Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the but-how-will-i-know-when-to-change-chords dept.
Gavitron writes "The online Guitar Tablature Archive OLGA.net has been shutdown again, to "ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come." Scant details exist, but there is more information in forums and blogs."
This reminds me of the joke argument that people make about having their minds erased after hearing music because remembering the song is a form of copying.
Tabs on OLGA aren't from published sheet music, they're written by people learning to play the song by ear. (And, they're usually wrong, in my experience)
This story reminds me of a short story called Melancholy Elephants, which gives a theory on what could happen is copyright were extended indefinitely.
"Senator, if I try to hoard the fruits of my husband's genius, I may cripple my race. Don't you see what perpetual copyright implies? It is perpetual racial memory! That bill will give the human race an elephant's memory. Have you ever seen a cheerful elephant?"
An interesting read.
-- It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Completely wrong. My ears are better than yours or anyone else's ears.:P
These guitar tabs are written by beginners as far as I can tell, who learnt from guitar tabs in the first place. I never learnt from guitar tabs! Playing by ear is the only method, lazy pricks.
Playing by ear is the lazy way to do it. It's mimicry. Learning how to read music, and understanding musical theory, is the correct way to learn music.
Then amateur tabs is definitely not the answer. The general concensus today is that most guitarists are unable to even read a staff, especially when it's a 6 (7 or even 12) string guitar chord. Tabs are used everywhere because they are easier, the music staff is pushed up an octave for guitar from piano, and it really was never designed for guitar. This is why they even have finger diagrams for chords. It's much easier than reading several notes, unless you truly learn that way first. If any guitarist saw tabs after learning "hard" chords on staffs, I think they would immediately see the benefits of reading tabs live if they weren't going to memorize it. Would you consider learning tabs as "reading music"? I definitely would.
I agree on understanding music theory though. Not even I have done much of that yet.
And the other thing is that some people are said to just not have a musical ear, which is the reason for written music, including tabs. Someone loves the song Johnny B. Goode, but can't even figure out that fast guitar riff going on through the entire song because they simply can't hear it. And a lot of times that's true for me even, sometimes notes are too fast to hear (this is the time when I pull out Sound Forge and do a time stretch), and I keep matching notes, sometimes tabbing them down, till I finish. Other times the scale is obvious; I think I have a better than ear than some of my friends because some praise tab sites like OLGA, and I hate what I would consider inaccuracies. Books are 100% accurate apparently, but I really don't own many and don't feel like I need to (plus the price). The argument then becomes, as usual, why pay when you can get it for free? Shouldn't written music be like free speech? Why can't the publishing company lower the prices? Sometimes, even the most simple music gets priced at $20 or more per book (I'm not advocating prices based on complexity either). That's more than the album, which you could buy and just play by ear if you have one. My $0.02.
> Would you consider learning tabs as "reading music"?
Hmm... Not really. It's more like reading "Cliffs Notes." You get the gist of it, but the execution is greatly obscured. Sheet music tells you things that just aren't in tabulatures: most importantly, note and rest duration. But it also shows other things, like note style (legato/staccato), volume changes ([de]crescendos), and there are other handy things like codas. I believe it is also easier to denote dramatic changes in the music, such as time or key signatures, in the middle of a song.
Also with sheet music, it is easier to represent more than one instrument on the same page, although since we are only talking about one instrument here (guitar), that's mostly just a space-saving convenience and not really important in this discussion. Unless you have a friend that plays Bass.:)
BTW, I'm not really suggesting that tabs are worse than sheet music. With tabs, a creative person may take more liberties with the music, adding their own feel to it, making it "theirs." With sheet music, people usually play exactly what is printed, exactly as was originally intended.
Music is sound, not notation. The ear is the proper organ for sound, not the eye.
The correct way to use notation is to "hear" it in the mind's ear and play from that, so the first thing you need to play well from notation is a really good ear. . . backed up by music theory so you know what it is you're hearing; and why.
But I advise beginning to learn your theory with a monochord and a yard/meterstick and moving on to a one octave koto/dulcimer, tuning your intervals by ear. The piano has been the death of musical sense.
You don't make a living selling sheet music. Sheet music is just as much a recording as is a sound recording. Before the invention/wide distribution of sound recordings sheet music was the recorded music business and there's still money in it. The popular jazz fake book once had to be distributed by samizdat sneaker net, because it was just as illegal as a home burned CD to distribute.
Jay Ungar makes a good deal of his living from selling the sheet music for that fiddle tune he wrote, downloading it rather than buying it really is taking food from his mouth, although why one would need the sheet music for it is beyond me.
No, but musical sense died about the mid 1800s when equal temperment tuning first became the de facto standard, but if you've never heard music actually played in tune you'd never know that. In fact you'd likely think it was out of tune. . .
. ..because the piano has killed your musical sense. It is fundamentally out of tune, but nearly all of our music is played to match it, one of the few exceptions being solo fiddle and even that is beginning to die, because modern fiddle players are taught to match the piano even when they're playing solo.
The piano killed musical sense, the electronic tuner is kicking the corpse.
The ear is not just that thing on the outside of your head. The nervous system is part of the ear. Sound as you percieve it happens in the brain, not at the eardrum. The brain remembers what it heard. You can "play" music in your brain because your brain contains a sound recording of what you heard.
Beethoven could compose when he was deaf. He could "hear" what he was writing because his brain could reproduce a the sound, even though his "ear" could not.
I think there is a lot to be said for learning to play by ear. Saying "that's the lazy way to do it" seems slightly arrogant and, maybe a little ignorant of some of the benefits of playing by ear (in my opinion; and you are certainly welcome to yours).
Learing to read music proper isn't going to necessarily help you develop an ear for music, or for tone - which you need to jam with people and is really necessary if you want to play nicely with others.
Re:Why?
by
Anonymous Coward
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>With sheet music, people usually play exactly what is printed, exactly as was originally intended.
No, they don't. Ever seen a masterclass for classical piano? Either the musicians can't read the score even after 10 or 15 years of studying music, or the score doesn't convey everything that's needed for proper performance. Every style in music you'll need to listen to, if you want to know how it is done. If you don't believe me, take a classically trained pianist and hand him something written by Oscar Peterson. I think a good comparison would be writing. You won't know how a foreign language sounds unless you hear it. The fact that the same letters are used won't help at all.
Lazy != wrong, just different. I used that word because it was the word used in the parent.
My father learned to play piano, banjo, and mandolin by ear (guitar by book), and as a bit of a musician myself, I see advantages to both. By-ear musicians tend to be more original and innovative, while by-the-book musicians may gain technical advantages.
As for gaining a feel for tone, learning to play by music probably won't help those who are "tone deaf," but neither would playing by ear.
Music died when folks stopped singing and playing musical instruments and left music to the "experts".
Yeah, that too. I'm not sure the last time I played recorded music. I know the reason I did so was to learn a fiddle tune well enough that I didn't need to listen to a recorded version anymore.
The time before that it was to learn a song to sing, but if I want to hear it I go ask the delightful young woman who wrote it to sing it for me. She usually obliges and I might well add some harmony:
> Music died when folks stopped singing and playing musical instruments and left music to the "experts".
I guess I'm your antithesis then. I make music, and some of it is relatively original, yet make no claims to being an expert. Granted, the only traditional instrument I play is a trumpet, but a PC can be a very powerful "instrument." I also don't claim to be great, but there are some people who like it a lot. Are you saying that, somehow, your opinion of what is "music" means more than another person's?
Tabs as transcribed by fans, are often MORE accurate. And if they err (in the manner a published transcription may err in order to make the 'arrangement' easier to play, they often hit the accuracy and ease of play targets more accurately than the rushed officially published sheet music transcription. Sure there are lot of poor fan transcriptions out there that are wrong, but they sort of get wikied away. People take what they can use and leave the rest.
Official published transcription and tablature, when and where it even exists, has a tighter range of quality, but the target often falls short of the mark. Sometimes, deliberately. Either the transcriptionists they use could care less, or there is a deliberate corruption of the published arrangement, and lyric content, perhaps as a copyright trap, if not pure carelessness. Those versions sometimes see some correction in the marketplace, but not much.
The main reason there is so much fan driven tablature is selection. You can't keep sheet music in print indefinitely, as a paper product, even print on demand kiosks are limited.
Sheet music tells you things that just aren't in tabulatures: most importantly, note and rest duration. But it also shows other things, like note style (legato/staccato), volume changes ([de]crescendos), and there are other handy things like codas.
If you pick up a copy of Guitar World, you'll see that printed tabs all contain this information now. They're no longer Cliff's Notes, but they're still not all that. You might call tab the musical equivalent to reading a webpage through Babelfish -- yeah, it's translated, and nothing was really lost, but it's just not quite right:/ Also, modern music (including guitar), has information that is not really agreed upon in standard notation (it usually can be notated, but there might be some disagreement between versions), whereas it is (mostly) agreed upon in guitar tablature. Basically, both notations contain a lot of information -- and neither can really represent everything.
Also with sheet music, it is easier to represent more than one instrument on the same page
This is perhaps the most important reason to use standard notation: everybody can read it. No matter how much I'd like it, I can't get a pianist to read tablature. But a good guitarist can read a musical score.
BTW, I'm not really suggesting that tabs are worse than sheet music.
I am!:) Standard notation is not elitist, but it is conventional. It's major advantage is that it records pitch, not position. While that does make it harder to sight-read, it is easier to read (as in look at it and tell what it's doing). Standard notation builds up musical proficiency, tablature only teaches you how to move around a fretboard, with no idea what you're actually doing.
"Tabs on OLGA aren't from published sheet music, they're written by people learning to play the song by ear. (And, they're usually wrong, in my experience)"
Perhaps someone can help me?
Is a copy of intellectual property in violation of copyright if the copy is incorrect?
Ta in advance
-- God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
Very true, which is why today there is more and more music coming out that does not follow the "rules", even music theory rules. See the links below please:
These are some of the many genres today breaking all the "rules." I don't personally like this stuff, but I know many others who do, and I can definitely see in the future that things like this will change music back to the way it was before the "experts" came along.
Indeed everyone will sing again and play instruments without a care, search YouTube for noise music videos, it's crazy shit and people seem to like it.
Re:Why?
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Anonymous Coward
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I think you missed the point of what was said above. I think the poster above was saying that when everyone, professional and amateur, made music, music was "alive." But now, when most people want to listen to music instead of making music themselves (like you do) they listen to a recording of a professional.
"It's major advantage is that it records pitch, not position."
This is completely wrong. A large class of blown instruments (i.e. most woodwinds and brass) are termed "transposing instruments" because what is written as a "C" comes out as Bb, A, or Eb (depending on the particular instrument). Transposing the score to an instrument's "natural key" in this way allows a clarinet player for example to use the same fingering on instruments pitched at A. Bb, C, and Eb, whereas having them work with a score where a written middle C would equate to the key a piano player calls "middle C" would require them to learn completely separate sets of fingering for each differently pitched instrument.
Standard notation is thus every bit as positional as guitar or keyboard tab, because both contain a set of instructions telling musicians to make various physical movements that will produce a certain pitch, and not a representation of the pitch itself.
-- I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Listen man, we get it, you are "Stuck Up Musician Man". Not one person on earth, except other stuck up musicians, gives a crap HOW you transfered what you thought in your head to what you recorded, all they care about is what it sounds like. I play guitar, and have been playing for 9 years. I also play drums and a little keyboard, and know a lot about music theory. I don't disagree that it is helpful in playing, and knowing how to write on a staff is good for getting your ideas down, but tab is very useful when trying to figure out a song too. Expecially if you already have an idea of how it goes.
Oh yeah, and when you say "people usually play exactly what is printed, exactly as was originally intended", that is wrong too. Not every song ever recorded was intended exactly to sound the way it was. When you play, unless you are a robot (like many collegate "musicians" who have soulessly learned the tricks of playing, without ever worrying about the fact that what they do is art, not math) when you play a song 10 times, you will play it with at least several notes varying in duration, and possibly even pitch, DEAR GOD!
Music is art, that is why people like different things. If it were not art, everyone would agree which is the best, and which is the worst.
Learning how to read English is mimicry, done wrong. Speech is sound, not notation. The ear is the proper organ for speech, not the eye. All of those 'authors' writing down their words in funny notation are the death of both oratory and understanding. And much meaning is lost from, say, The Gettysburg Address, when written versus the beautifully performed original.
Ban the written word. If you don't learn your history, science, medicine, fiction, etc. orally from a teacher, then you are a lazy know-nothing.
-- Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Until you compare them to the audio recording. Sometimes they aren't even in the same key.
Sheet music is usually the original version by the original composer and lyricist (assuming that the composer could write music notation correctly and bothered to).
Somewhere around here I've got an old copy of the sheet music for "House of the Rising Sun". It's a copy of whatever the publishing house and rights owners actually have a copyright on. It bears very little resemblence to the record released by The Animals back in '64.
--
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Re:Why?
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Anonymous Coward
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Playing by ear is the lazy way to do it. It's mimicry. Learning how to read music, and understanding musical theory, is the correct way to learn music.
Reading music vs. playing by ear has nothing to do with understanding musical theory. That's like saying you can't study literature if you listen to a storyteller instead of reading a book.
Do you think Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder are merely "mimics" who don't understand musical theory?
Musicians - please mod this nonsense back down to where it belongs.
> Reading music vs. playing by ear has nothing to do with understanding musical theory.
No it doesn't, and I didn't say it did. I said the correct way to learn how to make music... I said nothing about playing it. Yes, there's a difference.
> That's like saying you can't study literature if you listen to a storyteller instead of reading a book.
No, it's more like saying you can't study literature without learning how to read at all. Unless, of course, you have a perfect memory for what you've heard. But that's still not the correct way to study literature.
> Do you think Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder are merely "mimics" who don't understand musical theory?
Starting off, yes, Ray Charles was a mimic. He mimicked gospel music. And yes, I'm not so sure they necessarily knew much/any musical theory. Doesn't mean they weren't good. I did not say that you can't become great by learning the "wrong" way. Louis Armstrong, Dizzie Gillespie, did not learn the "correct" way to play, but they were considered masters.
> Musicians - please mod this nonsense back down to where it belongs.
No, it's not. Maybe I wasn't clear, so I'll try again... Standard notation records pitch, tablature records position.
A large class of blown instruments (i.e. most woodwinds and brass) are termed "transposing instruments"... having them work with a score where a written middle C would equate to the key a piano player calls "middle C" would require them to learn completely separate sets of fingering for each differently pitched instrument.
This is correct, but that doesn't mean fingering and transposition are the same thing. Transposing is another one of those things a musician is expected to know how to do -- and depending on your focus, you may be expected to memorize the natural key and range of every instrument in an orchestra. Regardless of where concert C is, the notes still represent a pitch. Fingering is a different story. If you've ever read a piano score, you will sometimes see small numbers 1-5 next to some of the noteheads. These are fingering guides, and tell the player where to position his hands. Much music written for piano includes both the noteheads (pitch) and the fingering (position).
Guitar tablature, however, does not include information about pitch. Sometimes, in printed form, publishers will print guitar music on two staves: the one on top written in standard notation (pitch/duration), and the one on bottom in tablature (position). Again, the tablature includes no pitch information. The tuning of the instrument determines the pitches heard, and the tablature must be adjusted to compensate for different tunings. In standard notation, the music is just there, regardless of how the instrument is tuned and does not need adjusted.
Standard notation is thus every bit as positional...
Again, in instruments where you can produce more than one sound, fingering is notated separately. Mateo Carcassi was an 18th (I think) century composer who produced some performance and instructional pieces for guitar. In these (written in standard notation), he actually wrote in three extra sets of information for position: numbers indicating the left hand fingering (economy of motion), dots indicating the right hand fingering (which finger will strike which note), and left hand position (how high up the fret board the student should play a passage).
... as guitar or keyboard tab,...
I really hope the keyboard tab thing is a mistake. Piano is probably the most important instrument for a musician to learn, and playing from tabs is hardly learning. I can't even imagine how you would notate something like this in tab -- the closest I've seen is the piano roll.
... because both contain a set of instructions telling musicians to make various physical movements that will produce a certain pitch, and not a representation of the pitch itself.
This is true, for instruments where more than one fingering is possible. However, standard notation is, strictly speaking, pitch. Here's why: if a trumpet player hands me a score for trumpet, I can play it on guitar from the sheet music, even though I have no idea how the trumpet is fingered. If he handed me a series of fingering diagrams, I couldn't even guess what it would sound like, but he could play it. It works both ways. If I handed him a work written for guitar (in standard notation), he could play it (at least the melody - he can't play chords obviously). If that work was written in tab, however, my horn player can't. Do you see the difference now?
I used to think this way, but after gigging for years with both types of people, I think it's this:
You need to be able to do both, but if one was more important, I'd say playing by ear is more important.
There are plently of amazing professional musicans who can't read a note of music, and it doesn't stop them. The music in inside them. They don't need paper to get it in, or out. Can Stevie Wonder read music?
However, there are scores of 8th grade kids and amateur adults who can read sheet music just fine, but it sounds like crap because they are thinking of it in terms of splotches of ink and finger movements, and not sound. They typically freeze when the music is taken away.
Find ANY highly-rated musician, making a living at it today - and you'll find that almost certainly they are a great reader and by-ear player. The best players can read anything, but don't need to.
Reading sheet music won't help you in a 4-piece rock band, and playing by-ear won't help you play in a studio orchestra recording a film score.
It's like language. You don't learn by the words first, you learn to speak it by mimcry. Then you learn to be literate, so you share ideas with people that aren't with you right now. You can't learn a foreign language by a dictionary alone. You'll have to be "lazy" and start mimcing the accent, tone, cadence, and all the other things that makes a language sound natural. Otherwise, you'll sound stilted and incorrect, just like the person who never learned to play anything by ear.
-- I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
On the off chance you aren't a troll...
I guess you will have to toss out TONS of great musicians, especially in the guitar realm. Dig on Hendrix? B.B. King? Zakk Wylde? (just to name a few, there really are tons of self taught, and non-music reading guitarists that can really play, and can really write great music). Coming from the slashdot crowd it's not surprising that your comment was modded insightful, but really I think it's bunk.
There is no "correct" way to learn music. It's a form of art. To dictate a prescribed method is to deny that art. While having well defined "rules" and learning progression works well for science (ie stuff that slashdot readers are great at).
Learning to play by ear focuses on the ear, or more precisely the sound. In the end the sound is the important part. Those musicians who can't get their heads OUT of the sheet music are the poor ones. I'd take someone who can play a song by ear, or better yet, write a song by ear, than someone who can read every chord, and how it can theoretically be used. Theory and sheet music can't tell you what will sound good or bad. That takes ears, bottom line.
There are lots of great musicians who used sheet music, and theory as _tools_ to further their music. In the end EVERY great musician/writer has used their ears.
I know I know... reading music and knowing theory is the *right* way...
Picasso painted wrong too...
> I guess you will have to toss out TONS of great musicians,
CAN YOU PEOPLE FUCKING READ??? A half-dozen people so far have totally failed to comprehend what I said and then attacked me for what they wanted my post to say. I said the "CORRECT WAY TO LEARN." I didn't say "artists who didn't learn by notation aren't artists."
The "correct" way to learn to be a doctor is to go to med school. That doesn't mean you can't gain those same skills by "mimicking" a real doctor. But you lose a lot by doing it that way, and it's not considered "correct." However, you may gain some skills that school-trained doctors don't have.
Not quite as good: The "correct" way to learn a programming language is to study its structure, commands, and start by writing simple programs. I learned C by staring at MUD code and tracing it until it made sense. I may have lost a lot doing it that way, I may have gained more insight, but it doesn't mean I am a better or worse programmer because of it. I still do not claim to have learned it "correctly."
To deny the brush is to deny the art, regardless whether you use it... However, I never denied the ear!
"Maybe I wasn't clear, so I'll try again... Standard notation records pitch, tablature records position."
You were perfectly clear the first time -- reiterating a wrong statement does not make it right.
"This is correct, but that doesn't mean fingering and transposition are the same thing. Transposing is another one of those things a musician is expected to know how to do -- and depending on your focus, you may be expected to memorize the natural key and range of every instrument in an orchestra. Regardless of where concert C is, the notes still represent a pitch. Fingering is a different story."
