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Comment by alex_c | Hacker News Reader

I see where you're coming from, but that argument opens up a pretty big loophole to use any copyrighted material however you please. There's a big difference (in terms of both effort and value) between a documentary and some user-generated annotations of varying quality.

I'm not clear what you mean by "at best half of the work being used" regarding lyrics, since the full lyrics are reproduced.

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Most of the fair use case law I have seen doesn't try to differentiate between good and bad commentary about the work they are building upon because it's really tricky and subjective.

Also, with "at best half of the work being used" I was referring to the fact that it is just lyrics and doesn't include the other elements of the song.

Ah, I see. AFAIK the lyrics and the recording are considered distinct works with separate copyright (and often different owners), so the lyrics count as the "full" work in this case.

I think you might be right about that. I vaguely remember that weird difference being part of the way Hallmark has managed to hold the copyright to Happy Birthday. If I remember correctly, the lyrics were way out of copyright, but the piano arrangement that was written in the 30s or 40s and is now in common use now was copyrightable. Bleh.

@alex_c is right: the recorded iteration of the song is one licence, and the music and lyrics (covered by the publishing licence) is another. If Rap Genius haven't licensed the music and lyrics, then it's no different legally to filesharing mp3s.

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