The whole My.MP3.com thing from ages ago indicates trouble even if you do verify the user owns the music.

Eh... That's an apples to bananas comparison if you ask me. You can do a google search to find thousands of high-profile lyrics sites that have been around for quite a while. If we did something on the down-low on riocar.org, it would never show up in a Google search, because nobody would be linking to it. The my.mp3.com thing was actual unauthorized distribution of music, whereas lyrics are generally transcribed by the masses. As I mentioned, the record companies HAVE gone after some of the heaviest-hitters (The LEO archive that used to be on FTP, lyrics.ch, etc) but there's no way they'd go after a private database where only a few dozen people are accessing them.

We could even use this BBS to post LRC files if we wanted to. One thread per album or per artist or something like that... The BBS's search feature could be used to find them.... It sounds like you wouldn't endorse this, but if you just created a forum that required users to be registered and logged-in to view it, I think it'd be secure, and I can't imagine a scenario where you'd hit any legal trouble.

But, of course, that's your decision to make. I just think that there would be hundreds of sites they'd go after first.