A transposing instrument is not one whose player has to mentally transpose things, but one whose score is transposed into a different key from the one played by C pitched instruments. Consider for example a work whose true key is C major: those playing Bb instruments will read from a score written in D, Eb instruments from one in A (they usualy, but not always, score these down rather than up because the Eb family tends to be high-pitched), and A instruments will have a score written in C#. This score transposition is intended to ensure that the player can use the same fingering for each instrument in a particular family, so a clarinet player who is has to switch between a Bb clarinet and an A clarinet in a particular piece of music (because each instrument has a distinct tone) will have this reflected by a score whose key changes (assuming again a C major piece) from D to C#, thus allowing him or her to use exactly the same finger positions on both instruments to produce what in actual pitch terms is C major scale.
"I really hope the keyboard tab thing is a mistake. Piano is probably the most important instrument for a musician to learn, and playing from tabs is hardly learning. I can't even imagine how you would notate something like this in tab -- the closest I've seen is the piano roll."
Keyboard tab is a little picture of a small part of a keyboard with black dots on various keys to represent chords. The only place I've seen it used is as a teaching aid in books showing how to play things such as modal Jazz, where chords such as 9ths and 13ths are commonly used; it tends to sit under a piano score rather than taking the place of one, and helps students cope with the fact that Modal Jazz is one of those forms that looks very horrible indeed when written out because (a) it tends to be harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically complex, and (b) the use of a 9 note diminished scale means that key signatures have no real meaning.
"standard notation is, strictly speaking, pitch. Here's why: if a trumpet player hands me a score for trumpet, I can play it on guitar from the sheet music, even though I have no idea how the trumpet is fingered."
But you won't be playing the same notes when reading that score, because you will play a C when reading a C, while your trumpet player will play a Bb or Eb, depending on the instrument, when reading the same note. One or the other will therefore have to actually play in a different key from what is written, thereby proving that written notes do not represent pitch any more than guitar or keyboard tab does.
"If that work was written in tab, however, my horn player can't"
That's merely due to the fact that he hasn't learned to read it, not because it would be impossible for him to do so. In my previous career as a session keyboard player, I had to read guitar tab as a matter of necessity, and can therefore play from it just as easily as any other form of commonly accepted notation (I also learned to read guitarist's finger positions on a fret-board as a consequence, which turned out to be very useful indeed!). My ability to read guitar tab obviously isn't a case of positional information, because a keyboard has no positional equivalence to a guitar, so in my case it is purely a form of notation that I used to play notes with, as is the case with standard notation.
"Do you see the difference now?"
No, I do not. Either n
-- I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
No... your missing the point. There is no _correct_ way to learn music. Bottom line, music is not about rules. The best way is the one that gets you to the point where you make the music that your ears like the most. That isn't the same for everyone. I suppose for some that means learning to read music, and understanding theory. I think for others it really doesn't matter. I couldn't imagine John Coltrane not using sheet music and theory to help him in his musical journey. At the same time, that sort of thing would have been totally irrelevant for Kurt Cobaine. I would argue that Kurt Cobaine did indeed learn music the _correct_ way for what he was doing with the music.
Oh yes, while I'm here, the "ensuring..." quote in the summary is a complete fabrication.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Oh noes!
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Anonymous Coward
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This is extremely inconvenient for many people and unwarranted, IMO.
Newer people learning guitar use tabs to get the gist of a certain song. It even helps experienced guitarists using standard notion, as tabs can very quickly point to a place to start, octave wise on the neck of the guitar.
I really, really hope something bad happens to the RIAA (like people die bad).
Re:Oh noes!
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Anonymous Coward
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Oh yes, while I'm here, the "ensuring..." quote in the summary is a complete fabrication.
By "fabricated" are you suggesting some sort of fraudulent intent, or what exactly do you mean?
Examples of the compositions infringed include "Beautiful Day" written by Clayton/Evans/Mullen/Hewson and administered by Universal Music Publishing, and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" written by Lennon/McCarthy and administered by Sony/ATV Tunes LLC.
Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing his copyrights, John Lennon might have to quit music and get a day job! Then where will all the Beatles fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new Beatles music, I'm sure.
Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing his copyrights, John Lennon might have to quit music and get a day job!
It is called estate planning, asset management. Something the grown-ups here will understand.
Then where will all the Beatles fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new Beatles music, I'm sure.
NASA loses the moon-walk tapes. The master recordings of The Beatles are preserved and protected because they have commercial value. There are 170 Beatles titles in print. The alblums. Live performances, BBC transcriptions.
Interpretations of The Beatles by other significant talents must number in the thosands. The Cirque du Soleil's "Love" sella out at $150 a seat in Las Vegas.
Can we sue the RIAA for not releasing any new Beatles songs? Isn't it in their contract somewhere?
I bet without the RIAA songs would cost 20% what they do today.
To make them go away all we gotta do is stop giving them or their affiliates money..
You want them to go away, don't you?/grin/
Re:Terrible!
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Anonymous Coward
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And you didn't mention all those folksingers of old, who merely wrote because they'd get money from their lyrics. Of course, at the time, they didn't think to ask congress to "protect" their songs so that they'd write more...silly them, they actually encouraged other people to play and sing the songs. Worse yet, they encouraged those people to do that "free!"
"If I had a hammer, I'd hammer on the RIAA, I'd hammer on the MPAA, I'd hammer on the DMCA, all over this land..."
Given that copyright was intended to give artists incentive to continue creating music (which is the grandparent's point, and also happens to be true), how does the Lennon estate justify its privilege to hold the rights to John's work? How are they furthering the cause of encouraging new music creation?
For thousands of years, we had no IP laws. Minstrels, musicians, writers and poets copied from one another and competed for the resulting ubiquity of their works. Hundreds of thousands of books were thus preserved, until they were intentionally destroyed at Alexandria.
My family gets together with several other families every year for a big Easter weekend camp out, and Saturday night is always dedicated to a campfire sing-along. This year, one of my cousins brought a huge compilation of Beatles arrangements (fully licensed) to the sing along. There was only one book, but somehow everyone around the fire knew the songs. We'd all heard them from our parents' album collections. Some of us remembered a now-defunct all-Beatles radio station that played strong for one summer and then shut down because it was unprofitable. Some of us even remember singing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or the Money Can't Buy Me Love Madrigal in choir. Considering the Beatles haven't been heavily advertised since Anthology, which was almost 10 years ago, I'd say that was pretty damn good. Estates and commercialism aside, the Beatles wrote and performed some amazing music. If all the IP laws in the world disappeared tomorrow, their music would not be forgotten. So what is the function of the Lennon estate again?
Given that copyright was intended to give artists incentive to continue creating music (which is the grandparent's point, and also happens to be true), how does the Lennon estate justify its privilege to hold the rights to John's work? How are they furthering the cause of encouraging new music creation?
John's work is his estate.
What drives our most creative and ambitious talents we may ever fully understand but building an estate for one's family is often very much a part of it.
In any event. the distribution of his estate was his decision alone. Would you chose to have your own estate extinguished to serve some nebulous public purpose? I didn't think so.
For thousands of years, we had no IP laws. Minstrels, musicians, writers and poets copied from one another and competed for the resulting ubiquity of their works. Hundreds of thousands of books were thus preserved, until they were intentionally destroyed at Alexandria.
From the classical to the modern era almost the whole of western art and literature can be traced to the independently wealthy or those working under aristocratic or clerical patronage. The lower class has no voice. The middle class has no voice. Women have no voice.
You don't need to go to law when you have a divine-right King or a Pope at your back. But neither do you have the freedom to say anything against their interest. Unless, of course, you are prepared to burn at the stake like Tyndale.
Considering the Beatles haven't been heavily advertised since Anthology, which was almost 10 years ago, I'd say that was pretty damn good. Estates and commercialism aside, the Beatles wrote and performed some amazing music. If all the IP laws in the world disappeared tomorrow, their music would not be forgotten. So what is the function of the Lennon estate again?
All art goes in and out of style. It will happen in time, even to the Beatles.
We have the whole of Disney and only fragments from other studios. I'll take the odds on family pride and self-interest when it comes to long-term survival.
First all that's left of all the money he made while alive, then the income from all the copyrights.
My job won't keep paying me after I die, in fact it pays alot less than while I'm alive now than he made while alive, yet that's all I get to leavemy heirs.
You know, I've read just about every post on this particular thread, and for all your argueing and bickering about IP laws and whether John Lennon's estate is protected and music belonging to the wealthy in the middle ages . . . I have to say you're all missing the bigger picture.
The OLGA have been shut down. Why? To protect artists? That's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard. First off: Tab books do NOT exist for every band out there. Even the major ones don't have tab books for all their albums, and most people don't buy that shit anyway. So I hold that whole arguement bogus. Second: Even if there WERE official, licensed tabs available for every song ever written the moment it came out, IMHO these people are still not breaking copywrite laws lest they copy the tabs right out of the books and share them. Even then, there's no convincing way to prove that's how they did that.
Bottom line, these tabbers - and I am one myself - spend sometimes HOURS sitting in front of the computer or the CD player, figuring out these songs, writing down an interpretation . . . and then post it on the Internet for free. They get no pay for their hard work. And all the recognition for the song remains with the artist. What this allows is for fans of the artist's work to pay homage to the bands they love by learning their songs. How, exactly, does that *hurt* artists? Especially given, as some people have pointed out, that listening to other people and learning to play their songs is how current artists got started writing their own. It's how you develop your style.
Basically, I call bullshit on this entire process, and I'll contuinue to use Ultimate Guitar to look at and submit tabs.
-- Putting the 33k in G33k.
Re:Terrible!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm glad they care so much about the artists that they spelt Paul McCartney's name properly.
You're not getting confused with the Communist Songwriter "John Lenin" are you?
Re:Terrible!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
John's work is his estate.
One wonders why his heirs can't live off the income from investments he made while alive.
I have contributed to society as well as to my employer things which will still be used after I die. Therefore, shouldn't my heirs also receive payments in perpetuity?
Is there some reason he is more special than I? (Other than being able to carry a tune, that is)
Re:Terrible!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
So what is the function of the Lennon estate again?
My job won't keep paying me after I die, in fact it pays alot less than while I'm alive now than he made while alive, yet that's all I get to leavemy heirs.
Your life. Your choices. No investments, no savings, no trust fund, no insurance?
Lenon chanced a career in music over the life of a respectable middle class Brit. It brought him to a life and a death (at age forty) that none of us will ever know.
Re:Terrible!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
IMHO these people are still not breaking copywrite laws
Humble opinions from people so unfamiliar with the law that they can't even spell the word correctly are worthless.
I'm serious. If you had read a single textbook on copyright, you'd have read the word a thousand times and be able to spell it. But all you have done is shown that you don't even have rudimentary knowledge of copyright law, in which case why should anybody take your humble opinion seriously?
This reminds me of the way many sacred Hindu holy scriptures kept in Somnath Temple were burnt and lost forever when Muslim warriors burnt the temple.
Somebody asked me once, why they were stored in a Temple and not shared with others?
I hope celebrity musicians start cherishing in art more than money.
Okay, so you've established that the point of the Lennon Estate as a holding entity for his rights is to make money for his children. I'd say that proves my point that the current system of copyright isn't serving its purpose. You could have brought up the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, which is at least tangentially related to his estate and does encourage new art, although most if not all of the funding for that contest comes from corporate sponsorship.
My point was that outrageous durations on copyright effectively grant TWO inheritances. Take two people who make the same anual income, one a surgeon and the other a good musician. Now assume they both invest thier income in a nearly identical way (same stocks, life insurance, homes next door to each other etc.) and both have a s.o. and two children.
Now suppose they both die in the same plane crash, who's children will be better off? The musician most likely as while the surgeon has stoped getting a paycheck while the musician's familly will still keep getting paychecks in the form of royalties assuming he managed to hang onto his copyrights.
Your comment reminds of something I heard Jon Brion tell years ago at one of his regular Friday night shows at Largo in Los Angeles.
To paraphrase, Brion said that we could destroy every bit of evidence that the Beatles ever existed--every record, piece of sheet music, CD, radio archive, photograph, movie--anything that represented any portion of their work. We could destroy all that, and still, in a few hundred years, anyone you stopped on the street would still be able to sing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Because even without any physical evidence of the Beatles' existence, they are now so ingrained in our culture that they are part of the human DNA and exist in every one of us at a cellular level.
Wait a minute...
by
macthulhu
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Let me get this straight... somehow showing somebody how to play a song will prevent people from writing new songs? I'm sorry, Logic has just stuffed it's head so far up it's own ass that it disappeared.
--
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Re:Wait a minute...
by
gEvil+(beta)
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· Score: 5, Funny
I view this as a major win for music fans everywhere. Think about it--the closure of tab sites on the net will result in a reduction in the number of bad cover bands. Either those people will never play music, or they'll be forced to attempt to create their own music. Judging by the talent of most cover bands, I'm guessing it will be the former. End result--less suck in the music world!
[yes, it's a joke. no, i don't think closing tab sites is a good thing.]
However, sometimes it's nice to see a cover band, only pay $5, and get to be 10 feet from the band, and be able to get good cheap bear because you're in an actual bar. As opposed to paying $100, to sit 300 yards away from the actual band, and overpaying for crap beer in a plastic cup.
--
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
somehow showing somebody how to play a song will prevent people from writing new songs?
Point taken: the connection is a shakey one at best, but I think you're playing it a bit too dumb. People do actually get revenue from people purchasing scores, for buying performance rights, etc. I can understand the *ehem* logic behind this: that every person who views the site could have bought the official notation. Honestly though, I think sharing music is more like sharing lyrics than sharing recordings. You can whistle your favourite tune on the street just fine, even though it could technically be called an arrangement and public performance.
-- You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Re:Wait a minute...
by
tepples
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Think about it--the closure of tab sites on the net will result in a reduction in the number of bad cover bands. Either those people will never play music, or they'll be forced to attempt to create their own music.
Re:Wait a minute...
by
Exocrist
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· Score: 3, Insightful
When I started to learn to play guitar, I started by learning how to play my favorite songs (new and old) from tab sites like OLGA. I think if anything, shutting down a site like this removes incentive for "musicians and songwriters" to make their music, since there will be fewer people willing to pay for lessons, or invest the time to learn how to figure songs out by ear and then notate the songs to paper (or simply in the head), and thus there will be fewer musicians making music. You have to start somewhere, and if they take away this kind of learning device, fewer people will be learning.
I also think they're just trying to get more people to buy their tabulature books, which are often full of mistakes.
Re:Wait a minute...
by
MindStalker
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· Score: 1, Informative
Last time this happends people on slashdot pointed out that these tab sites are very popular when someone is learning to play a song. Generally if a band is going to give a public performance they will purchase the sheet music (most venues require then actually).
Re:Wait a minute...
by
chmod+a+x+mojo
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Cover bands aren't all bad. Yeah SOME are, but just like any software you may find, there are probably 3-4 good ones for every bad one. If anything this would stiffle innovation, do you really think that ANY of the artists that became famous just up and started writing new stuff? Nope they ALL started by playing the music THEY grew up listening to. I don't know anyone who just picked up a guitar and started writing original music, it is impossible. You must first learn chording etc. from actual songs to "hear" how to mesh everything together.
-- To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
considering most cover bands are better than what the labels endorse these days I say get rid of the record labels and only let cover bands play. competition will drive out the sucky ones and the good ones can make money without selling their souls to the record labels.
That is called win win. of course since the labels lose money they call it lose lose.
-- i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Songwriters still get paid performance royalties via ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC when someone plays a song they learned off of OLGA.
ONLY if the performer is buying the rights to public performance via sheet music or other arrangements with the publisher. However, I'd hazard a guess that large percentage of people who do perform others' songs learned via free tab sites do not have the legal right to perform that music in public.
Re:Wait a minute...
by
Mr.+Slippery
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· Score: 2, Informative
ONLY if the performer is buying the rights to public performance via sheet music or other arrangements with the publisher.
No. Buying sheet music has nothing to do with performance rights.
Venues pay money to ASCAP, BMI, et cetera, which then do various sampling to see what songs are being played, and distribute money to songwriters. Performers don't buy performance rights, venues do.
I'd hazard a guess that large percentage of people who do perform others' songs learned via free tab sites do not have the legal right to perform that music in public.
Performers don't buy performance rights, venues do. Otherwise open mic nights would be impossible..."Ok, before you come up to the stage, we need to see your performance licences." (In theory, street musicians would need to pay ASCAP, etc., but no one enforces this.)
-- Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog You cannot wash away blood with blood
...there are probably 3-4 good ones for every bad one.
IMHO, you have those numbers backwards. Also, I view music as a creative art form. Only being able to play something that someone else has shown you indicates that you can mimic, but that you can't create on your own. Yes, you need to start somewhere, and that usually is playing songs that already exist [which is why my note at the end of my prior post says that I don't think these closures are a good thing]. However, there comes a time when you should progress past simply rehashing stuff that's already out there and begin making things on your own. Think about it in terms of other art forms, such as painting. If you came across someone who could mimic the greats really well, but couldn't paint something on their own to save their life, would you truly consider them as a good artist? I'd say that technically they were good, but no, they are not an artist--as I consider the creation aspect a large part of being an artist.
So would you argue that the many many artists who are singers and performers only, not song writers, are not really artists? That rules out the VAST majority of musicians. Not only the cookie-cutter pop artists, either. How many symphony violinists spend their time performing their own music? There's been a very traditional divide between composer and performer. For music in general, I think your viewpoint is extremely rare.
However, I think you're specifically talking about modern popular music. For this, there's a better history of singer/songwriter since it's all based on blues, jazz, and folk, which focused on personal music instead of composed music. I think you'll find more sympathy for your view in this realm. Still, there's a lot more to playing someone else's song than just hitting the notes. Interpretation is often more important than technical ability, and can completely rewrite a song, even with the same basic melodies and lyrics. Compare, for example, the many versions of Bob Dylan's "Knockin on Heaven's Door." It's hard to view the GnR cover, e.g., as a mere mimicking of the song he wrote.
So, in my opinion, creation is not limited to writing the music. "Merely" playing it offers plenty of opportunity to display creativity.
I would call them a performer. I wouldn't necessarily consider them an "artist."
-- This guy's the limit!
Re:Wait a minute...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Last time this happends people on slashdot pointed out that these tab sites are very popular when someone is learning to play a song. Generally if a band is going to give a public performance they will purchase the sheet music (most venues require then actually).
How the fuck is this informative?
As a professional musician and veteran of hundreds of gigs I have never once been required by any venue to purchase sheet music. In every rock cover band I have ever played in each player has figured out his part himself by ear.
For theatre gigs I have always been supplied the sheet music. The only way the above statement might be considered even remotely true is on jazz gigs where I will bring a couple of fake books along to play tunes I might not be very familiar with, but in no way was I required to buy these.
Generally if a band is going to give a public performance they will purchase the sheet music (most venues require then actually).
Uh, yeah. How did this get modded informative? Funny I could see, since I did get a good laugh out of it.
Assuming that a band doesn't have a reputation yet, the big requirement is usually that the owner or manager of the venue has heard them (usually through a home-made CD or MP3). Alternately, they know the owner or manager of the venue. Sheet music does not enter into it.
So would you argue that the many many artists who are singers and performers only, not song writers, are not really artists?
It dosn't really make much sense trying to work out if a performer conforms to some intellectual definition of "artist". The test is more along the lines of "do they have an audience/will people specifically go to their performance?"
That rules out the VAST majority of musicians. Not only the cookie-cutter pop artists, either. How many symphony violinists spend their time performing their own music? There's been a very traditional divide between composer and performer.
Different performers may well create a very different performance of the same piece of music. Either vocally or instramentally. e.g. it's not unknown for full orchestra to play "pop music".
For music in general, I think your viewpoint is extremely rare.
Similarly you don't find too many actor-writers...
Still, there's a lot more to playing someone else's song than just hitting the notes. Interpretation is often more important than technical ability, and can completely rewrite a song, even with the same basic melodies and lyrics.
"Trivial" changes such as tempo, key, instrement(s) can make a huge difference.
Unfortunately this is yet another example of a good law gone bad just because the technology moved on.
