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Walter Ritter, author of the pearLyrics application and widget that automatically searches the Web for song lyrics and adds them to the lyrics field in iTunes, said that he had been contacted by Warner/Chappell Music and asked to remove the software or face legal action.

'As a freeware developer I can not afford to risk a law suit against such a big company, although personally I don't see where pearLyrics should infringe any copyrights handled by them,' he writes in a statement on his website. '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. Well, but I'm just a developer and not a lawyer.'

This latest move, which has also resulted in the disappearance from Apple's Dashboard pages of most of the lyrics widgets, is thought to

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be part of a wider campaign to prevent the publication and distribution of lyrics on the Internet. They are, after all, copyrighted.

According to Witter the letter he received drew parallel between the distribution of lyrics and the sharing of music via p2p networks.

'What disconcerts/disappoints me most however is that now, after fighting against illegal filesharing (something I can fully understand) and trying to shut down lyrics sites, Warner/Chappell seems to want to dictate Internet users what applications they are allowed to use for searching and browsing content on publicly available websites,' he says. 'I am not sure if they actually checked pearLyrics for what it does, or if they just thought, hey, let's try and just send a cease and desist letter, after all, this is just a little freeware developer and he won't risk standing up against us anyway.'

He adds that Warner/Chappell declined to respond to the two mails he sent, in which he argued that they may just have misunderstood what pearLyrics is about.

'If they did realize that pearLyrics is just a highly specialized webbrowser, then, well, then it is indeed a black day for the freedom of Internet and the users choice of tools to use,' he writes. 'Well, maybe they don't like caching, but then again, any webbrowser and even all the search engines use caching techniques, so where is the point? Could it be that those companies are too powerful for them to sue? And more importantly, what's next? Forbidding text editors because one might type copyrighted song lyrics?'