[griffzhowl]

I think having the lyrics reproducible in text form isn't the problem. Many sites have been doing that for decades and as far as I know record companies haven't gone after them. But these days with generative AI, they can take lyrics and just make a new song with them, and you can probably see why artists and record companies would want to stop that.

Plus, from TFA,

"GEMA hoped discussions could now take place with OpenAI on how copyright holders can be remunerated."

Getting something back is better than nothing

[mjr00]

I didn't downvote, but

> I think having the lyrics reproducible in text form isn't the problem. Many sites have been doing that for decades and as far as I know record companies haven't gone after them.

Reproducing lyrics in text form is, in fact, a problem, independent of AI. The music industry has historically been aggressively litigious in going after websites which post unlicensed song lyrics[0]. There are many arcane and bizarre copyright rules around lyrics. e.g. If you've ever watched a TV show with subtitles where there's a musical number but none of the lyrics are subtitled, you might think it was just laziness, but it's more likely the subtitlers didn't have permission to translate&subtitle the lyrics. And many songs on Spotify which you'd assume would have lyrics available, just don't, because they don't have the rights to publish them.

[0] https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/nmpa-targets-unli...

[griffzhowl]

Thanks. Maybe that misconception was the problem. Taking a hammering in downvotes, lol

[griffzhowl]

Had a couple of drive-by downvotes... Is it that stupid an opinion? Granted I know nothing about the case except for what's in TFA

[EdgeExplorer]

I'm not one of the downvoters, but it may be this: "Many sites have been doing that for decades and as far as I know record companies haven't gone after them."

Record companies have in fact, for decades, been going after sites for showing lyrics. If you play guitar, for example, it's almost impossible to find chords/tabs that include the lyrics because sites get shut down for doing that.

[griffzhowl]

Hmm, alright. I actually do play guitar and used to find chords/tabs with lyrics easily. I haven't been doing that for maybe 10-15 years. Anyway, maybe those sites were paying for a license and I just never considered it

[fwn]

> Had a couple of drive-by downvotes... Is it that stupid an opinion?

While I do not agree with your take, FWIW I found your comment substantive and constructive.

You seem to be making two points that are both controversial:

The first is that generative AI makes the availability of lyrics more problematic, given new kinds of reuse and transformation it enables. The second is that AI companies owe something (legally or morally) to lyric rights holders, and that it is better to have some mechanism for compensation, even if the details are not ideal.

I personally do not believe that AI training is meaningfully different from traditional data analysis, which has long been accepted and rarely problematized.

While I understand that reproducing original lyrics raises copyright issues, this should only be a concern in terms of reproduction, not analysis. Example: Even if you do no data analysis at all and your random character generator publishes the lyrics of a famous Beatles song (or other forbidden numbers) by sheer coincidence, it would still be a copyright issue.

I also do not believe in selective compensation schemes driven by legal events. If a legitimate mechanism for rights holders cannot be constructed in general, it is poor policy craftsmanship to privilege the music industry specifically.

Doing so relieves the pressure to find a universal solution once powerful stakeholders are satisfied. While this might be seen as setting a useful precedent by small-scale creators, I doubt it will help them.

[charcircuit]

It's like saying that movie studios haven't gone after Netflix over movies, so what's the issue with hosting pirated movies on your own site. The reason movie studios don't go after Netflix is that they have a license to show it.

[BeFlatXIII]

If anything, AI would scramble the lyrics more than a human "taking lyrics to make a new song from them".

[griffzhowl]

Maybe, but it's also possible to get an AI to produce a song with the exact same lyrics. And a human copying lyrics would also be a copyright issue in any case.

But anyway it seems I misinterpreted the issue and record companies have always been against reproduction of lyrics whether an AI or human is doing it

[ToucanLoucan]

Likely because you're a "luddite" which in the current atmosphere of HN and other tech spaces, mean you have a problem with a "research institution" which has a separate for-profit enterprise face that it wears when it feels like it having free and open access to the collected works of humanity so it can create a plagiarism machine that it can then charge for people to access.

I don't respect this opinion but it is unfortunately infesting tech spaces right now.