200 years ago the only way a song writer was going to get money is by selling the sheets. No recording, no nothing. Nowadays, tell me who relies on that for their financial survivial? (Hint: noone) We have very cheap recording equipment and song writers get the money from selling their music on disks and for soundtracks of movies, etc (eventually, when Sony and the others sells them, the authors get their share).
That said, the closing of OLGA is just enforcement of a law, that was made for exactly that purpose, but is exceptionaly outdated and generally does way more harm than help.
Yep, I think we agree. Whether or not someone is an artist or whether something is art depends almost entirely on the opinion of the viewer. There is a measure of artfulness in nearly any skill that requires judgement. Whether performing a symphony, writing a concerto, or making a sandwich, there is some degree of artistry.
Ok.. Having spent a significant effort over the years learning to play the classical guitar, though, I beg to differ. The score only gives you part of the performance, the rest is due to the artistry of the performer. I am pretty good at hitting the notes, but just doing that leads to a really boring, flat performance. The good performers use much deeper interpretive skills than I am capable of, and that's what it takes to really make music.
However, as the sibling poster pointed out, reasonable people can disagree on what it means to be art. I guess we do. Hey, it's a free country and you're free to be wrong, nyah nyah! (just kidding):-)
I think your comment might have some truth to it - most bands giving public performances in bars sound so bad that they probably *are* using the purchased sheet music, which usually contains more mistakes than a typical Slashdot post.
I'm getting a kick outta these replies, as its obvious I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Actually my personal experience is with classical music where venues really do require sheet music (atleast for stuff not outta copyright, then well you still need the music).
I hope you realise that there is a massive middle-ground between the two situations you describe. You are in no way limited to either a cheap cover band or a big label, Clear Channel rip off production. I got to $5-12 shows all the time and not a cover tune is heard.
-- We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I have no idea as to whether or not venues of any type require sheet music. However, I do know when a reply is completely rude and unneccesarily harsh. If the guy/girl is wrong about this, then fine. By all means, post a reply with correct information and some sort of evidence, as many of you have. Don't act like the person has just finished stomping newborn baby puppies though, just because you think they gave incorrect info.
Also, as a guitar player, I used OLGA a lot when I was first starting out. It is sad to see organizations making it so diffult for OLGA to keep up the good work. Does anyone have any ideas as to how we could fight this and/or who we could contact to express our disapproval?
I am quite aware that there are many good concerts in the $5 to $20 range. Actually, my own philosophy is never to pay over $25 for a concert ticket. Sometimes I'll go as high as $30 if it's a band I really want to see. I saw a lot of the current big name bands before they were big, and often for around $10. I live in Ottawa, so a lot of the up and coming Canadian bands play cheap shows here. I always chuckle a little when they come back 5 years later playing at the local NHL arena, and charge $80 a ticket. I wouldn't pay that much to see anyone, I don't know why anyone else does either. I don't know who these people think they are, but that's quite a lot for what usually ends up being a less than 2 hour show.
--
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Provide a source for that fiction, dude? Cos I'm calling bullshit on it. *EVERYONE* has the right to perform *ANY* music in public. If you didn't write it, you have to pay a fee to the author. And you have to pay that fee whether or not you've bought the author's music book.
This is certainly the case in the UK and the US. I believe it's also the case in all European countries too, although I don't know for sure so I couldn't guarantee the correctness of that. Elsewhere in the world I don't know.
If you're talking the legal system of Outer Mongolia or Kyrgyrstan, then fine - but please make that clear. And since this version of OLGA wasn't hosted in Outer Mongolia or Kyrgyrstan, it ain't all that relevant.
Grab.
Re:Wait a minute...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Any band that cannot do a decent cover should not be making thier own songs.
Jeeze, just look at that sorry cacophony that is U2 for crying out loud.
Music has been passed down for generations
by
LiquidCoooled
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Without somewhere to get the pass on the music it will be lost.
I would feel great pride if I were a composer having my tune played around the world by people, its like having your code used all around. Its not like knowing the chords will give anybody an advantage to become an international star, and I doubt it would lost anyone money.
-- liqbase:: faster than paper
Re:Music has been passed down for generations
by
schon
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Without somewhere to get the pass on the music it will be lost.
Yes, exactly. That's why they're doing this.
If they don't clamp down on public memory, then they can't sell the same crap 20 years from now and call it new.
Re:Music has been passed down for generations
by
Ant+P.
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· Score: 1
Without somewhere to get the pass on the music it will be lost.
With the quality of music the current regime shits out, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.
Re:Music has been passed down for generations
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I would feel great pride if I were a composer having my tune played around the world by people,
but great composeres like Metallica and specifically Lars from metallica do not. Their masterpieces that rival those of Mozart and the other greats pale in comparison to the great Metallica creations!
Besides, for every person playing their music without paying royalties they cant buy more solid gold ferarri's or slave children.
do you understand why they are against it now?
Re:Music has been passed down for generations
by
remmelt
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· Score: 1
Well, they could claim to lose money on chordbooks. The official books are often of such better quality that this is a stupid claim. There are a lot of good tabs out there (I should know, I use them often) but usually the "real" book has greater detail, more instrumentation, notes on equipment used, and (rather important) rhythm structures.
What the RIAA's fail to understand is that these tabs are all made by enthousiasts. These are the people that are actually enthousiastic about the music. They like it so much that they want to play it themselves, and share this knowledge with like-minded people. They sit with their guitars and the cd and copy the song down. Is this not love? Are these really the people you want to turn against you?
Re:Music has been passed down for generations
by
despisethesun
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· Score: 1
Are these really the people you want to turn against you?
Well, if you've been paying attention to the RIAA's tactics over the past couple of years you'd know that yes, these are the people they want turning against them. They don't really give a fuck what people think of them, they just want a captive audience. If you can't get music any other way, then you have to buy it from them.
-- This poo is cold.
Re:Music has been passed down for generations
by
hesiod
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· Score: 1
> the other greats pale in comparison to the great Metallica creations!
Yes! Without them, the world never would have heard such great songs as Turn the Page & Whiskey in the Jar!;)
Re:Music has been passed down for generations
by
leenks
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· Score: 1
I'm musical director of a successful corporate function band in the UK, so we play an awful lot of current and past chart music. I would only ever use the official sheet music (ie that from the record company press) for chart songs if I couldn't obtain it elsewhere - not because I'm too stingy, but because the music is almost always awful, often sounding drastically different to the recordings.
As a result I tend to buy legal sheet music from third parties (usually quite expensive - say between 20 and 50 pounds per song), or I write the music out by ear from the recordings and adapt it for our line-up. Hopefully that isn't illegal - the ridiculous venue licencing laws in the UK cover it as far as I know.
So what exactly is wrong with amateur tabs?
by
Mikachu
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· Score: 2
What's so horrible about tabs that will destroy the future for composers and songwriters? Is an imposter band gonna spring up and take their places? What the hell are they afraid of?
Re:So what exactly is wrong with amateur tabs?
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solevita
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· Score: 1
Probably not, but there are book stores out there full of exensive to buy guides to playing your favourite songs. You can still learn how to play all the hits, but it'll cost you.
Re:So what exactly is wrong with amateur tabs?
by
jmv
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· Score: 4, Insightful
What the hell are they afraid of?
That they won't be able to sell you the same tune for an Nth time in the form of an "official" (and often crappy) guitar translation.
Re:So what exactly is wrong with amateur tabs?
by
NoMaster
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· Score: 1
Almost right, but it's more like "they won't be able to sell you the same tune for an Nth time in the form of an "official" (and often crappy) ringtone".
(Yes, I know a guitar tab is not sheet music - but having the key and chord progressions makes it remarkably easy for even this non-muso to add the melody on top and create better-than-the-shitty-$2-per-download quality ringtones for free...)
-- What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Continue to have incentive blah blah blah... What is this bullshit? Quit spinning the reasons. You think the website hurts sales, so you want to shut it down. Fine. JUST SAY IT THAT WAY.
In my opinion, the creepiest part of 1984 (go reread it) is that language is being dumbed down so as to control modes of thought. The Big Brother ideal is that in 50 years people are too stupid to remember complicated concepts, since the simplified language no longer allows for them to be formed. It's why I want to shoot anybody who actually buys this sort of phrasing, such as what the RIAA is giving us.
Thanks corporate America, for trying to make us all that much dumber.
Re:Fucking 1984 speak
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
That sounds like terror talk to me. It's against people like you that we have to fight the war on terror. Just recently a terror plot was foiled in London. Attempts were made at terror bombings by those who perpetrate acts of terror.
Anyone who uses the terms "terrorist", "terrorism" or "correct fucking use of the English language" are clearly in league with terror groups.
Re:Fucking 1984 speak
by
jbssm
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Hummm, let me see:
Real Sentence vs Bush Sentence: Global Warming vs Global Climate Changes War Against Middle East vs War on Terror Palestine vs Middle East
If you check around, not only the media already adopted these political correct terms, but even the normal people did it... in fact even the geeks do it all the time now.
I clearly remember some years ago, you would always see the words Global Warming and Palestine... it's frightening to see that in so little time the changed the way people refer to the events in a way that they become clearly more forgiving to the politicians and they don't transmit the really dimension of the facts.
But perhaps it's just me, perhaps I'm dreaming... are we fighting against the Eurasia or Eastasia now ?... this morning in the news it said we are fighting against Eastasia in fact that we were always fighting against Eastasia and that Eurasia is our eternal ally, but I remember that in yesterday newspaper it said that we were fighting against Eurasia.
Perhaps I'm crazy... perhaps the chocolate ration really increased since last week.
How is global climate changes a dumbed down version of global warming? If anything the former is more descriptive. politics aside, those who do believe in global warming understand that it will result in massive climate changes on both ends of the spectrum rather than just warmth. Is this just meant to be somehow inflamatory and I don't see it? Same goes for "war with the middle east" I wasn't aware that we were at war with the middle east. I think that to say we were would be at best grossly misrepresenting the current unfortunate situation. It's certainly not synonymous or replaceable with "war on terror" (at least not yet). I can see that you are frothing at the mouth with your "ideals" but I'm just not sure I follow your examples.
Re:Fucking 1984 speak
by
MyNameIsFred
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Some of your examples are poor.
"Global Warming vs Global Climate Changes," the fact is many climate scientists that believe in global warming prefer phrases such as global climate change. Global warming does not necessarily mean the world gets warmer everywhere. Some places can get colder. Look up what happens to Europe if the Gulf Stream is stopped by global warming. Thus the argument that global climate change is more accurate.
"War Against Middle East vs War on Terror," the facts are that the war against Islamic terrorism is much bigger than the Mid East. Take for example the Bali bombing. Or the Madrid bombing. Or the London subway bombing. Or the...
It's why I want to shoot anybody who actually buys this sort of phrasing, such as what the RIAA is giving us.
Better shoot those that use such language to achieve their goals - those buying it can still be educated.
How about "We Will Prevail" (by now a whole book full of Newspeak instead of just another rallying cry - read the user reviews at amazon!) or "Islamic Fascism"? Would you shoot?
First, perhaps you don't know, but both these terms were crafted by a very know marketing genius in U.S.A. I don't recall the name of the guy (the team actually cause he didn't do it alone), but a few days ago there was a documentary about it in Discovery Channel or Odiseia Channel. I didn't make up the examples, the guy clearly gave this examples and he was the one that created it.
About "Global Warming vs Global Climate Changes": You are thinking about what may be the consequences in the future (and it's true that a sudden rising in temperature may stop the Gulf Current and put Europe in to a ice age) not about what is happening, and that is clearly that the Earth average temperature increased several degrees during the last century (how many degree is a matter of debate). This term was forget a few years ago, because is sounds much better to average Joe, Global Climate Changes (doh, what's that, that's normal, here in my state, it snows in the Winter and its sunny in the Summer... we are smart here, we always knew there are climate changes, and we bet it's the same all over the world, sunny in Summer, cold in Winter).
About "War Against Middle East vs War on Terror": sorry my mistake, what I meant (and those were the previous word used) was "War in Middle East"... which got nothing to do with terrorism... the real term should really be "War for Oil"
Global climate change is not some goofball conspiracy, it is an acknowlegement that describing the (possibly) human triggered climate changes as 'warming' is a bit if an oversimplification. The idea is to make the conversation about the consequences, not argue about whether it is getting warmer or not.
As far as your other stuff about the Middle East, Palestine and terror, the "war on terror" isn't a war on the middle east. It was certainly used as part of the excuse for the US to go into Iraq, but it very much has consequences ouside of the middle east. The ongoing support of Israel in it's border conflicts is pretty much unrelated, except that Dubya thinks that a democratic Iraq would have a stabilising effect on the entire region. Also, regarding Palestine vs The Middle East, go look at a map, that's why the words get used the way they do.
"Global climate change is not some goofball conspiracy"... gosh you really should say that to Bush administration.
That region is called Palestine since ever... they only changed the name in the past decade since it's much easier to support the Israelis fighting the Palestinian people in Middle East than it is to know that the Israelis are attacking the Palestinian people in Palestine.
There is the normal assumption by people that if the territory is called Palestine then it should belong to the Palestinians (attention I'm not saying that this is right or wrong I'm just saying that it's only a marketing term), and that was why they changed the way people refer to it some year ago.
Actually, the name change to Global Climate Change was spearheaded by scientists, who thought that Global Warming was too narrow in its implications. They figured out that increases in average global temperatures could result in the decrease of local temperatures, changes in rainfall, changes in wind patterns and all kinds of other things that significantly affect the lives of local populations. Hence the more appropriate name of Global Climate Change, which, even though it sounds more innocous, is actually more terrifying in its consequences.
If your culture went further away than just watching cowboy movies perhaps you knew what I'm talking about... as it obviously doesn't then please get back to you life. Someday you will manage to read a book... believe me it's not that difficult... and you may actually learn something, isn't that great?
Yes, I know (like I said above) that the matter is much more complex than that and that the global warming (if it continues) will cause global climate changes for which we cannot predict the full extent for now.
But it's just like you said it, it sound more innocuous this way and that is why the politicians and the the media started to use it... it was not because it's scientifically more correct.
Quote a day keeps the flames in play.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"The online Guitar Tablature Archive OLGA.net has been shutdown again, to "ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come." Scant details exist"
Obviously not so scant that you can't pull quotes from it.
Yes. People, corporations etc are and should be allowed to own copyright on works, and ensure that copyright is not being infringed through the legal system.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Hang on...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
That's not a discussion, that's an assertion. Why should this be the case? Should the copyright terms be shorter? Should they be sellable? Back up your belief with reasoning or evidence.
Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law. Should it be law?
Well, the guitar sites have allegedly broken the law in a limited way.
"It has come to our attention that your website, Guitartabs.com, makes available tablature versions of copyrighted musical compositions owned or controlled by members of the NMPA and MPA, without permission from the publishers. A representative listing of those compositions and the publishers who control the copyrights is attached as Schedule A."
"Schedule A" is what interests me. To prevent any damages, all Guitartabs.com would need to do is remove the items on "Schedule A". Ditto for OLGA.
Unless "Schedule A" represents an excessive portion of their content, shutting down their websites is a bit extreme.
-- [Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Re:Hang on...
by
Mr.+Slippery
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law.
No, it hasn't. Teaching people songs is fair use. If we're jamming at a party and I tell you, "Let's play `Knocking on Heaven's Door'. Oh, you don't know it? It G, D, and a little Am7/C hammer on thing," that's the way music works. Are you going to put a gag order on every guitarist?
Songwriters get paid royalties when people sing their songs in for-profit performaces. (Yes, the details are tricky, but the idea is IMHO basically sound.) OLGA is not just fair use, its existance is actively in songwriter's interests. Neil Young gets a nickel every time I play "Needle and the Damage Done", which I learned off of OLGA, at one of my gigs. (But not if I sing it in the shower, or at a party where I'm playing just for fun.) The people against this are parasitic "music publishers". Fsck them.
We've been through this before. (Note the date on that article.) OLGA's contents have long since been distributed to scores of other tab sites.
-- Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog You cannot wash away blood with blood
Are you the CEO of a large corporation, or part of a large meta-corporation (RIAA etc...)? No? Then your opinion on the matter is irrelevant unfortunately.
True, but this is different. You'r not just chatting to a few friends any more than singing a song on stage in front of thousands is the same as singing along to your iPod.
I agree that Olga's existence is actively in the interests of the songwriters, but it isn't absolutely certainly fair use. It scores in that it's not for profit, and doesn't harm sales for the songwriter (although the various music industries would argue that it does). On the flipside, it is a transcription of an entire song, and it is distributed to a lot of people.
Re:Hang on...
by
Mr.+Slippery
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You'r not just chatting to a few friends any more than singing a song on stage in front of thousands is the same as singing along to your iPod.
If you're in front of even one paying customer, singing along to your iPod is still a public performance requiring payment. Under the right circumstances, singing a song on stage in front of a large audience could be non-commercial. (I sang a Ween song on a "stage" in front of at least 100 people at the national Rainbow Gathering last year, a very non-commercial venue.)
If I'm playing in a bar with one guy drinking, royalties are required; if I'm playing for free at a friend's party with 100 people there, royalties are not required.
Size of the audience is not relevant.
Same goes with teaching a song. What, if I'm at that party with 100 people and I tell everyone what the chords to "Louie, Louie" are (and that they're the same as "Wild Thing"), I owe somebody a nickel? No way. That's a factual statement, covered by my free speech rights.
And it doesn't matter if there are 1,000 people at that party, or 10,000.
And if I post that information to the internet - the chords are A, D, E, D, repeat (and the break on Wild Thing is G - A - G - A) - that's still my free speech right.
-- Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog You cannot wash away blood with blood
Same goes with teaching a song. What, if I'm at that party with 100 people and I tell everyone what the chords to "Louie, Louie" are (and that they're the same as "Wild Thing"), I owe somebody a nickel? No way. That's a factual statement, covered by my free speech rights. And it doesn't matter if there are 1,000 people at that party, or 10,000.
Well, it depends. Once you get to a certain level, then you know fewer and fewer of them personally. Once you put this on the internet, you are essentially broadcasting. Fair use is not very specific by design. If you read an extract from a novel at a party, then that's your right to free speech. Post that online, and it's not. It's not just whether its commercial, but also whether its public or private in nature. And there are various levels of public and private. Member only clubs, places of work, educational establishments, informal gatherings... All could be considered private or public depending on many factors.
If OLGA think that what they do is fair use, then they have every right to use that as a defence. If the NMPA don't think this is fair use, then the only option is to take it to the courts.
Once you put this on the internet, you are essentially broadcasting.
So what? I'm not broadcasting the song, not a performance or recording of it. I am broadcasting information about the song.
Dangerous guy that I am, I'll do some more: "You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog" is a 12-bar blues. "Can't Help Falling in Love" is in the key of F, as are many other great love songs (like "Romeo and Juliet" and "Punk Rock Girl"). A reasonable approximation to the opening riff to "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" can be played something like:
E aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa B a5a3aaa3aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa5a3aaa3a5 G aaaaa4aaa2a2a4a2aaa4a2aaaaa4aaaa D aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa4aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
That's the sort of ASCII tab in question, by the way, for those not familiar, modified to pass/.'s lameness filter; replace all "a"s with - to see how it would usually look.
Note that it is not a complete representation of the performance, as it does not contain timing information. Also note that this is not in any way, shape, or form a copy, but a "by-ear" transcription, my own take on how to play a set of notes that sound like the riff in question.
This is all information about songs, not songs themselves.
-- Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog You cannot wash away blood with blood
But this is less than the entire song and more than a vague description.
All these factors are relevent. The NMPA disagree with you that this is fair use, because of the amount that is transcribed. If OLGA feel the same way as you, the only way to resolve the matter is to take it to court.
I don't get it...
by
Pedrito
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I've never understood how they can make guitar tableture a copyright violation when you have a gazillion sites out there posting lyrics. How is that any different? The tableture is someone's interpretation of what the artists are doing on the guitar or bass. From experience, I can say for a fact that it's rarely entirely accurate, so it's not really a copyright violation. It's artistic interpretation. Lyrics are far more likely to be accurate and therefore far more likely to actually violate copyrights. Still, I don't really think that either should be a violation.
Besides, this is just as likely to help the RIAA as any of their other foot shooting methods. I mean, how much can you piss off your customer base before they simply stop being your customer base?
