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Song lyrics?

Should lyrics be included on song pages?

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M

MTC

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Recently a user called Mko has been adding song lyrics to song pages, only for them to be deleted by Zhen Lin, who suggested someone make a thread about it if they want to have them, so should song lyrics be added to the song pages or not?
 
The issues of contention are:
1. Are they relevant?
2. Do we need it? We could just as easily link to any of the dedicated lyric archives sites out there.

Anyway. Since Evan is away, it could be a while before we can come to a decision about this.

If I remember correctly, one of the other issues was the risk of legal action, but they are probably irrelevant at this point, considering the other stuff we have. In particular, this was the trigger: for those of you that remember Itomaru's Encyclopedia Pokémonica, this is part of the reason given for them shutting down:
...小プロの要請は、「スクリーンショット」「自作イラスト」「歌詞の英訳」「小説版『ポケットモンスター』の一部引用及び英訳」の削除...
Click to expand...
"... ShoPro's demands were for the removal of the screenshots, fanart, English translations of lyrics, English translations of portions of the Pocket Monsters novels ...", more or less. But we've already got the first two in vast quantities, and we're not in Japan, so that's less of a problem.
 
I'll take this opportunity to point out that Wikipedia guideline (not rule, though) says no to copyrighted lyrics, but then again, it also says no to fair use images and screenshots, which have in abundance.

However, point two of Wikipedia's lyric guidelines is that "Wikipedia isn't designed to mirror primary sources, that should instead be done at Wikisource." The same applies here - Bulbapedia text is covered by one licence (with some exceptions - mostly Wikipedia-based content) - and we have a place for primary sources as well - Bulbagarden Archives - it has all of one essay at the moment - but the basic categorisation schemes are in place.

Blackjack Gabbiani said:
They wanted the FANART removed? That's just insane.

Anyway, animelyrics.com has translated lyrics and they've never gotten in trouble.
Click to expand...

Fanart is, whether you like it or not, trademark infringement. It usually isn't copyright infringement. Whether or not fanart is covered by fair use law is something for lawyers to get rich with.

Animelyrics.com, if you haven't noticed, is an English language site. A few weeks ago, a poster raised the same point about the risk:
M. Ryuuji said:
Just be very very careful. The anti-copyright-infringement scene in Japan is frighteningly efficient and almost entirely automated. Even posting lyrics is grounds for being spider'd and then sent an auto-generated cease and desist. This why it's usually easier to find lyrics for J songs on English-run sites like this as opposed to J equivalents -- J sites within their jurisdiction that collect a lot of lyrics permanently in one place are knocked off the internet pretty fast.
Click to expand...

But Japan is Japan. The server is in USA (somewhere), our middleman is in New Jersey, the site owner in Australia, the Editor-in-Chief is in Philadelphia (currently Europe)...
 
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It's probably just an excuse they picked. Consider the case of Al Capone - virtually no one gets charged for tax evasion, but he did - because they needed a solid case to convict him. Likewise, here, ShoPro needed to convince the site owner to shut down.

The other thing to consider, perhaps, is that many Japanese imageboards are mostly anonymous. Ever noticed that a good number of posters are 名無しさん or some other variant?
 
I personally would find them very useful, especially if there were all 3 forms (Kanji, romanji, and translations) as that could help me work on my Japanese. *hehe*

Though one might have to worry if the contributer is stealing the translations or something :/
 
Could we put the lyrics on a separate page attached to the song in question? Also, I am wary about English translations, but I don't see the harm in posting the original Japanese/English/whichever-language-applies lyrics, as those are not open to interpretation by a translator.
 
I was looking at the pages for the recent episodes, and I got a question.

What about the lyrics for the English openings?
 
While the archives may be the best place for this sort of thing, I see no reason why we don't put them on the 'Pedia at least in English--perhaps host the Japanese version, for the curious, on the Archives. We're not going to get in trouble having lyrics posted up, or else every MySpace in the world would be shut down. As a matter of convenience, it'd be a good idea to post up all lyrics, if possible.
 
Lyrics are making the song pages quite cluttered and long. Perhaps they should be their own articles, even in their own namespaces.
 
Trivia part should be eliminated, with featured episodes discussed in the description paragraph.

People and Pokemon who appear in the video is meaningless bullshit.

The other way you fix this is making it Glory_Day_(Ending) vs. Glory_Day_(Song)
 
If we were to be so economic about what to put in the encyclopedia, we may as well just use Wikipedia.
 
Please note: The thread is from 18 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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