Hello everyone. I am not a regular here, and am, in fact employed by one of the very publishing companies that HFA/NMPA represents.

Judging from your posts, this is mostly a reasonable group of people, and this is a reasonable site dedicated to a distinct niche of the music market.

After reading this thread, I hoped that I might be able to shed some light on this situation for all of you. Roger in Baltimore has pretty much nailed the situation on the head.

You see, your site is only one of literally THOUSANDS that we publishers send HFA/NMPA to on a DAILY basis. The truth is, what NMPA is doing is at the request of the publishers that own the vast majority of copyrights in the U.S. and they have a very small staff and little funding to accomplish this. However, this is a very serious matter that cannot be ignored. This is probably why they come across as more heavy-handed than this site, in particlar, may warrant.

They've dealt with an enormous number of downright abusive and angry people who are willfully and blatantly seeking to thumb their noses at copyright law - and who post extensive databases of current, money-making lyrics. I do not see that as being the case here, but no-one at NMPA has the time necessary to do the searching which I have just done at this site. In fact, it is extremely rare that I have this much time.

The publishing community is overwhelmed right now - and make no mistake about it MOST OF THE PRESSURE IS COMING FROM THE WRITERS THEMSELVES. Picture this, if you will. You are the person who designed this site, and in it, you designed a number of distinct pieces of art as well as a database method that has not been done before. Let's even up the stakes - the site's owners paid you to do this. Designing websites is how you make your living and feed your family. Someone comes along and copies all your artwork and your code and freely distributes it on the web. Several potential customers download the freebie and cancel their contract with you. How would you feel?

There has been a lot of bad blood built up on both sides of this digital uses issue, but the clear fact is that THE LAW CLEARLY STATES THAT COPYING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE OWNER IS ILLEGAL. You DO have such copyrighted material on this site and what my company pays NMPA to do is gain a list of those titles which we may own so that we can work on finding mutually acceptable solutions. We ARE NOT HERE TO SPOIL ANYONE'S fun. We are here to PROTECT THE SONGWRITER who makes his/her living from royalties paid on uses of their songs. Even in the case where a songwriter may be deceased, very often their heirs are making their livings promoting and maintaining the works of their parent.

We are all music lovers here. What we need to keep in sight is that, without the ability to earn a living writing songs, we would be so much the poorer culturally. We need to protect the individual's right to claim ownership of their works. Please, I would like to request sanely that you simply provide NMPA with the list of titles on your site. I will be in touch them personally to discuss this site and make clear that I do not see it as being equivalent to an ILS.

Thank you for listening!

P.S. - I won't give my name here simply because my e-mail can handle no more hate mail than I already receive.