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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers Legal
US publishers win lawsuit against lyrics website
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 15 October 2012
A number of US music publishers last week won a lawsuit against a lyrics website run by Brad Greenspan, one of the co-founders of MySpace.
As previously reported, American’s National Music Publishers Association announced its members were suing LiveUniverse in August 2009, claiming that the site was infringing copyright by making lyrics available without a licence from the relevant publishers. Warner Chappell, Bug Music and Peermusic led on the litigation.
Judge George Wu ruled in favour of the publishers last week without a full hearing, mainly because of “misconduct” Greenspan is accused of in relation to the case, failing to provide information and to show up for hearings as requested by the court.
LiveUniverse was ordered to pay the claimants $12,500 for each of the 528 listed songs for which the site published lyrics without permission, while an injunction bans Greenspan from publishing any other lyrics on his site without first getting permission from the relevant publisher.
