In a classic case of ready-fire-aim, music publishing giant Warner-Chappell apologized to PearLyrics founder Walter Ritter, whose application searched users' files and the Web for lyrics to import into their iTunes folder.

As reported earlier, Warner-Chappell's first reaction to the application was a cease-and-desist letter as part of a crackdown on sites that publish lyrics and song scores.

Trouble was, PearLyrics isn't a site and it doesn't publish lyrics or song scores — it just searches for sites that do, just as Google, Yahoo! or any other search engine would.

While PearLyrics lacked the legal guns to call Warner-Chappell's bluff, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred Von Lohmann wasn't intimidated. In a widely circulated letter to W/C, he noted that "pearLyrics does not violate U.S. copyright law and that any legal threats by Warner/Chappell against U.S. software developers in connection with software similar to pearLyrics could expose Warner/Chappell to legal action in U.S. federal courts."

In one corner stood hopelessly out-lawyered pearLyrics creator Walter Ritter, an Austrian developer whose application cleverly searched the Internet for the lyrics to songs playing on iTunes. The application would then automatically append the lyrics field of the ID3 tag for a particular song.

In the other corner stood more-than-amply lawyered publishing giant Warner-Chappell Music.

Fly, meet Buick.

Suing file-sharers is apparently so 18-months-ago that the music industry, in dire need of something new to justify their hefty legal retainers, has taken aim at sites that offer "unauthorized" lyrics and unlicensed song scores. The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, said it will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006. MPA president Lauren Keiser told the BBC that shuttering websites and imposing fines aren't quite sufficient, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective." Ho, ho, ho.

Ever loathe to let facts get in the way of a good jihad, Warner-Chappell conveniently overlooks the fact that, rather than reproduce lyrics, Ritter's software merely searches publicly available sites that do.

So, one cease-and-desist order later, down goes pearLyrics. One wonders how quickly Google would have folded its cards.

"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," Ritter wrote. "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."

In an update, Ritter proves himself a good sport:

"Please try to understand Warner/Chappell, they are only trying to ensure that their artists get compensated for what they are doing - after all, it's their job."