Lyrics sites are being shut down. As well as they can anyway. Most of them are hosted overseas, and there isn't much the RIAA can do, try as they may. I think it's hillarious. If people know how to play the song, they will play it, and others will hear it, and then people will go buy the album. People won't not buy the album because they can play the songs themselves. Because it's really hard to drive down the interstate playing guitar, and your friends don't like it when you call them up at 3 in the morning and ask them to play that song again for you.
--
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Re:I don't get it...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You want to know why?
Plenty of market in selling sheet mucic.....ever walked into a piano/guitar store?
Ever seen just lyrics for sale? Ain't much of a market for selling lyrics....
There's not much to be gained in shutting down lyrics sites--the posting of lyrics would just become more distributed. So long as at least one person has keyed in the lyrics and posted them on a site indexed by Google, the public will be able to find the lyrics. And (as another poster already pointed out) lyrics being available is likely to increae the number of people buying (or renting, in the case of iTunes and similar digital restrictions systems) a copy of the song.
Re:I don't get it...
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Capt'n+Hector
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· Score: 4, Insightful
With classical music, you can listen to a CD or performance of a work, then "reverse engineer" it to produce the sheet music. Alternatively, if you can get your hands on the original manuscript, then you can copy directly from the source (if the copyright has expired.) In short: You have just as much right to produce sheet music for Beethoven as the current crop of companies do. However, these companies do go to considerable lengths to produce a quality product: extensive research goes into investigating the various versions of the manuscript, typos and errors on the part of the composer/transcriber/whatever are weeded out, and often fingerings/bowings are inserted by famous musicians through exclusive contracts.
For works produced before ~1950 (or whatever it is now...), the only thing that's copyrighted is the version produced by the sheetmusic company. Think of it like a map: the actual geography isn't copyrighted, only the representation of it on the page. You're free to go out and make a map of your own, just don't use the original map as a reference.
For more recent works, the issue is more sticky. I suppose it all depends on the composer. For instance, some demand written permission to perform the work (this is usually ignored by all but the most visible/famous orchestras.) In other cases, anyone might be free to perform the work, as long as the sheetmusic has been bought and paid for (some composers contract out sheetmusic production to some company, and then get royalties/kickbacks when that sheetmusic is sold.)
Regardless, it's not as cut-and-dry as you might think. There are several "layers" to a piece of music: the original manuscript, the sheet music (including bowings/fingerings if any), the actual sound produced by some performance of the work, an individual recording of the work, and perhaps on a more metaphysical level, the actual note progressions themselves. (That is, if I were to go out and write a piece that was based on Shostakovich's "DSCH" signature progression, is that copyright violation?)
As for the topic at hand, these guitar tabuletures are synonymous with fingerings/bowings. This is not sheet music, because it doesn't include the instrument-indepent staff. In the case of violin/viola/cello/etc. music, fingerings/bowings without the staff is almost useless. Who could claim foul if I copied the fingerings from the latest rendition of a classical work still under copyright? The performer or the composer?
There is no exact answer to this, which I suppose makes it the perfect ground for lawyers. Welcome to copyright hell...
-- Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti? Africus aut Europaeus?
People won't not buy the album because they can play the songs themselves.
However, people won't buy the official musical notation if they can play the songs themselves. The sheet music market is significant enough for the RIAA to pursue their interests in this market.
-- You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I'm thinking about an arranger who listens to a recording, writes notations on papers, and passes it around to the band. The notation could be notes on the staff and it could be something else, right? (The bands I played in, they were chord symbols and an approximation of where in the bar they happened.) The songwriters have copyrights on the lyric and melody. The record company has a copyright on the recording. The publisher has a copyright on offically sanctioned sheet music (and player piano rolls and uses in broadcast and films and...). None of them -- no one -- has a copyright on the arrangement or the harmony behind the melody.
So why is guitar tablature that is produced by transcribing a performance infringing? (Especially as the tablature's don't show the melody, they show the solos.) It's notation for an arrangement with single guitar. Posting scans of a officially published tab book would be one thing (and clearly infringing) but transcription and notation feels like clean-room reverse engineering to me.
If the interpretation bears a resemblance to the original work, then it is a derivative work. And if it is a derivative work, then it is subject to copyright law. And if it is subject to copyright law, then the creator has a limited right to control distribution of his/her work and its derivatives.
What it actually is is reverse-engineering. Whether we have the same legal right to distribute reverse-engineered music as we do to distribute reverse-engineered computer code is a question I am not prepared to debate.
What is the ideal solution to the OLGA situation? Artists should sell their own official lyric books/sheet music/tablature. There's clearly a market for it, and with internet distribution and and army of starving former Music majors out there looking for transcription work, it should cost them next to nothing.
This is not sheet music, because it doesn't include the instrument-indepent staff.
It IS sheet music, because essential melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic aspects of the music can be derived from the tablature. That, to me, satisfies all the identity requirements of "sheet music". It's not just a term that applies to musical notation consisting of five lines, four spaces, and a G-clef.
I don't know how guitar tabulature works, but with violin, the fingerings is just a series of numbers. That by itself cannot be used to reconstruct the "sheet music." Now, it may be true that the way guitar fingerings are written, you CAN reconstruct the sheetmusic. If so, I suggest they change it ever so slightly so you can't.
-- Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti? Africus aut Europaeus?
Lyric sites are shut down as well
by
WilliamSChips
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· Score: 1
azlyrics for example.
-- Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
This is good news!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Now the big record labels can rename and rerelease old classics to later generations and they will have no way of knowing that it isn't new and cool and young and hip!
Terrible!-Violating gooses and ganders.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing his copyrights, John Lennon might have to quit music and get a day job! Then where will all the Beatles fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new Beatles music, I'm sure"
Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing the GPL, GPLers might have to quit free programming and get a day job! Then where will GPL fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new code, I'm sure
Re:Terrible!-Violating gooses and ganders.
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Bogtha
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· Score: 2, Informative
You obviously missed my point. Please show me somebody who thinks it is necessary to protect GPLed software written 43 years ago, by somebody who's made more than enough money to retire on and who died decades ago.
-- Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
face - consider yourself spited
by
Sodade
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· Score: 1
How many times have I heard "honey get me that CD with that song on it - you know, the one that goes naa na naa naa naa - no, not the one that goes na naa naa na" - the fricking RIAA should be praising lyrics sites. They probably think that they can come up with some way to make money off a copycat site. Boy, I'll give them money for that - not.
(OK, so the preceeding was a bit of a fabrication to prove a point - my wife is a librarian and can find stuff better than I can and I buy my music fome a russian website to prove a point to the RIAA that all they need to do is hit a resonable price point)
You may be interested to know that Gracenote has a liscence to legally distribute song lyrics as of about a month ago, so yes they will slaughter the lyrics sights soon as they are "stealing profit".
Programmatically generate all possible guitar tablatures between 0 and 30 minutes. Then shut down artists who write new songs under 30 minutes for copyright infringement.
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Anyone want to go halves on copyrighting the notes A through G?
The record companies are just scared because if you play tabs backwards you hear the devils voice proclaiming the deliciousness of DRM.
That's actually not all that unusual.. for whatever reason the composer or arranger may choose to use those accidentals on sheet music. (Odd key, whatever)
-- "'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Underground
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Prior to the intarweb, jazz musicians would buy these illegal books called 'real books'. They were photocopied/cheaply bound collections of sheet music for a couple of hundred jazz standards. Pretty dang pricey too. You can still get them, the same way as always- by asking for one from the local music shop guy. The legal versions are called 'fake books'... and they pretty much suck huge hairy donkey balls.
Shutting down OLGA, which was an online real book for many musicians, simply means that now guitarists will have to search through the dozens of sites that copied the entire archive onto their own servers and assault the user with pop-ups and spyware.
Which is lame on so many levels...
Innocent before proven guilty
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Can you point me to the transcript of the trial which took place proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the OLGA website infringed on any copyright at any time? Please. Because, otherwise, someone might accuse you of libeling a website with false accusations that a law had been broken by them.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
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Lumpy
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· Score: 1
you must be from a free country like china.
Innocent until proven guilty has not been a part of United States law for almost 50 years now.
Today you are Guilty until proven innocent, and circumstantial evidence can get you the death penalty.
-- Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
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jb.hl.com
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
It's a website full of guitar tabs of quite clearly copyrighted music. Of course it fucking infringed on copyright.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
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Gibsnag
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· Score: 1
No. Its a website full of how people think songs are played. If they can prove that these tabs are taken from an official tab book then they may have a case.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Swearing about something does not absolve you of defamation.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
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Travelsonic
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· Score: 1
So what if the tabs are from copyrighted music? What does that have to do with anything? Isn't it the tabs and not the music they are derived from that we are talking about here? And you like so many people make the "copyrighted = infringing" fallacy where you assume everything copyrighted is illegal to distribute when it really is copyrighted works you don't have permission to share is illegal. This may or may not be the case here, but the distinction is still important.
-- If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
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senatorpjt
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· Score: 3, Informative
A guitar tab of copyrighted music is like a plot summary of a copyrighted movie. It's a description of a work, not a copy.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
by
evanism
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Crikey, I had it down as "you are guilty of anything until proven innocent at extreme cost".
Law = defense Defense = time Time = money Money = profit... QED; Law = profit
Better watch out. Gitmo awaits you all my learned friends! Rendition...?
Ergo... plead guilty, its cheaper than going broke, even if you are innocent.
-- Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
by
westlake
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· Score: 1
Can you point me to the transcript of the trial which took place proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the OLGA website infringed on any copyright at any time?
"Proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is the standard for a verdict of guilt or innocence in an American criminal trial.
In civil litigation there is simply a finding for the plaintiff or the defendent based on the weight of the evidence, It is enough that the scales tilt in your favor.
It is not easy for a publisher to win an action for defamation in American law. That is the opposite side of the coin of his freedom to publish without priore restraint. It would be enough for the defendant in this case to to say that he was expressing a layman's opinion in a matter of public concern.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Pretty accurate... The tabs I've written were my *interpretation* of what I was hearing and, as such, I believe the copyright on my interpretation is mine. It all gets a bit murky because this interpretation *may* be a derivative work. Still, shutting down a website that hosts interpreted tabs is a bit silly; no interpretation is likely to be 100% accurate, so it would be far better if the music publishers *asked* the sites in question to put up a link to the official publishers, e.g. something like 'Sound inaccurate? Buy the official version from (whoever)'. I should add that a fair amount of the sheet music I've bought over the years hasn't been much more than an approximation, mainly because I suspect they don't talk to the musicians who wrote the music in the first place (where possible, of course; I suspect a ouija board to Lennon might be pushing things a bit far). The lesson to be learned here is "don't be an arsehole"; had the publishing companies used a bit of common sense they could used this as an opportunity to better their public image and, probably, increase sales. BTW, the UK magazine 'Guitarist' whinged that they were paying good money for 'professional' tabs and queried why we should download amateur-produced tabs for free. My reply to them was along the lines of "You paid for these? You were robbed". And no, I haven't bought it since.
Re:Innocent before proven guilty
by
X.25
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· Score: 1
It's a website full of guitar tabs of quite clearly copyrighted music. Of course it fucking infringed on copyright.
Dear me, Slashdot is really full of experts on just about any topic. Real nice.
I only wish those experts would, for a change, start argumenting their claims...
Grammar Nazi
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's "its", you insensitive clod!
Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
tepples
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· Score: 1
People, corporations etc are and should be allowed to own copyright on works, and ensure that copyright is not being infringed through the legal system.
But exactly what copying should constitute infringement?
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
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jb.hl.com
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· Score: 1
Any of it! Hence "copyright", the right to copy. That is what is provided for under law, and it's a system fair to all parties.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
suprchunk
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The "copyrighted" material you are referring to is not as blatant as you so quickly assumed. It is people who think what they are writing down what they are hearing correctly. It is usually pretty close, but they are not the original artists so they do not actually know if it is 100% exact. But you seem to think they are getting the sheet music from the artists and posting exact copies. That is usually never the case with tabs posted online. If you would look at some of the sites instead of assuming, you would see how many different versions of the same tab exist. I don't think the artist wrote that many versions that seem to differ from each other, sometimes vastly. But you do. It is akin to someone retelling a story, by your standards. So any book synopsis should never be printed except by the publisher because you are infringing on someone's copyright by trying to convey what happened in a book.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
whathappenedtomonday
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· Score: 1
But exactly what copying should constitute infringement?
Exactly. Most tabs posted state that they are the own work of the submitter (it's usually not just chords or diagrams of where to fret, but also explanations and directions on how to play things in general). I also wonder how they can take down whole sites regardless of non-copyrighted content on them. A huge percentage of tabs available is useless, because they are plain wrong or cannot be used to "reproduce" a certain song without knowing the original work quite well. (ASCII tabs usually have no indication of note/chord durations). This is just another attempt at complete control over consumers. I'm truely disappointed.
-- I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Any derived work is subject to permission of the 1st author(s) before it can be sold, used, etc, unless it falls within fair use guidelines; all other use is technically not legal.
-jjrlmsb
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
runlevel+5
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· Score: 5, Informative
Mod parent up. This has long been the theory supporting the legality of tabs. The writers of tabs see them as learning tools at best or derrivative works at the very worst.
The fact that tabs are not written out as sheet music also encourages guitarists to purchase CDs in order to learn to play at the correct timing, which is not written into the tablature. Tabs are by-ear transcriptions and their availability has helped untold numbers of budding guitars develop their skills without the need to [buy and] learn from expensive sheet music.
Tab websites have slowly been closing their doors due to threats from sheet music associations, the industry, and fear of punishment under copyright laws that leave very few fair use rights in them at all, heavily favoring the recording companies. It's a real shame that yet another one has been pressured to go under.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
bogado
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· Score: 2, Insightful
So I guess your programs that you made while listening to some of the RIAA music should be considered derived work? I guess I went a little bit over the line here? But what about if the work you done is music? When is it a derived work or it is your music based on another?
Musitians usually learn by first "coping" what they hear. How many of the bands and musitian of top 10 hit list have not played in his garage a cover of his prefered musics. This is so common that the first question almost anyone asks in an enterview with almost every artist is what are your influences. Creative process is a copy process, get over it.
So this tabs you get on the net are helping to pass our culture ahead for the next generation of musics. Those tabs have not a single drop of sweat of the original artist, those tabs are the work of a individual who as to begin to write his own music he starts to write or read other people's first.
--
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
kdemetter
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· Score: 1
any of it ?
So , imagine this :
I buy a CD legally , listen to it , and while listening i sing it out loud .
By your terms , they can sue because i'm copying it into my brain .
Even more , i'm broadcasting it ( everbody near me can hear me singing and so they copy it too ) .
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Kazymyr
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· Score: 1
I just realized I infringed an author's copyright the other day. I was reading a book, thus copying its content from the paper it was printed on through my eyes into my brain. I just hope he doesn't find out, or he'll sue the hell out of me.
-- I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
scum-e-bag
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· Score: 1
Thank you for a good post.
I am currently working on an electronic music project and my intention is to release it under a GPL style licence. I will include MIDI code and directions about how instruments (hardware synths) are to be connected. This will be released in a final *.ogg format and a Rosegarden project format. Any help beyond the Creative Commons Licence is appreciated.
viva la revolution
-- Does it go on forever?
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
westlake
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· Score: 1
A huge percentage of tabs available is useless, because they are plain wrong or cannot be used to "reproduce" a certain song without knowing the original work quite well
Congratulations. You have just made the case for the copyright holder intent on protecting the integrity of his work.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
westlake
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· Score: 1
I just realized I infringed an author's copyright the other day. I was reading a book, thus copying its content from the paper it was printed on through my eyes into my brain. I just hope he doesn't find out, or he'll sue the hell out of me.
"You come in here with a skull full of mush..." Copyright protects the right of distribution and the publication of unlicensed derivative works.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
hesiod
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· Score: 1
> Hence "copyright", the right to copy. That is what is provided for under law, and it's a system fair to all parties.
So I should not be able to "copy" presidential speeches, as the content of those were written by the president (well, his speech writers). If the public wants to know his opinion they have to listen to him live, not read his words that were illegally copied by some damned newspaper.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
hesiod
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· Score: 1
> You have just made the case for the copyright holder intent on protecting the integrity of his work
Integrity of their work??? If someone has a guitar tab and hears a song, they are likely to play it better than just hearing it alone. Making the tabs available increases the quality of future performances by others. All of this ignores that someone who's just learning a new song via tabs is unlikely to be playing the song publicly, let alone for profit. Your point makes little sense.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
yuna49
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· Score: 1
In the United States, a copyrighted work is defined in Title 17 of the United States Code.
Section 102 of the Code states:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." (my emphasis)
The key phrase is "tangible medium of expression" meaning things like paper, CD's, etc.
The rules governing your whistling, singing, or otherwise performing a copyrighted work are defined in the concept of a "public" performance (Sec. 101):
"To perform or display a work 'publicly' means --
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times." (again, my emphasis)
So you can sing anything you want in front of your family and its "social acquanitances" but not in front of strangers in a bar and not on TV. At that point the performance becomes "public" and subject to copyright law. Whether a particular performance infringes depends on the applicability of the "fair use" concept and any additional rights granted you by the rights-holder. The copyrighted song, "Happy Birthday to You!," is a common example. No one collects royalties from you when you sing it, unlicensed, at a party, but movie producers must credit the songwriters and pay them royalties if it's performed in a movie.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
qeveren
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· Score: 1
Just because nobody can read the encoding in my brain doesn't mean that it's not tangible. Alright everyone, make sure you forget any music you might currently remember!:)
--
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
JimDaGeek
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· Score: 1
Your one sided argument makes it sound like you work for the [RI|MP]AA. Not all use of a copyrighted work should be considered infringing. There is something called fair use that lets me use a small portion of a work. For example, I can put a small blurb from the book "Inkheart" in this post:
Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. Many years later, Meggie had
only to close her eyes and she could still hear it, like tiny fingers tapping on
the windowpane. A dog barked somewhere in the darkness, and however
often she tossed and turned Meggie couldn't get to sleep.
The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover
against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages. "I'm sure it must
be very comfortable sleeping with a hard, rectangular thing like that under
your head," her father had teased the first time he found a book under her
pillow. "Go on, admit it, the book whispers its story to you at night."
it's a system fair to all parties
Correction. The system use to be fair. Bribes to corrupted politicians have led to a continual increase of copyright terms. The system now favors the copyright holder in an unfair way. Make copyright 20 years and the I would agree with you about the system being "fair to all parties"
-- General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
voice_of_all_reason
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· Score: 1
Not to be a jackass, but that's a logical error. Introducing more apprentices into a group increases both the number of people ahead of and behind the mean. In this case, I think more than not will be perpetually amateur players or people who quickly drop the hobby than those who go on to fame.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
TheLink
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· Score: 1
One day his publisher/owner might.
Because one day you might need/want the aid of an artificial brain (Alzheimer's, or just coz you want photographic memory). And the only ones available have DRM built-in.
So you'd have photographic memory but have to pay-per-view. You'd have perfect multimedia recall, but have to pay per recall.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
HiThere
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· Score: 1
It was originally intended to be a system fair to all parties. The original copyright term was also something in the range of 17 years.
With the current system, I consider the pirates more honorable than the RIAA and the MPAA...AND their members. ALL of them.
Sorry to shout, but this is important. Yes, there should (probably) be a copyright law. The current one is vile, corrupt, and *much* worse than not copyright law at all.
--
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
sumdumass
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· Score: 1
um... outside your intentional changing of puncuation to make it apear different, this statment is mine and was copywriten in my book "doing dumb things for the hell of it".
You are not allowed to use my copywriten work for your own advancment of ideals or goals. Please remove the offending content imediatly or remite your contact information for discusion of royalty payments and permisions to copy my work. Please also be advised that i always reserve the right to chose the intentions and medium my work os duplicated in.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
sumdumass
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· Score: 1
I would look close at a GPL style license. It apears the GPLv3draft2 isn't compatible with the GPL itself. It bars the changing of any of the wording or creating dirivitive works.
It would suck to find out after you released your project that the license was in copyright violation and the people "protecting your freedoms thru thr GPL" have the right to invalidate the license of your project leaving it open to anything or imposing positions/restrictions on it that you specificly intended it "not" to have.
