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【 以下文字转载自 WWW 讨论区 】
【 原文由 PP 所发表 】
The original text can be found at
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/01/cyber/articles/19lyrics.html
January 19, 1999
Lyrics Site in Copyright Dispute Is Closed
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
The International Lyrics Server, a popular
Web site containing the words to more than
100,000 songs, was closed last week after
music publishers accused the site's
Switzerland-based operators of copyright
violations and police officers seized their
computers, the site's founder said.
Karl Aschminn, the prosecutor in charge of
the case for the Swiss canton of Basel,
confirmed that a criminal investigation was
underway, but he declined to respond to
additional questions.
Pascal de Vries, a network consultant in
Basel who founded the site in February 1997,
said that when the Lyrics Server was active,
it received an average of a million hits per
day from 100,000 visitors seeking the words
to chart-topping songs by bands like the
Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, as well as to
show tunes and obscure ditties. The database
could by searched by song title, artist name
or key phrase.
The Lyrics Server's home page now says that
it has been "temporarily disabled," in what
appears to be the music industry's latest
success in cracking down on Internet sites
that reproduce copyrighted material without
permission.
On Thursday, de Vries said, police officers
from the cantons of Basel and Zurich arrived
simultaneously at his apartment, his
technical consultant's Zurich home and their
Zurich-based Internet service provider
(ISP). Not finding de Vries in, a team of
officers went to his office, only to learn
that he was out with a client, he said.
But the police did find Roger Meyer, his
technical consultant. After interrupting
Meyer's morning shower, they confiscated the
two servers on which the site resided, and
he was ordered to surrender his passwords so
the files could be accessed. He was then
interviewed for four hours. Police also took
invoices related to the Lyrics Server from
Cyberlink Internet Services, the site's ISP,
he said.
De Vries said the police were responding to
a criminal complaint filed by lawyers for
the Harry Fox Agency, on behalf of
Warner/Chappell Music Inc., Polygram Music
Publishing Inc. and six other
music-publishing companies.
The Harry Fox Agency is the licensing arm of
the National Music Publishers' Association,
a trade group in New York representing more
than 600 American music publishers. Fox
Agency officials did not return phone calls
seeking comment on the case.
De Vries met on Monday with a district
attorney for a three-and-a- half-hour
preliminary interview. He said has yet to be
charged, but he also faces a hearing on
Friday for an earlier civil case brought by
the Harry Fox Agency.
"I say I didn't do it," de Vries calmly
asserted in a telephone interview on
Saturday.
He explained that it was the site's users
who had contributed the lyrics, at a rate of
between 200 and 300 new songs every day, and
that he was merely making them available in
an organized fashion, somewhat akin to how
and other music-oriented newsgroups do. He
said he had not entered any of the words
himself.
He also argued that the lyrics were
listeners' personal transcriptions from
albums and radio broadcasts, not copies of
official sheet- music versions, and that
debates would regularly occur over
inaccuracies. He said, "For us, it was just
a kind of discussion database, not something
to harm the music-publishing companies."
"They think that they have lost millions
through our server," he continued, "but they
have to prove this, and they didn't prove it
yet. If they can, this could cost me
millions [in damages] -- which I never can
pay back. But I think the main goal is not
to get money, because I don't have too much
of that, but to have something of an
example. They want [use this episode] to
tell other sites that it's really clear you
don't have any chance."
De Vries said he was continuing to sleep
well, despite the prospect of a stiff fine
or a jail sentence. "The law is quite an old
law, not specific for the Internet, so there
is plenty of room to discuss," he said.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged that his case
may have ramifications for the Swiss ISP
industry. Last May, the former head of
CompuServe Deutschland was sentenced to two
years in jail on the charge that he
distributed pornography that was accessible
through his service. The sentence was
suspended and German laws have been approved
that largely exempt ISPs from legal
responsibility for material that users post.
Swiss law has yet to be modified, de Vries
said, which means Cyberlink might face
prosecution.
In an e-mail message, Beat Tinner,
Cyberlink's managing director, pledged to
fight any charges against his company,
comparing it to package-transport service.
He said: "We consider ourselves to be a
carrier of data. We cannot control the
contents of the data packets traveling
through our network."
Tinner also shared de Vries's conception of
the Lyrics Server as a free, newsgroup-style
resource. He said: "Users were adding songs,
and the owners of Lyrics could not check
[the copyright status of] each and every
song. And the song texts were not sold."
The Harry Fox Agency, which represents
19,000 American music publishers, has been
aggressive is ferreting out copyright
violations on the Internet. Last June, the
Online Guitar Archive, a repository for song
chords and lyrics, voluntarily closed after
the Fox Agency threatened legal action
against it. The U.S. site remains shuttered,
although a half-dozen international mirror
sites continue to offer its contents.
In December, also at the Fox Agency's
behest, a civil court in Switzerland ordered
the Lyrics Server's operators to remove 26
specific songs, which were published by the
same eight companies that de Vries said are
responsible for the new criminal action.
To comply, de Vries said, it took him about
four hours, in part because he was not
certain which of the 30 songs in the
database titled "For You" was at issue. A
hearing on the civil case also is scheduled
for Friday. "Until then," he said, "we
thought nothing else would happen."
The Lyrics Server was run as a
non-commercial venture, although de Vries
began accepting banner advertisements in
October 1997 to offset the fees charged by
his ISP for the heavy site traffic. He said
the million daily hits, split evenly between
search results and lyrics downloads, cost
the site 20,000 Swiss francs (about $14,500)
per month.
"We never took money for ourselves," de
Vries said. "We had to do something.
Otherwise we would have had to shut down the
server because of financial problems."
Now de Vries has legal problems and he is
not sure how soon, if at all, he will be
able to relaunch the site.
Randy Eisenberg, an amateur musician in
Chico, Calif., who uses the site, said: "I
find the closure to be an enormous loss. As
a member of a garage band, for me it was a
most amazing resource and in no way would an
artist or publisher be threatened by my use
[of it]."
The Lyrics Server was launched after de
Vries's rock band, First of May, struggled
to find the correct lyrics for Deep Purple's
"Smoke on the Water" and other songs they
wanted to cover.
He recalled: "I thought it would be good if
there was something like that on the
Internet. But I didn't find anything good,
so I thought I'd start doing it myself."
After transferring 40,000 lyrics from a
German server, he entered them in a
searchable database and launched the site.
Not that de Vries benefits directly from the
Lyrics Server's contents. In his quintet,
two others share lead-vocalist duties. He is
the drummer.
Matthew Mirapaul
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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