This is what I look like when I'm stunned. Warner Music has apparently apologized to the guy who was trying to make music lyrics available to folks who, you know, like to listen to music, where they had previously told the guy to go pound sand.

But if you check out this article from Wired, you see…the rest of the story:

One of Ritter's recent brainstorms — an application that queries lyrics data online to help music fans choose tracks based on themes, like "love" or "breakup" — may now remain only an idea, he says.

"I'm concerned with how I should go on with software development, because this will be a potential issue — every time I come up with something that people like, someone might say 'you can't do that, it's illegal and it infringes copyright," Ritter told Wired News. "It's getting really difficult to be innovative as a small developer."

(Bowler tip to Boing Boing for the linky to Wired)

Now, let's cogitate on this for a second, because a couple of things spring to mind.

The music industry, who never misses an opportunity to piss off their customers, is beginning to attack sites that offer lyrics. In typical music industry fashion, they are striking out blindly. Sure, you could make a case for going after sites that run ads and make money off of publishing online lyrics that the sites themselves don't own. But I don't personally see the point in this, because if you're looking for lyrics to a song, chances are you already have a copy of the song. Whether it's illegally obtained, legally obtained, you've got the song. Does it really make any difference to anybody if somebody who has a copy of the song wants to know what's being said in the song? When was the last time you thought about driving to a music store (as in, one that sells sheet music, if you can find one) and thought, "Oh, to hell with that. Hal Leonard can kiss my ass. I'm going to STEAL THE LYRICS FROM THE NET! MOOHOOHAHAHA."

No, you've never thought that. I doubt seriously that a single sale of sheet music has been lost to the internet over lyrics. Ever.

Tablatures are mentioned as well, and for those of you like me who are about as musically proficient as a dead armadillo, you might not know that the tabs are what help you play a song on the guitar. That's another kettle of worms, frankly, although honestly, having been in a band, it's not like removing tabs from the Net is going to keep anybody from covering someone else's music. I've seen songs go from the stereo to being covered live in the next room in less than an hour. So.

But let's go back to lyrics, because they're a glaring example of everything I've been complaining about with this copyright nonsense. We've established that lyrics are generally only consulted by people who already have a copy of the music. And it's obvious that the music industry's War on Downloading is about as effective as America's War on Drugs. Both Wars have achieved two things: a lot of money thrown in the crapper and a lot of people pissed off and inconvenienced.

Here would be my advice to Walter Ritter, he of pearWorks who caused this shitstorm in the first place by daring to like music enough to want to make the experience more pleasurable to other music lovers: stop. Why are you rewarding the music industry with your time and effort when their reaction is to shoot you down and waste your time with angry letters of legalese? They don't want your help. They apparently don't need your help.

If you really want to do something to help yourself and other music lovers, take your idea of making an app that finds music based on your mood, and make an app that finds music by musicians who want people to hear their stuff. You know, those folks who are the Anti-Warner Music. The artist who understand that if they are found via pearMusicMood (or whatever you're going to call it), they will be found by a new listener and thus, might sell some copies of their album.

It might be helpful if there was a one-stop shop where you could find artists who actually want to be shared, which I've offered to compile, but no one seems to be really taking me seriously.

Honestly, people: the music companies, the movie companies, a large number of artists and so forth…they don't love you. You're like people caught in an abusive relationship, you know that? You keep thinking "Maybe if I do this, they'll love me again." But they won't. They're just going to keep hitting you with cease and desist letters and lawsuits and other such signs of their "affection" until you finally break up with them and leave them. You want to remake "Steamboat Willie" or write your own Superman story, and instead of making your own characters or cartoons or shacking up with creators who will actually treat you nicely, you stay with the big abusive SOBs who want you to enjoy their art but Their Way or not at all. The only way these assholes will ever stop is if you stop giving them your time and money. There are so many bands and writers and artists of all shapes and sizes who deserve your money more and will love you the way you want to be loved.

Just let it go, okay? Seriously.