You can do whatever you want with you projects license, but I would avoid automatic inclusions of furture license revisions unless you control the "future license" process and look at what the license was derived from to ensure any chance of it being in violation is little.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
+5 Informative.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
enharmonix
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· Score: 1
The original copyright term was also something in the range of 17 years.
I'm probably mistaken but I believe it was 14 years, after which you were eligible to apply for an extension for another 14 years, for a maximum of 28 years. Far more reasonable -- the Framers understood knowledge is not something that belongs to man. Information is like God: It Is What It Is. A temporary monopoly rewards creativity, not for novelty's sake, but to encourage the spread of information, knowledge. Now terms are Life + 70 / 95 Corporate. Information artificially controlled for that long falls into oblivion, and nobody remembers it when it enters the public domain. Yeah, we have a lot of public domain stuff now, but nothing less than almost a century old. It falls out of the collective memory, and ceases to beneft society. In fact, as a society, it scares me how ignorant we (the US) are as a people. Bulls*** copyright laws are, I think, a big reason for this.
On the other hand, <flamebait>if the Quran had been under copyright in the 7th century, we wouldn't have terrorism today because nobody would've heard of Islam.</flamebait>
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
indifferent+children
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· Score: 1
Alright everyone, make sure you forget any music you might currently remember!:)
If you can find some way to remove the lingering bits of the Spice Girls catalog from by brain, I'll pay you.
-- Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
cayenne8
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· Score: 1
"The copyrighted song, "Happy Birthday to You!," is a common example. No one collects royalties from you
when you sing it, unlicensed, at a party, but movie producers must credit the songwriters and pay them royalties if it's
performed in a movie."
I'd heard this was why they don't sing it in restaurants much anymore....they all have their verions of something like "Happy, Happy Birthday...on this your special day...etc".
-- Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Bloke+down+the+pub
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· Score: 1
outside your intentional changing of puncuation
Something tells me he made one or two spelling corrections too. Per sentence.
-- It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
sumdumass
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· Score: 1
Umm, that sentence is chater 110 verbatim. It is titled "does it realy matter".
Why are people steaing my copywriten work when they are trying to claim they are sticking up for copyrights?
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Schraegstrichpunkt
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· Score: 1
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
jb.hl.com
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· Score: 1
I don't troll. I just state what I believe. I believe that people should be fairly reimbursed for their work, and that copyright infringement is immoral. If that's "trolling" then this place is FUBAR.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I believe that people should be fairly reimbursed for their work
No you don't, you believe that people should be reimbursed for their work. And then reimbursed for their work again. And again. And again. For the rest of their life. And then their children should get reimbursed too, for another seventy years, even though it's not their work and their parents already got reimbursed many times for it.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
jb.hl.com
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· Score: 1
People should be reimbursed for the rest of their natural lives, yes. Not descendants or any of that bollocks.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Then I suggest that you retract the following claims you've made:
As it stands, the things you have already said contradict what you are saying now.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
jb.hl.com
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· Score: 1
Why? I can believe that copyright infringement is immoral, and at the same time believe it should not be extended to descendants of the creator of a work, can't I? As for the "any copying is infringement", I meant in the sense of currently copyrighted works.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I can believe that copyright infringement is immoral, and at the same time believe it should not be extended to descendants of the creator of a work, can't I?
Copyright infringement, today, includes copying that is done after the creator dies.
Now, you can engage in a dialogue where you question whether copyright should include this or not, but when somebody tried to do that, you disagreed.
Furthermore, you've already stated that corporations should be entitled to copyright. Corporations can be immortal.
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
jb.hl.com
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· Score: 1
Now, you can engage in a dialogue where you question whether copyright should include this or not, but when somebody tried to do that, you disagreed.
What? You're talking shite. Sorry.
Furthermore, you've already stated that corporations should be entitled to copyright. Corporations can be immortal.
Can be, but usually aren't. People damn well thought Standard Oil was invincible, now they're just broken into little pieces.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If he's copying the work verbatim (and thus infringing your "writs") he must be either desperate, very very bored or even more of a dopy, illiterate fucktard than you are.
Or all of the above.
they're hurting their own sales...
by
asilentthing
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· Score: 1
I think what the companies need are some proper business analysts. Free tabs are like grassroots marketing in a way. They get the word out to people who are actively searching for the product. But because, in most cases, the tabs aren't completely accurate, they point directly to your local music supply store or internet site that sells the "official" tab and sheet music books. It doesn't seem like that hard of an idea. But this way, you just make the customer mad, the tabs show up on a usenet group and nothing gets done (in the eyes of the corp.)
It's ridiculous how these media companies think they can run a business.
-- ---
these days, what with business and stuff, you gotta get your emails...
Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the concern
by
pbooktebo
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I think that the online tab revolution has been wonderful for amateur musicians all over the world (of course, especially guitarists). I've used the tabs, and I think that it is possible to make the case that this is often a fair use of copyright (though, often, not).
That said, I can understand the music industry has concerns like these: 1. They do sell sheet music, and this practice cuts into their profits. I'm guessing that some revenue-sharing model could work, but that the RIAA/BMG/etc. aren't (yet) interested. In fact, I have actually seen some bands distribute their own tabs (or tabs contributed by fans), which I think is a fantastic idea. 2. The quality of most tab is fair to poor. I teach music and guitar, and I always end up correcting tabs (even chords) for students. On some level, this is OK, but the chunky and too-often incorrect chords can really make a tune sound much worse than it is. If I were an artist and thought everyone was learning some ham-handed version of my tune, I'd probably be a bit pissed. 3. In this copyright-dominated world, it does seem that you risk losing your rights if you don't defend them.
I wish it weren't so. I'm a big fan of Lawrence Lessig, and believe that the stifling of things like OLGA make us less creative as a culture. I also love that there are still amateur musicians out there who want to play music for themselves and their friends for the pleasure of making muisic. I hope a good compromise or capitulation (on part of the music industry) is in the works.
It is McCartney, you moron. John Lennon was killed a number of years ago, you douchebag.
Here is a quarter...buy a clue.
Re:HOW SAD
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
Whoooosh......
Never before have I seen someone miss the point of a post, in relation to the story, in such a way to make themselves look more idiotic than even the lowest slashdot troll.
It's humor, so you are the one needing to get a clue. (hint: laugh- it was funny!) BTW, the typo did not detract from the joke, even you knew who he was referring to or you would not have tried to correct him.
Knowing that Lenin was shot YEARS ago is what made it funny.
-- Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Re:HOW SAD
by
krewemaynard
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Taste in music is a whole different area- let's just say I would not have been upset if the assasin had bagged the 4 of them a decade earlier, but that's just me.
Yes, they had talent, and yes they were popular, but so not my style- has the same effect as fingernails on a chalkboard.
BTW, even after all of that, there are about 2 or 3 songs of theirs I do like, and I do respect their talent and creativity. It just is not my style of music for the most part.
Back in the mid 60's when the "Fab Four" were starting to get airtime in USA, I was already hooked on several "underground" radio stations around Columbus, OH that were playing stuff like: Fat Mattress (Noel Redding- became bassist for Jimi Hendrix Experience) White Rhino (don't know what happened with them) MC5 Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes
As you can see, this is a world of difference from the Beatles.
Perhaps I was a little harsh, but fanatics of any type always seem to light my short fuse. This past xmas, I purchased the John Lennon boxed set for my stepdaughter, and have added to her Beatles collection in the past, but I don't care to listen to them myself.
-- Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Seriously, it's a crying shame that pretty soon "good stuff" like this will have to be not only hosted overseas but run by people who are outside the jurisdiction of American courts. If I were an American running something like this overseas, I'd be very afraid of a lawsuit for "aiding and abetting."
-- Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Re:Two words for archivists
by
Eternauta3k
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· Score: 1
pretty soon "good stuff" like this will have to be not only hosted overseas but run by people who are outside the jurisdiction of American courts.
-- Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
More info in forums and blogs
by
Gothmolly
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· Score: 0
Well if thats not a reliable source of information, I don't know what is. Next up, Slashdot referencing itself in an orgy of navel-gazing.
Folks, there is more out there than MySpace.
-- I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Strategy meeting
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
The contents of OLGA are ascii, very low bandwidth high density data. It should fit onto a single CD. It can be served by a simple httpd. The online archive should be moved to two new hosts. The hosts do not have to be powerful machines. Nor do the temporary operators need to see themselves as the "new" archive, merely temporary mirrors. The only requirement for an operator is that they should know at least TWO friends or colleagues who will host the archive on their machines and the skills to set that up. At the first hint of a takedown notice each operator should comply after stalling only long enough to replicate the archive. Let's show these cunts the power of the hydra and what exponential bifurcation means.
Let's show these cunts the power of the hydra and what exponential bifurcation means.
Great line.
-- To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Tabs still available on archive.org
by
Ph33r+th3+g(O)at
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Here's one, for example. Can't just go to the root page via archive.org and start clicking links, though, as the links to the artists and tabs aren't modified, even though the tabs are in the archive. And if it hasn't happened already, I'm sure these small text files will be compressed into an archive and posted regularly to Usenet.
-- I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
OLGA to become an errata sheet?
by
tepples
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· Score: 3, Interesting
That they won't be able to sell you the same tune for an Nth time in the form of an "official" (and often crappy) guitar translation.
If this is the case, then OLGA might again rise from the ashes as a sort of "errata sheet" to the official translation, explaining every single error in every single song book. Criticism of a copyrighted work is likely to be ruled as fair use of that work and thus not an infringement (17 USC 107).
Re:OLGA to become an errata sheet?
by
hesiod
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· Score: 1
> Criticism of a copyrighted work is likely to be ruled as fair use of that work and thus not an infringement
Yes, they would be able to point out errors, but I don't believe they would be able to reprint the whole thing, just to point out those errors. People would still need to purchase the inaccurate books.
Re:OLGA to become an errata sheet?
by
aztec+rain+god
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· Score: 1
What if they go through the tabs and intentionally inject errors into them? Would they not then be original works? Just to mix things up, maybe change one word in the title of each song?
-- Sig cannot be found.
Re:OLGA to become an errata sheet?
by
hesiod
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· Score: 1
I think that's the definition of a "derivative work." I'm not quite clear on the technicalities of those, such as how much needs to be changed to be considered different-enough.
"Not illegal if you don't get caught" but OLGA did
by
tepples
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· Score: 1
I've never understood how they can make guitar tableture a copyright violation when you have a gazillion sites out there posting lyrics.
The lyrics sites are just as much in violation of copyright as OLGA; they just haven't been caught yet.
Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingering
by
dpbsmith
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Naftule Brandwein, the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso, turned his back on the audience in order to keep the secret of the finger he used to achieve certain effects.
Of course, we're talking "trade secret," not "copyright" here.
I wonder whether he ever considered patenting his fingerings? I wonder whether that's possible. It seems to me that it might be.
The RIAA aren't the culprits- this time.
by
gottagetmac
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This cease and desist had nothing to do with the RIAA- it was brought by the NMPA and the MPA (if you read the letter). These organizations publish sheet music, not music. They could care less about the popularity of the music itself, and only care about their own sales, which probably are hurt by the availability of tab.
Re:The RIAA aren't the culprits- this time.
by
NulDevice
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· Score: 1
Yes, THANK you. I was waiting for somebody to point that out.
The RIAA doesn't give a crap what happens to sheet music. The MPA does, since they're representing people who publish the sheet music. And since OLGA strikes a direct blow against their licensed music sites (places like Musicnotes.com and others) it's fairly unsurprising that they're not happy with it.
--
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
Do you forget 17 USC 107 et seq?
by
tepples
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· Score: 1
Any of it! Hence "copyright", the right to copy.
I just copied nine words of your automatically copyrighted comment into mine. So sue me. No wait, you'll be laughed out of court, as some instances of copying are obvious fair uses and thus not actionable infringements. The issue here is what should and should not be a fair use.
Re:Do you forget 17 USC 107 et seq?
by
jb.hl.com
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Fair use is quite obviously not a whole song's guitar tabs. A short riff, perhaps, but not the whole damn song.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Do you forget 17 USC 107 et seq?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
So you agree that you were wrong in your original assertion that any kind of copying is infringement?
Re:Do you forget 17 USC 107 et seq?
by
metalligoth
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· Score: 1
From my understanding, once you change a couple of "riffs" in the song, it becomes a different song and therefore is not subject to copyright. This is how these sites have gotten away with this for so long. The RIAA is able to pursue them now since they've become so power-hungry and in bed with all of Washington.
The changes in the songs are easy to recognize and are why when you play a song from a tab site it almost never sounds 100% correct. You're supposed to figure out the issues yourself and adjust if you want to play the original version.
Re:Do you forget 17 USC 107 et seq?
by
Jerf
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· Score: 2, Interesting
From my understanding, once you change a couple of "riffs" in the song, it becomes a different song and therefore is not subject to copyright.
Your understanding needs to grow to include the concept of derivative work.
Believe me, I am well aware the current copyright system has some major conceptual holes in it (most of which even the Slashdot community really hasn't gotten to noticing yet) and the shit has only begun to hit the fan. But the system is not so broken that they would fail to notice such an obvious hole that would allow you to basically strip copyright protection from whatever you want with minimal effort.
Just because I am correcting you on this point should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the entire existing system, or as anything other than, simply, a correction on how you understand the current system.
Re:Do you forget 17 USC 107 et seq?
by
Weedlekin
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· Score: 1
"From my understanding, once you change a couple of "riffs" in the song, it becomes a different song and therefore is not subject to copyright."
Your understanding is wrong. A plaintiff will win in court if a song has certain specific similarities to his or her original -- it does not have to be identical. If changing a couple of riffs here and there was enough, jazz players (and more importantly, their recording / publishing companies) would not have attributed their often substantially altered renditions of various works to the original authors.
-- I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
And how did Lennon/McCartney learn to play
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
How did Lennon and McCartney learn to play guitar? That's right - by learning to play their idols' music as teenagers. These days they would be prosecuted for it.
Re:And how did Lennon/McCartney learn to play
by
NulDevice
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· Score: 1
Nah they wouldn't. They'd be sued if they performed it in front of a paying audience without paying royalties, or recorded it without mechanical license (and they did do a lot of covers in the early days), or if they transcribed licensed music and sold it or gave it away. But just learning to play it would not have gotten them sued.
And most of these laws in some form or another predate the DMCA by decades. John and Paul woulda been sued back then the same as they would be now for most of that stuff (although the plaintiffs were not as litigious in those days).
--
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
Re:Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingeri
by
Ph33r+th3+g(O)at
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· Score: 1
I wonder whether he ever considered patenting his fingerings?
If he patented them, he'd have to disclose them. And there's probably not enough money in chasing after small-time artists that would then copy them to be worth losing the mysterious aura he's generating by keeping them secret.
-- I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The quality of music tabs in the stores is absolutely sh*te. I have spent much money on these (pop, rock) and they are about as much use as a hamster trying to play lead guitar.
Online efforts by people, on the other hand is very good.
The RIAA deserve a medal for saving me shelling out on music and sheet music. I know what they publish and support is about as nice as HIV.
Indeed... and Ultimate-Guitar is fully legal. It operates under russian license. Interesting how quickly creative websites like this have flourished around the world while being stifled in the US... oh, for the pre-DMCA internet!
-- Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Give me a break! This is the gayest thing I have ever heard of. Not only is it OLGA... but several guitar tab sites have been "temporarily" shut down... it is guitar tab!!! NOT THE SONG! It is just several guitarists ideas of how they think the song should be transcribed!!!!! This pisses me off so much! THis is so wrong on so many levels... I am pissed trying to write anything about it.
First of all you can't get the "groove" unless you listen to an actual recording and secondly I've never found a transcription in my life that was entirely correct. Guitar tab is a tool and a good starting point for learning a song.
Any sane business would try to set up some kind of affiliate deal with tab sites to try to sell mp3's of the songs being searched for.
I really wish music companies would think before acting like dicks. If you could find me a band who MIND that kids out there are learning to play their songs from sites like OLGA, I'll be a surprised man. It's free publicity if anything, most bands/albums I like don't have tab books to purchase so I look online. It's hardly like these sites offer mp3s of the songs along with the chords, what's the issue? As far as I can see it'd encourage people to check out the rest of the band's music. In my personal development as a guitarist I use tab sites all the time to learn songs I like and it definitely isn't hurting the bands. It's just another way for the big corporations to harness a popular industry and either spoil it for everyone or try to make money off it. That Lennon quote comes to mind: "Music belongs to everyone; it's just publishers who think they own it" (or words to that effect).
I believe #4 is something like "improve so much that you decide to play a gig, but fail to hand over a thousand bucks to some company."
They sell at about $5 per song....
by
Kunta+Kinte
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Part of the reason RIAA is going after the free music databases is that they would like to sell you the sheet music for about $5 per song. Checkout MusicNotes. In fact I've seen songs for more than $10 bucks on there, depending on the format.
I never got tabs, they're often incorrect and missing a lot of information. But there is no way guitarist are going to spend $5 per song for sheet music en masse. Personally, I prefer buying books of non-RIAA songs.
They saw that legal online music only took off after iTunes started selling music for $1...
PS. Does anyone know of an online database of public-domain MusicXML sheet music?
-- Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Re:They sell at about $5 per song....
by
musiholic
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· Score: 1
Much of the sheet music I've ever seen put out by the publishers is shit anyway - totally missing the nuances of how the songs were played, often missing entire sections of songs. The "Yes Complete" book is far from it. The Zeppelin sheet music book was laughable. The Chicago book was probably the most thorough I've seen, and even it dumbed the songs down horribly.
-- One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
Re:They sell at about $5 per song....
by
NulDevice
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· Score: 1
MPA. Not RIAA. Different bunch of lawsuit-obsessed music industry lawyers.
--
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
Re:They sell at about $5 per song....
by
poot_rootbeer
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· Score: 1
Part of the reason RIAA is going after the free music databases is that they would like to sell you the sheet music for about $5 per song. Checkout MusicNotes.
What does MusicNotes have to do with the RIAA? Nothing.
to "ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come."
OLGA has been around for quite a long time, and if im not mistaken, music has been created, manufactured and published for all that time. why would it now have an adverse effect?
In that time many composers and songwriters have learned the art of songcraft as they serve apprenticeships playing the works of others via OLGA.net.
Not 'apparent' at all
by
kripkenstein
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law.
No, this is not apparent at all. The site owner of Olga says so, and I agree with him completely.
Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs, which is a clear copyright violation. Nor do they publish lyrics (although they do sometimes). They primarily publish tab files (tabulature), which are specifications of where to place your fingers on a guitar (not even notes), and chord files, which are lists of chords. Now, to see how ridiculous the 'copyright' claim is, consider the case of chord files.
A typical chord file contains something like "G D Em C" - which are all the chords you need to play for quite a lot of rock/pop songs (up to modulation to a different key). A lot of others are covered by "G D C" (even simpler). There are only 6 basic chords on the guitar (in a specific key). Most songs use only a few of those (except for people like e.g. David Bowie, who uses dozens of chords in some songs). Basically, to claim copyright violation here, is to claim that "G D C" is copyrighted. But by which of the 1,000,000 songs that use it? It isn't unique in any way (unlike, say, lyrics or mp3s). Chord files (usually) only contain names of chords, not rythym or anything else. They are brief and nonunique in the extreme. To claim copyright violation would be amusing if it weren't sad.
The case of tab files is different, as these can be fairly specific to a song. However, even here it is far from clear that a copyright violation is being committed. A perfect, note-for-note transcription may seem to be an obvious copyright violation, but 99% of tabs are far from that. They are more like a guess or an interpretation of the song (for example, in nearly all cases they contain only notes, not durations of notes - and again, not even notes, but positions on the guitar).
As a guitar player who has enjoyed Olga for many years, this (repeat) development is sad, and I believe unjustified.
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
6031769
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· Score: 3, Funny
This is quite correct. I would further point out that many of the tunes listed on OLGA were neither written nor recorded on a guitar, and therefore all OLGA and their contributors are doing is describing how one might go about performing that work on a guitar. In those cases they are certainly less worthy of the banner of law-breakers than a member of the public openly violating copyright by whistling their favourite tune while walking down the street (not just copyright violation, but public performance no less). Lock up the whistlers now!
-- Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
kfg
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs
They don't? Then how is it you can learn to play songs from them?
