainly the copyright owner may argue that it does fall afoul of (3) and (4). Specifically that they're distributing the work in its entirety and that clearly this may have an impact on its market value since it's freely available where otherwise the copyright owner could charge. It's up to the courts, but I highly doubt the outcome would be favorable to the distributors. (For similar reasons, TFP posters reposting articles instead of simply linking to them is legally dubious, but probably not to as much of a degree, and I figure it's a lot less likely that the article writers would object)
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Originally Posted by flamingdog
You notice how the injured party in all of these debates are always representatives of music publishers, but always talk about how it hurts the artists? Funnily enough, it's not too hard to find a great deal of reportage expressing how publishers are already screwing artists.
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It's the record companies that most of the complaining is done about. Record companies and publishers are generally seperate entities, though it's common for record companies to also publish and there probably exist publishers that also make records. (Publishers deal with song rights and record companies deal with rights to the specific recordings that are put on CDs, etc.) In my understanding, a 50/50 split of revenue between the publisher and the songwriter is common, whereas record labels typically pay the artists (another distinction between the songwriter and the artist that is often lost), especially new artists, considerably less.