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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

OTOH, when a site wraps ads around lyrics, why should all of the ad revenue go to the site and none to the songwriter? Effectively the lyrics are being "sold" in exchange for the user's attention.

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That is true under a maximalist interpretation of copyright. On the other hand, what is really being sold here is the transcription and search-ability of the lyrics (and in RapGenius's specific case the community-contributed critical analysis of the lyrics).

Since the near total majority of people who will be reading the lyrics already posses a copy in audio form it seems unfair, in anything other than a maximalist context, to pay for them twice.

It's not maximalist to say that a website cannot make a copy of something for someone who owns the item in another form. That right to copy belongs to the copyright owner, not the person who owns a copy.

For argument's sake let's say you are right, that it is not maximalist. That would imply there is a more extreme interpretation that would qualify as maximalist.

Can you describe what that interpretation might be? What is more extreme than saying without exception that the "right to copy belongs to the copyright owner, not the person who owns a copy."

Meanwhile, I'll just leave this right here: http://www.ripshark.com/

RG, and the others, rely pretty much exclusively on song lyrics to pull traffic from Google.

It's impossible to know who possesses what song in audio form, and it's up to RG if the pass that cost on to their users if they wish to.

>Since the near total majority of people who will be reading the lyrics already posses a copy in audio form

If you mean "legally possess", I very strongly doubt that's true...

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