Notation is a recording. The very musical recording copyright was invented to protect. The recorded music business predates sound recording by hundreds of years.
Kids these frickin' days. Your factory fed tech brain is ruining your good sense.
KFG
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
kripkenstein
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· Score: 1
Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs
They don't? Then how is it you can learn to play songs from them?
Actually, you can't! From a list of chords, you can't learn to play a song. They aren't meant to be used that way. The correct way to use such a file is to first know the song very well, and preferably have a recording of it.
As any guitar player will tell you, knowing the song is most of it; the list of chords is just an aid. From your knowledge of the song, you will know the rythym, speed, phrasing, points of emphasis, and so forth. Those don't appear in a chord file.
First picked up a guitar nearly 50 years ago now. Professional performer on same for 30 years, teacher for 20.
. . . the list of chords is just an aid.
Well, OLGA supplies more than just lists of chords and as any guitar player will tell you if you have good knowledge of the song you don't really need the chord list to begin with, you can hear them, although yes, the list can be a learning aid.
You could also say, however, that you don't really need a script to learn a play, just a recording, but try telling that to the script publishers if you post one online. They're covered by copyright.
KFG
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs, which is a clear copyright violation.
Please tell me: How is not publishing recordings of songs a clear copyright violation?
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
Marcus+Green
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· Score: 1
Could you explain and make clear the statement.
"Nor do they publish lyrics (although they do sometimes)"
So they don't publish lyrics, but they do sometimes? isn't that the same as "they publish lyrics"
A typical chord file contains something like "G D Em C" - which are all the chords you need to play for quite a lot of rock/pop songs (up to modulation to a different key). A lot of others are covered by "G D C" (even simpler). There are only 6 basic chords on the guitar (in a specific key). Most songs use only a few of those (except for people like e.g. David Bowie, who uses dozens of chords in some songs). Basically, to claim copyright violation here, is to claim that "G D C" is copyrighted. But by which of the 1,000,000 songs that use it? It isn't unique in any way (unlike, say, lyrics or mp3s). Chord files (usually) only contain names of chords, not rythym or anything else. They are brief and nonunique in the extreme. To claim copyright violation would be amusing if it weren't sad.
In fact chord progressions are not copyrightable. Just look at jazz - there are hundreds (if not thousands) tunes based on "I Got Rhythm" chord progression. Or for that matter consider the 12 bar blues or any doo-wap song from the 50s...
-- ...richie - It is a good day to code.
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
dartarrow
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· Score: 2, Funny
A typical chord file contains something like "G D Em C"
Dude... u just listed the chords for Every Single Green Day song
-- I love humanity, it is people I hate
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
kripkenstein
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· Score: 1
First, I gather from the tone of your reply that I may have offended you. After rereading my reply to you before, I apologize. I feel strongly about this issue and I went a bit overboard.
Well, OLGA supplies more than just lists of chords
I agree. This brings us back to my original post, where I said that the case of chord files is different than tabulature. A highly-accurate tabulature is high in information, even if not entirely complete. And perhaps this is indeed copyright infringement (but I am not sure). However, a large portion of the content is just chord files, which I believe is not infringement, as I claimed before (the information present in 4 chords isn't much).
You could also say, however, that you don't really need a script to learn a play, just a recording, but try telling that to the script publishers if you post one online. They're covered by copyright.
I would compare a list of chords to a very brief summary of a script. I believe that such summaries are legal to post online (e.g. Wikipedia does it). But, a highly accurate tabulature is something else, as I said before. I am less sure about that case.
The problem is that the lines can be blurry between the two cases (such as a very partial tabulature, which is the majority of content on Olga), so we may see them all lumped together as legal or not. It would be a sad thing (to me) if chord files were deemed copyright infringement because of that.
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
kripkenstein
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· Score: 1
Some chord files contain lyrics, just so guitarists won't need to search for a lyrics site containing them.
My point was that most chord files don't contain lyrics.
Re:Not 'apparent' at all
by
kripkenstein
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· Score: 1
Sorry for my English. Instead of "Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs, which is a clear copyright violation", I should have had
Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs, which would have been a clear copyright violation.
I gather from the tone of your reply that I may have offended you.
No, not at all. Really.
I feel strongly about this issue and I went a bit overboard.
I have no idea how many songs and instrumentals I know "by heart." It's well beyond any concept of counting them. I'm not looking forward to having my brain sucked out and agree I with Beethoven's observation about the music "biz."
If I seem to be coming from some other space it's just that I guess I feel strongly about people understanding that written music is a record of the music. The "Jeez, it's not like it's a CD or something" was getting to me. I'm a musician. I play. I write. It's the "stuff in a can" that's the "fake."
Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs
Notation is a recording.
Three words: Straw man argument. You deliberately misinterpreted what the grandparent meant by "recordings". Stop insulting my intelligence, even though I'm a Slashdot reader.
Not everything is protectable by copyright law. Take, for example, typefaces. They are clearly art, intellectual output, etc, and yet they are also not protected under U.S. copyright law. Making arguments on the (false) premise that copyright law is unversally applicable will get you nowhere.
The question here is whether or not these guitar tabulatures are covered by copyright law. The operators of the OLGA site assert that they are not. The NMPA and the MPA assert that they are. The courts will decide, and if we don't like the results, Congress can change the rules.
... was all the rage the last time I heard any grumblings about the OLGA. As I recall, Cherry Lane Publishing sued to have it shut down and this was about three or four years (decades in teh interweb-time) before the rise of file-sharring and Mp3s. Looking back at this time period you can't help but see what a huge waste of time it was to go through all the trouble of launching a legal campaign against something you 'perceive' as dangerous to your revenue stream, just to have another technology come down the pipe a couple of years later that makes your crys of malfeasance seem about as legititmate as people complaining that the deck chairs on the Titanic don't have sufficient lumbar support. The whole thing is going down, my friend.
I picked up my first guitar at 15 (which was in 1995). It was a Sunburst Fender Mexi-Strat and it's about two feet away from me right as I type this. The OLGA, as well as programs like Tabit (ah, DOS, remember DOS?), played more than an integral part in helping me to learn to play and I'm grateful to all of those random soandso@soandso.coms that tabbed out the music that I consumed and callused my fingers to. If Cherry Lane or others want to go after people that are scanning sheet music and posting PDFs, more power to them. That's a copyright issue, go get 'em boys. But if I'm sitting with a copy of StringWalker open for three bleary-eyed hours, trying to make "I Just Want Some Skank" by the Circle Jerks sound right, don't tell me what I'm doing is illegal or in any way detrimental to the music industry.
It's not.
It's cultivating interest via a medium that the publishing community obviously, obviously either fears or is woefully ignorant of.
-- The enemy of my enemy is quite possibly also my enemy. I've made a lot of enemies.
It's a shame - but tabs aren't going away
by
gadlaw
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· Score: 1
I never used OLGA, it was always or seemed to always be spotty and there are plenty of other sites online that provide tabs and links to tabs more efficiently. Having said that, it's sad to see it go. One more avenue for free expression of user made tab interpretations of songs gone. Gone but replaced already. And if anything, being able to learn guitar, to be able to call up in an instant a tab or five for one song I'm learning on my guitar has sent me off buying those Mel Bay tab books and compilation tab books all the more quickly. So the scummy, evil lawyers and their false claim of harm is on the face of it, absurd. It's also just the grinding justification that such lawyers use to justify their own existence as they troll along like lampreys looking to attach themselves to something bigger and better.
On the other hand,I pat myself on the back for buying Guitar Pro 5 early while they still had the whole catalog of guitar pro tabs to download with it so I have a good sized library of tabs I can hear. Yup, they closed down that tab collection down but it sprung right back up in a couple of places.
-- Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Back when I was first learning guitar before the internet became big, I would buy all kinds of books that had songs I wanted to learn. Then when OLGA came along I had no incentive to buy them anymore because a song was just a search box away. I don't think it has much to do with artist incentive as much as profit from those books. Music instrument stores have walls of those things.
I have books of sheet music, tabs are nothing like sheet music.
Re:Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingeri
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Eddie Van Halen used to do this back in the early 80s to conceal his 'tapping' technique for songs like Eruption.
Re:Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingeri
by
popsicle67
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· Score: 1
anybody that has to "hide" anything he does with a musical instrument is cheating pure and simple. I have never known any musician of any discipline to hold back anything that might make someone go "WHOA" unless they are generating that wow factor through dishonorable means. Vanity is a delicate thing but going as far as hiding what your doing from your audience,that's almost as crazy as Buckethead wearing a mask and a chicken bucket and talking through a toy.
I went there about four or five days ago and they had a sign up saying they were sorting out legal issues. I was a little depressed as there are thousands of sites around offering this service and it's easy to walk in the newsagent on the weekend and memorise the stuff out of magazines (or the books in the music store). I personally can't imagine the few people who make money out of the music they find on OLGA are statistically relevant. Also, any guitarist worth their salt can figure most pop songs out without thinking twice. Most are three chord wonders.
I really don't tink any recording artist is going to notice their income going up.
It takes a heartless recording corporation to believe that the only incentive for creating music is money.
Welcome to late capitalism, where the only motive for anything (at least that anyone will believe) is 'profit' and everything, including human emotions, are 'monetized.'
Please read Title 17. The DMCA does not give anyone the right to shut anything down. It provides a "safe haven" for providers who act promptly to remove infringing material. Absent the DMCA copyright owners could still send "takedown notices". However, they could still sue providers even they promptly complied.
-- Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Actually - This is simply a demand for them to shut it down. They are legally entitled to ignore it, and the writers of the letter are legally entitled to demand the ISP removes the data, and to sue OLGA. From a certain point of view, they're showing restraint.
Re:Not the DMCA
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Only insomuch as you consider the DMCA copyright law is your statement accurate. You admit as much in a subsequent comment. Pretending that the take down portions of the DMCA do not act to take down websites shows just how willing you are to mislead. You must be an attorney, probably for the MPAA or RIAA. The DMCA is a law that was paid for by buying off politicians with campaign contributions. If you do not see the problem with that, you are part of the problem.
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm curious how often you buy any kind of guitar tabs or music books from a store. In my experience, probably 80% of the guitar books are worthless, sound awful, and aren't anywhere close to being correct. I highly doubt the artists are directly involved in the publishing process and it's probably the exact same process as the online sites, with the only difference being that these books aren't free and aren't corrected by others.
Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
FhnuZoag
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Right. What his 'representatives' are doing with his music seems to be the very antithesis of his philosophy. Indeed, recall the lyrics to Imagine:
Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people Sharing all the world...
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
the_duke_of_hazzard
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· Score: 3, Informative
Those are his lyrics, not his philosophy. He lived in a very big house and had many material possessions.
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
jb.hl.com
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· Score: 2, Insightful
As someone else pointed out, his actions seem to be the antithesis of his philosophy.
-- By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
> As someone else pointed out, his actions seem to be the antithesis of his philosophy.
Indeed. What is is often the antithesis of what ought to be.
The irony wasn't lost on Lennon. If he actually had no possessions, then of course there would be no need to imagine no possessions.:)
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
StikyPad
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· Score: 1
Since one's philosophy is best indicated by one's actions, we can assume that they were just lyrics, as the above poster stated.
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
McFadden
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· Score: 1
What his 'representatives' are doing with his music seems to be the very antithesis of his philosophy. Indeed, recall the lyrics to Imagine
Try telling that to his former wife who not so long ago licensed Nike to make a pair of sneakers with exactly those lyrics printed across them. It's hard to 'imagine' a worse choice (pun intended!)
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Not to be a nit picker but Lennon was cremated so it's impossible for him to roll.:)
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
poot_rootbeer
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· Score: 1
Indeed, recall the lyrics to Imagine:
It's nice that you think Lennon was such an idealist, but I doubt you will find a statement on a single one of his albums releasing the rights to his music, lyrics, or phonorecordings into the public domain. He took part in The System. Really, there was no way he could have thrived without doing so.
He wasn't even above claiming copyright on other people's work on occasion (do you really think "Jamrag" on the 2-LP release of "Sometime in New York City" was written on the spot by Lennon/Ono? Or did the Mothers of Invention know to play it because Frank Zappa had already written it and had them learn it?).
Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave
by
andrewman327
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· Score: 1
He was ultimately popular enough that he could have released some indie music open source without regard for license if he had wanted to push his philosophy.
Armchair socialists will rant and rave about property rights being a tool of oppression until they are robbed and go running to the police. Speech and action are different things.
-- Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Poor Quality
by
Nerdfest
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· Score: 2, Informative
Not OLGA, but the commercial sheet music. I've found many examples where the sheet music I've bought is of lower quality than that available from OLGA. It smeels of the publishing compamies putting out music unrelated to what the original artist actually plays. Protecting a crappy product with lawyers isn't the way to make your customers happy...
Re:Poor Quality
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I have to agree. During my days as a budding guitarist, I'd often peruse the "official" tab books for an artist, trying to see what I was "officially" supposed to play - only to find it as flawed (if not more so) than the eight or so available "interpretations" on OLGA or some other tab website. Frankly, I find that having eight different interpretations is a more useful starting point for figuring out a song than having a blatently incorrect "official" tab book (which, often, would only have the tab for one instrument instead of the full band's arrangement - probably my single biggest gripe with official tab books). Between the eight interpretations on OLGA, you'll normally get in the ballpark of how the song is actually played, at least.
That said, any guitarist worth his or her salt should be able to pick out a tune by ear:)
So let me get this straight....
by
carlzum
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· Score: 0
Thirty years ago people like Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan rip off the music and lyrics of blues and folk singers before them (many of whom died poor) and become multi-millionaires. Now you get sued for just showing amateur musicians how to play those chords. Nice.
In my area (Tampa Bay FL) a restaurant owner was sued [sptimes.com] for playing songs (cover bands and on the stereo) owned by BMI without paying them an additional fee to the ASCAP fee he already pays. I guess the moral of the story is, P2P-related lawsuits were just the beginning. Media companies are going to extort every penny they can until someone stops them.
Re:So let me get this straight....
by
carlzum
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· Score: 0
It's the deviation that should make it legal.
by
twitter
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· Score: 1
I never got tabs, they're often incorrect and missing a lot of information.
Well, that's why they are independent works and the take down is harassment. From the site owner:
I have long been of the understanding that an original, by-ear transcription of a song, which is a duplicate of no copyrighted work and which generally deviates substantially from the work on which it is based is the property of its transcriber, and not the original composer of the song.
If you are doing cover songs with a band, you might spring for the $5 to "get it right". The music industry itself gets things screwed up all the time as a quick glance at the career of Jimmi Hendrix shows. They got his album art wrong, his recordings screwed up and finally he's buried under a plaque of a right handed guitar and is still missing a promissed statue of himself. With screw ups like that, do you think they can get all the notes right? Maybe, maybe not. If copright did not live forever, it would all be fixed by now.
Outside the industry, where the vast majority of us live, people like my wife just want some basic directions to learn with. All most people care about are the basics. Before the internet, they would get them by listening to the record over and over again and meticulously transcribing what they though they heard. People still do that, but now they can share the results and everyone wins. The version people hear is often easier to play and sounds better than the original. Sometimes it's not, but you always get a choice.
Everyone but a few self defeating pigopolists that is. As you pointed out, the greed heads want to charge you more for the sheet music than an actual recording. This will really be the end of most of their sales. One of the only reasons people still listen to fifty year old music like the Beatles is because they are fun to sing yourself. If those idiots make it hard for people to enjoy what they sell, people will move on.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Re:It's the deviation that should make it legal.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hendrix, while left-handed, always played a right-handed guitar.
gdc
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Knockin On Heavens Door
g-d-c
Geez, I'm so glad we've got that outta the way.
Bob Dylan will be angry though:(
Except many many songs are composed of g-d-c or variation thereof.
I should just copyright the g chord and shut down everyone, everywhere.
Sue me.
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
by
Oligonicella
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· Score: 1
I buy my music fome a russian website to prove a point to the RIAA that all they need to do is hit a resonable price point
Why the hell didn't anyone mod this funny?
Fight the evil at his root
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
They should forbid the sell of music instruments too, this is the root of all evil !
Here is an example : it all started with a guitar from my dad. I didn't knew how to play guitar at that time, so I used this Olga site to find easy Nirvana tabs so I could start playing. Then, Olga was not enough, so I searched, and turned to other tab site and I came to play Bossa Nova songs ! Do you realize what happened to me ? from playing Nirvana to playing Bossa Nova ? All of this just because of a guitar and using Olga/online tab sites ? that's insane.
So, I'm here to speak, and to prevent this from happening again to a child/teenager, because I still struggle everyday to refrain from playing a little "Corcovado" when I see my guitar.
That's why closing Olga is not enough and I request them to fight the evil at his root and to ban the sell of music instruments. These is the real cullprit perverting our mind, and making the world unsafe.
Re:Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingeri
by
Xamataca
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Let's go back to the ancient school tradition were masters and artisans of every discipline only shared is knowledge with fellow members and disciples.
Let's develope obscure societies with secret rules, strict hierarchies and stupid ceremonies all for the high and noble ideal of keeping the secrets away from the peasants.
Welcome to the future, welcome to the Middle Age.
-- ***Game Over***Insert Coin***
Why I don't think this is copyright violation
by
ericlondaits
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· Score: 1
If you have the sheet music, you can play a song you never heard.
If you have chords (or even most of the tabs in this sites) you just can't play them unless you heard the thing first (usually you need to practice with the recording until you can properly interpret the chords).
-- As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Are they for real? Back in the days when I was practicing guitar I had to listen to the tunes myself and write down the chords. Songbooks where to expensive and the web wasnt there yet. So would this mean I am breaking copyright?
Am I breaking copyright law by LISTENING to the music or what?? Its plain insane!
Not yet, but you are if you let anyone else listen to it, or see your transcriptions.
--
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
91degrees
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· Score: 1
I'd like to see just how much profit is made from sheet music. I'd find it hard to believe that any songwriter of any song featured on OLGA makes any worthwhile fraction of their money from sheet music. Surely almost all of it is from airplay royalties and record sales.
You're sick...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
...and you need help. Humans are more important than guitar tabs and copyright law. Call your mother, go outside, talk to somebody. Your are in dire need of therapy.
Re:You're sick...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What about humans who choose to spend their time fucking things up for the rest of us?
Individual humans who act contrary to the whole of society -- even if they do so in ways less direct than violent crime -- should not be forgiven their sins just because the actions they take are abstract and indirect in how they harm others' wellbeing.
Let me ask you: Which is more important -- the life of one person, or ten people, or one hundred, or three thousand; or the ability of ten million to take some small, unimportant action without fear? I don't think that the answer is clearcut.
Play it by ear
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Why should MMPA or RIAA worry about tabs when all over the world children are being taught to play music by ear? Near me, the Oldtown School of Folk Music routinely teaches students how to listen to and copy any tune, whether or not the material is in the public domain. This induces infringement, just like TPB and Google. It is beyond replaying it in your head--it's replaying it out loud for friends and family, and maybe even in sessions!
Worse than that, playing by ear is often passed on by families of criminals, similar to the mafia. This musical crime may have a genetic component. For example, generations of traditional Irish musicians have taught their young to play by ear, and then then entire family will sit and violate copyright law together. It's a good idea to lock up all the Irish to stop this sort of lawlessness. In my day, we didn't try to "make our own fun"----we paid for it, like honest citizens.
PoV from a serious musician, the good/bad/ugly
by
TibbonZero
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I can see why on a LEGAL level they would want to shut them down, asides from the DMCA. They have in effect created and distributed a derrivative work from the music. However, it's a really minor offense IMHO. It isn't mallicious or trying to shut people out of money.
It is indirectly (perhaps directly) shutting people out of money however. Artists actually make a TON more from their publishing (which includes music in films, on the cd itself, printed stuff, etc...) than from Record Deals (which rarely make anything). In fact it's one of the easiest ways for a new artist to legitmately make money. As well as songwriters, as that's the ONLY place they get their money from. Using the DMCA is odd, as they have other things they can use against them.
I think it's uncool however that they do this. OLGA first of all isn't really a good representation of the music IMHO. Tabs are, well horrid, for reading music. I can't see why they are getting so bent. This isn't going to push the amount of sheet music purchased up as they hope.
