PearLyrics was a great little Mac OSX widget that could automatically search for song lyrics on the net and display them as you played music in iTunes. Unfortunately, the free program may have been too great. Walter Ritter, the developer, has pulled the app after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Warner/Chappell Music. "As a freeware developer I can not afford to risk a law suit against such a big company,"
Ritter says on his site, adding that "personally I don't see where pearLyrics should infringe any copyrights handled by them. After all pearLyrics only searches and accesses publicly available websites, displays, and, at the users wish, caches its content. Something that can easily be done with any combination of search engine and webbrowser too." I'd have to agree. This looks like a case of a big label's lawyers going after a soft target after finding they can't shut down real copyright infringers. It would be great to see some group like the EFF take up Ritter's case, and it would be even better to see record companies stop harassing their customers and treating them like criminals, but I somehow suspect that's not about to happen.
Tags: freeware, news
