Music Lyrics Site LiveUniverse Hit with $6.6 Million Copyright Decision

By emeadows
October 23, 2012

Music publishers have long taken offense to websites posting song lyrics. “A recent court judgment against LiveUniverse makes it crystal clear: hosting an unauthorized lyrics site can get you in serious legal trouble,” writes Ars Technica.
LiveUniverse and its owner Brad Greenspan were hit with a $6.6 million judgment last week by a federal judge for running a lyrics site with no licenses from music publishers.
“That’s $12,500 per song for the 528 songs whose lyrics he was accused of infringing,” according to the article.
“There are thousands of lyrics sites, and many of them remain unlicensed. Music publishers started pursuing these sites several years ago, and now… they’re starting to see some real revenue come from online businesses who have taken licenses,” writes Ars Technica.
The lyrics sites may be viewed as harmless by some, but they are generating significant advertising revenue, and subsequently stealing from songwriters and publishers, according to Ross Charap, one of the attorneys representing the music publishers who sued Greenspan.
“This is an important new stream of revenue for publishers,” suggests Charap. “They got nothing from it five or six years ago, and now they get tens of millions of dollars.”

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