PearLyrics is a program that displays the lyrics of the currently-playing track in iTunes: it gets the lyrics from the ID3 tag in the MP3 file, or if they aren't in there, it searches for them on a few different web sites, and then saves them into the MP3s.

It's very handy: I managed to use it to download the lyrics for almost half of my music collection in one fell swoop.

Except that the author got a "Cease and Desist" letter from Warner/Chappell Music, who seem to think that his program -- which is, basically, nothing more than a specialized web browser -- is somehow in violation of their copyrights.

But, the author doesn't have the time or money to risk a lawsuit, so he panicked and pulled it.

Update: fiyin has a mirror of it and a torrent on his site. There's another mirror at thock.com. And another here. Another list of mirrors here. If you know of more mirrors, please let me know.

Update 2: Some press (which is almost entirely cut-and-paste rephrasery from Pearworks -- a gem of journalism, really): Music giants bear down on lyric search apps.

Update 3: More press, mostly about the attack on the lyrics sites themselves:

"The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income," he said. "But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we're taking a more proactive stance."

Update 4: The PearLyrics site now says that Warner/Chappell has "apologized" for the "tone and substance" of their take-down letter. But that means nothing, because the software remains unavailable. Once you can again download PearLyrics from the developer's site, I'll believe that their apology means a damned thing.