The good side is that maybe for a bit people will (either google other sites or...) learn to use their ears. A real musician doesn't really need tab for playing pop tunes (which most of these songs are). Just use your ears and boom, there they go!
Re:PoV from a serious musician, the good/bad/ugly
by
potpie
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· Score: 1
But most people use tabs as beginners to learn how to play. Not everybody picks up a guitar for the first time as a real musician.
-- Esoteric reference.
Re:PoV from a serious musician, the good/bad/ugly
by
TibbonZero
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· Score: 1
Agreed, but everyone can learn to read real sheet music (which they want you to purchase, and I see as a fairly reasonable request. I have probably 2000+ pieces of sheet music or books of music... but then again, I have nearly as many recordings that I've paid for), OR they can purchase tab legitimately from the publishers.
Some artists/publishing companies don't care about their stuff being put out there like this, but the majority already have the product on the market and the only thing protecting it are their IP laws. Don't say "I'll buy it when I'm a pro", because real pros for most of this stuff would probably just listen and play.
Everyone that does pick up a guitar however (i'm making an assumption) does have ears and can figure out the stuff on their own for the most part.
I don't feel that this damages guitar instructors either who should be able to figure the stuff out on their own as well by ear, or more likely request that their students legitmately purchase books. Better yet, my past... 7 guitar mentors/instructors all have published books that have their teaching theory in them.
I don't think for the most part anyway guitar teachers are there to "teach songs", but rather to give the player the musical knowledge they need to play ANY song, and assist on ones that they are having particular problems with.
Re:PoV from a serious musician, the good/bad/ugly
by
pregister
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· Score: 1
I've used a lot of tab from OLGA over the years.
There _isn't_ decent sheet music for most popular music. At best most of it is arranged for piano with chord notation for guitar which is usually really, really horrible. I wish there really was sheet music which actually attempted to represent the guitar being played on a particular song, rather than a horrible piano/guitar arrangement. I bought some really nice sheet music of some Michael Hedges pieces. Be nice if more of this stuff was available.
TAB is almost never accurate...but at least it gives somebody's attempt to transcribe the guitar part...and its often very useful as a starting off place to figure out a piece.
Re:PoV from a serious musician, the good/bad/ugly
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Olga was previously shut down for the SAME DAMN REASONS. The lawsuits failed, and OLGA came back. If OLGA doesn't run out of money, it will rise again. The entire purpose of this lawsuit is to shut down OLGA by draining money.
Re:PoV from a serious musician, the good/bad/ugly
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Actually, not everyone has a musical ear.
The ability to reference individual notes especially in obscure chord combinations is impossible for a lot of people. It's hard for a lot of people, too, as can be determined by the gross inaccuracy of most online tab.
And sheet music doesn't lend itself to easy learning because most people learning guitar without formal training in some type of music don't know what the note names are or the intricacies of key signature. And amateur guitarists don't translate the note names to the strings...that lends itself more to theory.
Tab, on the other hand, specifies exactly where your fingers need to be and what the tuning is. It lends itself to being played through in entirety on the first attempt. The only thing really lacking from accurate tab is small timing issues (larger ones are hinted through symbols and space between notes).
I'm a techie. For me, it's unfathomable that a lot of people can't figure out how to use email (the simple art of attaching a document is beyond their comprehension) but if you've ever worked in a technical support field, you'd be aware of just how prevalant that problem was...if I had to guess, I'd say roughly 40% of the people that called in couldn't send an email with an attachment if their life depended on it. A lot of that reaction is because I lost sight of my roots and forget at one time I had to learn how to do it, too. And not only that but I had the ability to learn it quickly while many people don't. Your ability to disect songs is much the same. You've probably forgotten your roots and exactly how hard it was your first time. You're probably also unaware that people have to overcome various handicaps such as varying degrees of tone deafness.
It only has to be proven that the tabs in question are the same as the copyrighted ones. Of course, this will never be proven because as anyone who has actually used online tabs knows...they're never 100% correct. Usually only about 40-80%, enough to get the basic progression down.
Of course, this will never be proven because as anyone who has actually used online tabs knows...they're never 100% correct. Usually only about 40-80%, enough to get the basic progression down.
I'm kinda conflicted here.
1) Taking this website down is good as a public service for quality control.
2) This website is good because it and its ilk allow real musicians to distinguish the wheat from the chaff just that much more easily.
It'll hurt them eventually
by
LaurieDash
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I've recently signed a small record deal with an indie label and i can honestly say that i would never have been as motivated to learn guitar and write songs had it not been for guitar tablature sites. The music that i listen to is often not even published (as sheet music) by the record labels and as a beginner i required other people's interpretations of my favourite songs so i could learn a version, work out chord structures and eventually write my own songs. If they want to close down guitar tablature sites i think record companies are hurting themselves in the long run, as they're erasing an entire generation of potential musicians.
If money is your incentive...
by
mushadv
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· Score: 3, Insightful
...then you shouldn't be making music.
Re:If money is your incentive...
by
titzandkunt
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· Score: 1
"If money is your incentive... ......then you shouldn't be making music."
So money making should be limited to......what? Accountancy? Law? Engineering? Software Development? Business Management?
Who the fuck are you to tell people how they should make their bucks? Some fat nerd in a parent's basement somewhere? Bill Gates? John T. Citizen, anytown USA?
I'm not impressed by the strength of your arguments. I doubt I'm alone in this.
T&K.
-- Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable...
Re:If money is your incentive...
by
mushadv
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· Score: 1
I never said anything against making money with music, I'm just saying it shouldn't be an incentive. You should make music because it's something you enjoy creating.
Re:If money is your incentive...
by
titzandkunt
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· Score: 1
How much money? Enough to live on - which, depending on your geographical location could be US$500 or US$50,000/pa? How much of their motivation should be financial? 0% = starving. 100% = Britney. Why should musicians and songwriters be denied the opportunity to make big bux, rather than living as minstrels, entertainers for others, while the technologists and financiers are free to better their financial standing by moving to better-paying employment or situations?
-- Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable...
Re:If money is your incentive...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Who the fuck are you to tell people how they should make their bucks?
Oh you know, the person BUYING their albums, and PAYING for their overpriced TicketRaper shows. That's who the fuck I am.
If an 'artist' is just out for my wallet, and cares less about the music, then they don't deserve to be making either.
Furthermore, writing twelve 2.5 minute long pop songs should not, in ANY case, be enough work to make you millions. Period.
Re:If money is your incentive...
by
novus+ordo
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· Score: 1
If you were a musician, you wouldn't need to ask such stupid questions.
-- "You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Re:If money is your incentive...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If being a karma whore is your incentive then you shouldn't be posting on/.
I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that people post on here. I don't agree with a lot of people's political views. I am against the war (which I would assume most here are). I'm against smoking bans in states and cities on private property (I think if you don't like a restraunt because it is smoke-filled you can do what my parents and I did when i was litte: tell them their restraunt smells like ass and we won't be back unless they ban smoking in their facility). I think private businesses (but not government or businesses with public contracts) should be able to discriminate against people if they damn well please, whether it be because they don't like gays, catholics, women, white people, or whatever the hell they like (but if they have public contracts they should have to adhere to non-discriminatory policies). If they discriminate I'll be one of the ones telling everyone I know not go there.
I'm a Christian and I believe God created man (not necessarily 6k years ago, but w/e) but I don't think we should teach creation in schools as scientific theory. I don't think homosexuality is necessarly right but I am 100% (and I argue with as many other christians as I can to try to convince them) pro gay-marriage because, thank God we do not live in a theocracy (look at the middle east). I am for drug legalization and against the death penalty. I agree with some and disagree with some of the views that are the norm here.
Yet this kind of shit is just RIDICULOUS. OF COURSE you should NOT be allowed to sneak into the studio, copy the sheets of music (or w/e if they are on a computer), paste them into a file, save it as a PDF and save it online. I think we can pretty much all agree that this should be a civil infraction (I think reasonable people should also agree that there is nothing *criminal* about doing that and the gov should not be paying to investigate copyright infringment either, but w/e).
But if someone figures out the damn chords themselves from listening to the fucking music, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY ABILITY TO PREVENT THEM FROM SHARING WHAT THEY HAVE HEARD WITH THEIR FRIENDS. GOOD GOD. If someone listens to your music, figures out how to play it on their instrument (lets not limit this to popular music) there should be NO LAW and NO PENALTY for them sharing what they have figured out. To try to control human thought is just unconciable.
There is a *HUGE* difference between trying to share the ability to play a song and infringing on someone's copyright. When copyright was invented (before the U.S. even existed) it didn't extend to people trying to figure out the notes to what they were hearing and playing them back to their friends.
It is already at the point where schools have been sued for performing music in plays etc when they did not have a license to perform it in a public performance. Is this what was intended?
I believe that if you walk up to someone on the street who is not familiar at all with copyright law and ask them questions about what they believe is right or not right, you would garner a pretty reasonable response overall. It is worthy of a lawsuit if you make a play about some guy's script and charge money for it. That guy who wrote the damn thing deserves to be compensated. But if your kid's elementary school finds that play on the 'net and performs it for the parents at Thanksgiving, fuck you if you think that is wrong and fuck you if you think the school should have to pay. Seriously.
There comes a point at which our society needs to decide which way it is going to go. There can either be a place for the modern day media corporations, or they can stay behind. That is their choice. But they cannot drag everyone else back in time with them. If they succeed in taking control of what people can or cannot think then it is only a matter of time before freedom of (or from) religion, freedom to own firearms, freedom to speak our minds (well, drugs are already illegal so we are getting there), etc... also fall to the same precedents.
-- replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
"I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that people post on here. I don't agree with a lot of people's political views. I am against the war (which I would assume most here are). I'm against smoking bans in states and cities on private property (I think if you don't like a restraunt because it is smoke-filled you can do what my parents and I did when i was litte: tell them their restraunt smells like ass and we won't be back unless they ban smoking in their facility). I think private businesses (but not government or businesses with public contracts) should be able to discriminate against people if they damn well please, whether it be because they don't like gays, catholics, women, white people, or whatever the hell they like (but if they have public contracts they should have to adhere to non-discriminatory policies). If they discriminate I'll be one of the ones telling everyone I know not go there."
It's hard to put into words how fucking stupid you are. Unless you live in fairy-land (which just might be true, judging fom your writing), most people can't just tell their boss to shove it and go get a job as waiter where they won't get slowly killed by idiots burning dried tobacco leaves and inhaling the smoke. In what kind of bizarro-world is it OK for private businesses to discriminate against you because you are gay, catholic or have big tits? Hey, you can just go and get another job, can't you? Perhaps you and I can, but 90% of the world's population are not educated, smart, good-looking, lucky and rich enough to do so.
Discriminating against races and sexual persuasions is OK, but sharing of guitar tabs sends you into rant-mode for hundreds of words? You might want to get your priorities straight.
most people can't just tell their boss to shove it and go get a job as waiter where they won't get slowly killed by idiots burning dried tobacco leaves and inhaling the smoke.
Don't like smoke? Dont work at a sports bar. It's as simple as that. Go to a family resturaunt if it bothers you that much. Request to work in the non-smoking section, etc.
Also, if you're such a loser that you have to spend long enough (read: decades) as a server for the second-hand smoke to actually do damage to your lungs, then you've got much, much bigger problems already.
( Has there actually been a confirmed case of a server that has never smoked getting lung cancer from second hand ALONE? )
And furthermore, most establishments have decent smoke scrubbers going, if they don't, and it bothers you that much, find another job. Or more to the point, you shouldn't have applied to the establisment in the first place if it really bothers you that much.
I hate christians, hence, I dont work at churches or outreach ministries. I also don't really approve of strip clubs, so I don't pursue employment by one. Same goes for big business. Don't like 'em, don't work for them.
In what kind of bizarro-world is it OK for private businesses to discriminate against you because you are gay, catholic or have big tits?
If this business is under 5 (I think?) people, then this bizarro-world is the good 'ole US of A. Small private businesses can hire / fire you for whatever the fuck they want. Might not be right or just, but it's how it is.
In fact, in some cases I believe it is how it should be. Say I own a small private business, and I'm pretty hardcore agnostic. I'm looking to hire some help around the office, and the first person I interview is a hardcore southern baptist. I will not hire this person, as it would undoubtably cause many office conflicts. That should be my right.
But it is also the baptist's right not to seek employment by a heretic.
Do not go into the lion's den looking for work if you're a tasty antelope.
Well said and well spoken. The first troll that answered your post is an example of what part of the problem is. His opinion and his thoughts matter, not yours or mine. He feels comfortable cussing and calling names since of course - you don't matter, your opinion doesn't matter and since it's not his opinion you are a bleeping idiot. Thinking like that makes it okay to ban smoking in restaurants and everywhere else now. Taking the freedom away from the restaurant that can allow smoking or not is okay since they're idiots and people who go to restaurants are idiots and so we need to decide what's right for them and then tell them what to do. And while we're at it, and since controlling every aspect of people is going so well let's outlaw sharing of songs or even figuring out how to play a song. Let's make it so that you can't copy something you see on tv and let's fill music cd's and dvd's full of copy protection so they won't even play in some cd or dvd players. And if you figured out a couple of bars of the latest Los Lonely Boys single then whoa are you in trouble.
-- Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Well, here I actually accept the law. Say you write a play. Someone sees it, writes it down, and starts selling it. There's a problem. The bright line has to go somewhere, and it allows authors to control their works, period. That doesn't bother me.
No, what bugs me is what a poor business decision this is (see upthread).
Give me a break. So if i listen to an audio book and type what i hear can i share (publish) that as well? Sheet music is copyrighted always has been and for along time it was the only way writers made money off thier music.
There are tabbing programs that will play back what you have done as a midi file so I call bullshite on people saying its not enough information to play the song.
You're probably a troll, but I prefer to believe that you didn't stop and think before hitting the 'Submit' button. After cutting out your insults, you've made the following points:
most people can't just tell their boss to shove it and go get a job as waiter where they won't get slowly killed by idiots burning dried tobacco leaves and inhaling the smoke.... Hey, you can just go and get another job, can't you? Perhaps you and I can, but 90% of the world's population are not educated, smart, good-looking, lucky and rich enough to do so.
First, a couple of side points. The risk from second hand smoke is fairly small - 20-30% greater chance of getting a single deadly disease - much smaller than the risks of other professions. As for the poor 90% of the world, they have so many problems, most much more pressing than a little cigarette smoke, that they could care less about it. Besides, how many waiters are there in third world countries (outside of tourist zones)?
Second, the Liberal Paradox seems to be at the center of this discussion. The plain english translation is that in order to have any signifigant freedom, you have to be able to choose things that harm others in some way, even if it's very indirect. Or in reverse: the only way to protect people completely from other people's choices is to not let them make choices in the first place. A good example is driving: if driving is legal it puts innocent lives at risk, but if it's illigal people's freedom is reduced.
In the end, though, my dislike of smoking bans comes down to the fact that I worry more about overdoing protection rather than overdoing freedom. It's always politically easier to add more laws to improve safety rather than to remove or reform laws once you have too many.
In what kind of... world is it OK for private businesses to discriminate against you because you are gay, catholic or have big tits?
The same world where they're allowed to discriminate based on height, appearance and gut feelings. Why is not hiring a gay person a federal case, but not hiring a guy you 'just don't like' OK? Oh, right, one where you're allowed to make your own decisions, even if they're stupid and/or immoral ones.
Discriminating against races and sexual persuasions is OK, but sharing of guitar tabs sends you into rant-mode for hundreds of words? You might want to get your priorities straight.
You might want to re-read his post. You might disagree with him, but he did make a clear argument that you haven't even tried to address.
Yeah, I'm probably a troll, a suspicion clearly corroborated by my long history of trolling here. I do mean what I said. Discriminating against someone "because he's gay" or "because he's short" is NOT the same as "because I don't like him". You seem to think reducing persons to one single aspect of their personality is the same as judging them as a person and deciding you are not on the same wave-length.
My family owns and operates a business with over 1000 employees. I kind of know what I'm talking about when I say that reducing an applicant to one aspect of their CV or character is not only plain stupid and amoral, but also makes zero business sense.
Discriminating against someone "because he's gay" or "because he's short" is NOT the same as "because I don't like him".
Why? You're still making an uninformed judgement based on personal bias.
You seem to think reducing persons to one single aspect of their personality is the same as judging them as a person and deciding you are not on the same wave-length.
You seem to think that when someone just doesn't like someone, and they can't put their finger on why, it's OK to discriminate then. But a minute later when they say "I know what it was, he's a fag!", all of the sudden the discrimination was bad.
reducing an applicant to one aspect... is not only plain stupid and amoral, but also makes zero business sense.
I agree completely, but I still think it should be legal. I think you skipped my Liberal Paradox section - if it's illegal to do everything that's stupid, amoral, or in some other way bad, you can't have any meaningful amount of freedom. Plus, this whole issue seems to revolve around a "money exception" to liberty that quite a few people have. I'd assume that you believe that it's none of the government's business when it comes to choosing friends, dates and so on, but if a dollar changes hands, then anything goes.
Legal Failure corrected by Innovation and Market
by
aqui
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I see this as much more of a symptom of the perversion of the legal system by the special interests of corporations (and their lawyers).
Unfortunately justice is still out of reach for many of us, and I think the number of people who cannot afford to go to court is growing. Corporations take advantage of their wealth and this financial imbalance.
Corporations in their short sightedness rather than competing through innovation and invention seek to compete by controlling the market by suppressing competition where possible.
Copyright and Patent laws were originally created to prevent this and strike a balance between the rights of the user and the creator. The idea was to create a functioning market where innovation is encouraged and sufficiently rewarded, while retaining open competition and consumer choice.
Copyright and IP law is particularly vulnerable since its complexity and the need to seek a balance between content users and content providers makes easy to pervert. That combined with the general lack of knowledge about copyright law and fair use and a systematic public campaign by the content industry to confuse the issue, has lead to the current situation.
It is disappointing that judges, lawyers and politicians (the guardians of our legal system) have failed to protect our legal system from growing greed and corruption.
Despite all this the content industry middlemen (RIAA etc...) will lose. The reasons are simple: 1) A new medium, the internet allows anyone to connect with customers. 2) A number of users are no longer interested in working with the content industry middlemen. 3) A large number of users are willing to share their content for free.
This is creating a large pool of accessible content that the content industry middlemen do not own or control in anyway. As this pool grows which it inevitably will the very content "protection" laws lobbied for by the record industry will protect the rights of the creators of this music. Since the creators have the right to distribute their content under any licensing scheme that they see fit (eg. creative commons) they can distribute it for free.
Consumers faced with the choice of easy free to use accessible content and the choice of copy protected digitally managed "official" industry content will simply vote with their feet.
These sorts of legal challenges just help create a hostile climate for traditional industry content users and will hasten the decline of the traditional content industry as these consumers move on.
These are the violent thrashes of a dying beast... (which unfortunately will take time and cause much damage).
We've seen it with software... and we'll see it again...
-- -----
"Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
1. They do sell sheet music, and this practice cuts into their profits. I'm guessing that some revenue-sharing model could work, but that the RIAA/BMG/etc. aren't (yet) interested. In fact, I have actually seen some bands distribute their own tabs (or tabs contributed by fans), which I think is a fantastic idea.
Does that not cut into the RIAA's profits? By your logic, the artists definitely should be allowed to distribute tabs.
Wanna really get the RIAA fired up?
by
PeeAitchPee
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· Score: 3, Funny
Take ASCII versions of the tabs and embed them in the mp3 metadata, along with the lyrics. Once released in the wild via.torrent or your favorite p2p app, it's one-stop shopping for starving guitar players.
If the music biz was serious about embracing tech, they'd be selling these files on iTunes / whatever right now -- you could probably sell them for $1 more than the "regular" version of the.mp3. Instead, they bitch and moan about OLGA, shut it down (again) while giving some bullshit excuse (just say you want the publishing revenue already!), and we're exactly where we were ten years ago -- except now you can get.pdf rips of their "official recorded version" tab books that sell for $24.95 or more on eMule etc. for absolutely nothing.
This has GOT to be a joke! Only, it isn't!
How can a business like the muic industry continually attack their customers? It is not going to work forever!
What really shocks me about this is as a guitar player, I KNOW had i not had access to tabs to learn from, i'd have never have been able to. Actions like this may someday end in a severe lack of artists to produce what the industry i trying to protect.
-- You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
"end in a severe lack of artists to produce what the industry i trying to protect"
Fewer musicians = stronger monopoly. Copyright lasts for ages nowadays.
So they'll just keep selling you the same old crap. Because by that time you'd have to keep relicensing your music periodically. And you'd think it is normal.
You'd even think it's fine to pay just to recall and to relisten to music you heard yesterday (albeit with the aid of your artificial brain augmenter + DRM).
In those days a penny for your thoughts might be considered cheap - even if it's just to access your own thoughts.
So what happens next? A torrent containing the entire OLGA database, available for anyone, findable with google within few days, or some.
-flashback- hej this already happened in 1996 or so, same OLGA, same legal stuff and somewhere in my basement a dusty CD containing a dump of the olga archive - it came with a magazine.
Let me clearify my remark about this torrent thing. At the time of napster, i i wanted to hear a particular song of say, Madonna, i downloaded that song and listened it. Nowadays, as most mp3 p2p networks are polluted with crap, what do you do if you want to listen one Madonna song? The easiest way is to download the torrent containing Madonna's full discography. 18 Albums if i remember correctly. And priotize the song you were after in Azureus in listen 5 minutes later. It's not necessarely the torrent, it is just that you'll force distribution of data to the darkest underground suburbs of the internet.
Keep them poor. Keep them dumb. Take the money. Make home-written interpretations of music evil. I've get a much better idea, close all schools now! That will keep them dumb! They will never learn how to read, and never abuse services like Olga again! More opium for the people!
-- A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
mbakunin
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· Score: 1
Hooey. This is an awful business decision, simply because no kid sitting in front of his computer picking out Beatles songs is in the market for sheet music or legally published fake books.
There is, then, effectively zero downside.
Publishers apparently do not recognize that they moreover give up substantial upside. The network effect of their compositions being made available by amateurs, for amateurs, is not inconsiderable. OLGA and other resources maintain and extend the hold of a given song on the mass audience's attention. This has several salutary effects. It actually increases the very small likelihood of sheet music sales for their works. It increases the somewhat less tiny probability of the recorded originals being sold. It increases the miniscule (but incredibly lucrative) chance of placing their work in commercials, films, or other directly compensated outlets.
They're not cutting off their nose to spite their face, they're just cutting off their nose.
That said, the music industry has been shooting itself in the gut for decades (since long before "home taping is killing music"). I am not shocked at yet another preternaturally stupid move.
No Blood for Oil
by
Z34107
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· Score: 2, Insightful
..."War in Middle East"... which got nothing to do with terrorism... the real term should really be "War for Oil"
Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Also, "Climate Change" is more accurate. We're in a period of "global warming" right now (1 to 2 degrees), but we just finished with a "global cooling" - the "Little Ice Age". See here. See how our climate is changing, not just warming? And that this isn't a recent phenomenon? Not that global warming/climate change isn't an issue - climate change just isn't newspeak.
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Well, "for oil" is simplistic.
The costs of the war come out of our pockets and go to Haliburton and weapons manufacturers. The skyrocketed price of gas comes out of our pockets and goes to the oil companies along with billions of dollars of tax money given to them as a gift as well.
So, the mission was accomplished. Just you and the OP are both unclear on the actual mission.
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Yes, if the money that is spent for war expenses is mine and yours, while the net income that is earnt by oil sales goes in the hands of the few that really pushed for the war (mmmh... I wonder how Bush senior got rich in the first place, huh? "Bush-Overby Oil Development Co" does ring a bell?)
Also remember to put into account the fact that oil reached ~70$ per barrel here in Europe after the USA bravado in Iraq. Guess who's getting richer? I give you a hint. Not me.
It's not how much. It's who.
(Of course, it's not only for the oil; there are a lot of corporations like weapon producers that are feasting on the war.)
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Yes. The war was fought for control over the oil, not necessarily for the profits arising from said control. There are a number of reasons other than the direct profit from the oil itself for wanting control over that oil, not the least of which is to bolster the dollar as the world's standard of currency. Another reason is likely to be expanding the reserves of oil available to the U.S. military.
Finally, even if there were no other reasons, the powers that be probably wanted to make sure that nobody else had control over that oil.
-- Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
You have to remember that other people need oil too. When you have the spicket you can artificially inflate the price and control that only the people you like get the oil.
Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.
You are making a big logical mistake here by assuming that the same people who pay for the war are going to profit for it.
The sad truth is that the taxpayers are going to pay the cost of this war (and any war, for that matter) with their hard-earned taxes and liberties. At the same time, the oil companies and their executives will reap the profits with virtually no loss.
You pay $200, I get $100, it's good business.
Source Code...
by
eemerton
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So, what's the "source code" for music? Is it the files encoded on the disc or mp3? Or is it the instructions on how to reproduce that music, ie. tabs and lyrics? Look, I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here, no one likes the RIAA and it's resonable to look for tabs from songs without hassle. But if software companies can hold on to source code, which unless you knew code it would be usless to you... just like playing music.
-EW
-- "Finish your dinner." -Your Mom
Re:Source Code...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
'source code' is an invalid analogy to music.
WRONG.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I've been a rock musician for 25 years, and I can tell you I've never known one single time where a rock band actually buys sheet music for an upcoming performance. ESPECIALLY in the pre-Net era. Venues requiring sheet music purchase? Huh? Oh please, what mushroom have you just fallen off. The average bar owner thinks sheet music is the soundtrack to a porn vid.
Three reasons why rockers don't buy sheet music:
1) Rock musicians for the most part cannot read music. Something like 99% of them.
2) Rock musicians are typically poor.
3) Sheet music can't get you high or drunk.
Buying sheet music for a rock gig. What a crock.
Re:WRONG.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
My thoughts exactly when I read that. A string quartet or chamber orchestra, sure. Rock band? NEVER! And of course, in typical slashdot fashion, some moron pulling shit out of his ass gets modded up as insightful.
When they're done with Olga.net, they can get a jump on all those people who hum the songs from memory!
I've noticed that the artists get unfairly represented when crazy, loud people sing along to the Dixie Chicks on their way back from work. We must put a stop to memory, it is a tool of terrorists against the Artists.
...essentially they're saying that their business strategy is no longer profitable due to advancements in technology and human ingenuity.
Aww.. Diddums.
Re:Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingeri
by
Onuma
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· Score: 1
Eddie Van Halen used to hide his speedy fingering tricks back in the Van Halen videos in the 80s. It really might not have been anything at all, since people can play much more technically and quickly than him - even in those years there were more talented guitarists. Maybe him just seemingly hiding something gave that allure that many musicians and their fans feed upon. More or less, it seems like an ego thing.
I don't know where I'd be, personally, without OLGA. I even printed out tabs for songs I was trying to brush up on or learn anew while I was deployed to the middle east. It really helped bring out my natural playing ability and also to re-train where I have stopped practicing for so many years. It'll be back, it's too valuable a tool for aspiring guitarists to let go down the drain because of some RIAA schmucks.
-- What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Missing some things here...
by
Saxophonist
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I teach guitar, among lots of other instruments and voice. Every so often, someone wants to learn some song from tablature, or they come to me only knowing how to read tablature with no acutal experience with regular notation. This is all fine and good -- I can help the student learn notation then -- but I typically point out several limitations of tablature (several of which apply also to chord diagrams, which are not the same thing as tab; a lot of people confuse the two):
Tablature does not convey rhythm at all. You have to already know the tune to have any idea how to play it. For most people, this necessitates a recording so that they can listen to the piece again and again. If they didn't pirate the recording, then the recording industry actually made money from this individual.
Tablature is non-portable. It is not a notation that makes sense for playing the music on any other instrument or singing it.
Tablature misses the visual cues that standard notation has. For instance, in standard notation, notes of higher pitch are higher on the staff, and there is a correlation between the distance between notes on the staff and the distance between the actual pitches. Not so with tablature.
Learning tablature is not the same as learning to read music. This one is somewhat obvious, but the student's understanding of music in general increases just by learning standard notation.
I am sure there are other issues as well. That said, I cannot see how shutting down a tablature site benefits the musicians at all; if anything, it encourages recording sales.
While the recording artist could potentially be disappointed with other musicians' inferior performances of their tunes, anyone in the U.S. can record and sell an original rendition of anything that has already been recorded, thanks to compulsory mechanical licensing, whether the original artist likes it or not. Of course, few amateurs are going to be able to pull off any kind of publishable album, but with the ubiquity of computerized recording tools (ProTools, etc.), it's not hard to make independent CD's anymore. Not that anyone but friends and family will buy them...
Re:Missing some things here...
by
jco
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· Score: 1
I am sure there are other issues as well. That said, I cannot see how shutting down a tablature site benefits the musicians at all; if anything, it encourages recording sales.
I'd tend to agree with this. However...
Tablature does not convey rhythm at all.
True in the case of some tab, not all. Books and magazines often use a form of tab that essentially uses fret number as note heads, encircling half notes and whole notes, and putting staves and flags (as needed) above quarter, eighth...etc. This eliminates the need for double-staff systems.
Tablature is non-portable. It is not a notation that makes sense for playing the music on any other instrument or singing it.
So? It was designed for fretboard-type, polyphonic, stringed instruments. Which is why players of such instruments were using it before "standard" notation was formalized. It seems pretty sensible to transcribe guitar music in guitar notation. Pianists and others will have transcribe to their notation just like we guitarists have had to muck with standard notation when tablature fell out of favor (perhaps because of notation elitists, but that is just a guess).
Tablature misses the visual cues that standard notation has. For instance, in standard notation, notes of higher pitch are higher on the staff, and there is a correlation between the distance between notes on the staff and the distance between the actual pitches. Not so with tablature.
If you keep in mind the nature of the guitar and that it's tuned in fifths (fourths in the case of the 3rd/2nd string pair), you can perceive the relative motion of a line of guitar music. In any case, I see no real use for such cues outside the context of actually working out the pitches, unless perhaps you have perfect pitch. If the notation tells you how to play the piece without undue struggle, it's good.
Learning tablature is not the same as learning to read music. This one is somewhat obvious, but the student's understanding of music in general increases just by learning standard notation.
I can sum this up in two words. "Non sequitur".
I do not begrudge you your (misguided) belief that we poor guitarists would be better musicians if only we'd abandon our sensible tablature and use your confounded "standard" notation.
Just be aware that when entering MY world, your opinion will be...somewhat disfavored.
Re:Missing some things here...
by
Doctor+Faustus
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· Score: 1
Learning tablature is not the same as learning to read music. This one is somewhat obvious, but the student's understanding of music in general increases just by learning standard notation. Wouldn't it be better to learn standard notation on an instrument that's better suited to it (fewer practical ways to play the same note)? I sightread standard music notation for violin and mandolin (they're basically the same), but I have no particular desire to do so for guitar.
Besides, if you teach a guitar player to play mandolin (reading music), you'll probably make him or her versatile enough to be able to just pick up a bass guitar and play it with no instruction, too. I know that's how it worked for me (except it was violin and guitar).
Lyrics are just a way for musicians to impress people by sounding smart anyway. If they really had anything important to say they would write a book.
Seriously, when is the music industry finally going to realize that no one in the entire world, ever, will refrain from buying a CD because they have already read the lyrics for free on the web?
Has anyone ever listened to the BBC stuff of the Beatles? Their early career was nothing but covers. How do you think they learned to play? or compose?
Many painters begin by trying to paint one of the masters. This is a very good way to learn to express your own creativity.
They even gave the following notice at the beginning of each file: (due to slashdot's stupid "lameness filter", I had to remove several "pound signs" and "hypens")
-- PLEASE NOTE This OLGA file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research. Remember to view this file in Courier, or some other monospaced font. See http://www.olga.net/faq/ for more information. --
Copyrighting Interpretations?
by
teklob
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· Score: 1
I was under the impression that most guitar tabs were legal because they were not in any way copies of the original work, and in fact most state: This is an interpretation of the original song by the author of this tab, and should not be taken to be accurate.
Either way, as an amateur guitar player I think this is really sad, but fortunately there are a multitude of other guitar tab sites out there to fill the void. I like Ultimate Guitar
RIGHT: Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000 PERHAPS RIGHT ALSO: The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000
IMPORTANT PART: It's not America that is making money of the oil in Iraq... it's Father Bush and is personal friends that help put Son Bush in the presidency. Iraq has the largest oil reserves in the world and you are dumb if you think that the war USA conducted in Iraq was to free the people of Iraq... that you have to admit, live in much worst condition now than they did before the war started... ah oh, no, the USA went to Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction and they were building "nucular" weapons... yeah, now I remember that was what you said before.
Numbers are very pretty, but it's their meaning that maters.
Insightful mod parent up, and add that we would not have Jazz at all if there had been strong "intellectual property" laws at the turn of the century. For most all Jazz is variations of standards and most Jazz musicians were too poor buy sheet music for everything they played. Screw the asset planners those are the people John Lennon fought against all his life from "money can't buy you love," to "give peace a chance." The asset planners never created anything in their whole lives and act like vampires on the truly creative person.
I'll end with a little quote from Thomas Jefferson on how absurd the whole idea of intellectual property is:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
The rest of this essay might teach you something as well.
-- Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Your ass called, and it wants its wrong info back.
by
teamhasnoi
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· Score: 3, Insightful
As other posters have commented, there is *no* venue that requires sheet music. In fact, they could give a rats ass if you know how to read it, learned it from a yeti in the mountains or was given the knowledge divinely.
Most venues would be overjoyed if they could play the radio, have bands, and have a jukebox without paying ASCAP or BMI. It's an expense, and I've seen a few venues that don't pay it. When pressed, they say, "Why should I have to pay to play the radio? It's free in my car and in my home!"
So, you're wrong. So wrong in fact, that you could be right - if you were talking about 60 years ago, or an orchestra, but we're talking about TAB and chords, guitar and popular songs.
Single note playing intruments in orchestras use music written for the instrument they play - and are not required to own, purchase, or otherwise HAVE sheet music by any! venue. (Maybe a bandleader who's a copyright nazi or a published composer whose music is being played might require it, but those days are fading fast - if not gone already!)
So, please. Either get back in your time machine and join us in the present, pick up a manual on what the hell is going on in the real world, or shutty.
This reminds me of what Mozart did
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
When Mozart was in Italy, he went to the Sistine Chapel to hear Gregorio Allegri's Miserere performed. He then proceeded to write it out from memory, returning the next day to correct some minor errors. Miserere was a closely guarded work of the Vatican and what Mozart did would have been illegal.
Kind of funny that one of the first instances of music "theft" came from one of the most brilliant composers of all time.
Eventually,
by
Progman3K
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Learning how to play an instrument could become illegal: When you learn how to play an instrument, you gain the skills to be able to 'reverse-engineer' and copy just about any piece of music. What's to stop you from learning the notes to a melody then?
Naftule Brandwein, the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso, turned his back on the audience in order to keep the secret of the finger he used to achieve certain effects.
Which was idiotic considering that most likely he was not playing the same kind of clarinet his audience was. Most clarinetists play Boehm system clarinets, but both New Orleans Jazz players and Klezmer players traditionally have played Albert system clarinets. The finger wouldn't matter since the fingerings are different between the two systems.
Let us never forget what was the original intention of copyright. It was to reward people not for merely creating material, but for actually sharing that material -- in the form of a promise to release it into the Public Domain some day soon.
Which raises the question. Times have changed..... Is a temporary monopoly on distribution still really the best way to reward people for sharing their creations with the world at large, or might there now exist a better way of accomplishing the same end?
-- Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Those two words: "already overseas."
by
entendre+entendre
·
· Score: 1
There are OLGA mirrors in Australia, Germany, Russia, and Sweden, all of which predate the latest OLGA shutdown. Presumably they are run by locals. It's probably going to be a long while before the Russians get shut down.
Re:Those two words: "already overseas."
by
eschasi
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· Score: 1
These mirrors seem to be limited to late 2003. I assume Olga was continuing to take submissions after that.
virus attacks vs RIAA
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think it's only a matter of time before people will get enough pissed at RIAA and start launching virus attacks and all kind of shiznitz against them
-m10
Publishing copyright stuck in the 30s ...
by
__aadkms7016
·
· Score: 1
Disclaimer: This comment probably has legal
mistakes in it, IANAL, and the topic is complex.
Feel free to reply with fixes.
--
A track on an album is covered by two different
classes of copyright: the copyright on the actual
audio waveform, and the "publishing copyright"
on the melody line (usually, what the singer sings)
and the lyrics. The second one is what is at issue
here.
Note I said "the melody line and the lyrics". If
you could in fact copyright a chord progression,
and if the rules for how many chords a new song
could "borrow" from an old song before it became
"theft" was patterned after the rules for melody
lines, then there would be a few extremely
wealthy heirs of the writers of early songs who
would be collecting royalties on practically all
new songs written. And this goes for drum
beat patterns (if they were covered by publishing
copyright) even more so than chord progressions.
This is the theory the OLGA folks are basing their
case on, I'd guess. The only thing their database
usually documents about a song is "this song uses these
chords, strummed like this". Which is not far away from "this song has
a tempo of 110 Beats Per Minute" or "this song is
in the key of A" or "this song has an ABABCA
structure". It's about where the line is between
"meta-data" and "data" on a song -- OLGA is drawing
it one place, their opponents are drawing it another.
My subject heading refers to the fact that in the
age of Hip-Hop, these rules make no sense -- what
most listeners think of as "the song" isn't covered
by publishing copyright in theory. Most raps don't
have melody, only lyrics and "flow" (which is seen
as a performer's technique, not composition). In practice, producers
make deals with rappers to get a percent of the song copyright
in exchange for using their track.
Like so many other
parts of IP law, song publishing needs a refresh for
the 21st century.
I wanted to play the guitar because it was cool. After a while, my mom got tired of me pounding on it in the basement, so she signed me up for lessons.
Every week my teacher, Paul, wrote out tabs or sheet music for a few songs and expected me to learn them by the next lesson. Typically it was old blues tracks or Beatles or other older stuff with the occasional Nirvana track in there.
I really wish I knew where Paul was these days so I could call the RIAA and work out a deal for a reward for turning in Paul because he violated their IP copyrights by not only being so bold as to teach other people's songs, but also for being so willfully infringing as to write them down for his students.
In all seriousness, RIAA, this goatse's for you: ()0()
-- Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
Re:Legal Failure corrected by Innovation and Marke
by
mpe
·
· Score: 1
Despite all this the content industry middlemen (RIAA etc...) will lose.
But they will probably try to "fight to the last man".
The reasons are simple:
1) A new medium, the internet allows anyone to connect with customers.
2) A number of users are no longer interested in working with
the content industry middlemen.
What the existing industry is fighting is a paradigm shift in the economics of distributing music recordings. Copyright originated with the technology of mechanised printing. Which produced cheap books, newspapers, etc in large quantities. The deveopment of copyright law is tied up with the business model of having a middleman to publish/print/distribute, etc. When music recordings were invented the business models already in use for books were taken and adapted. Originally copyright was a permission granted by the state to publishers. In the 18th century things were changed to make copyright something authors had. Ironically it's the likes of the RIAA and MPAA trying hardest to modify copyright "back" into something held by publishers. Whilst they have had considerably sucess in modifying copyright in the last few decades of the 20th century into something more "publisher friendly" something else has happened. Machines have appeared that can copy information and transport it anywhere on the planet have appeared. Not only can a single copy be produced and transported cheaply the machines are themselves cheap enough for a substantial proportion of people to own (at least) one.
3) A large number of users are willing to share their content for free.
The industry's method to tackle this is to bend the law in such a way that authors, poets, playwrites, song writers, etc. do not "own" their works (preferably that their members do). They do this by using the "derived work" part of copyright laws. There is, in practice, no such thing as an original work (no doubt the RIAA and MPAA are trying to work out a way to own plotlines which are at least half a million years old).
just get Olga out of US soil
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
when people will learn - no such servers should ever reside in United States. Too much redicilous IPO laws, lawyers and patents.
Olga would be fine if the server is in Russia, China or Mexico.
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
by
Firehed
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· Score: 1
Because allofmp3 isn't funny - it's cheap music that's not technically pirated.
-- How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I've found over 90% of the tab books I've bought have been inaccurate, some ridiculously so. One even advised I play a riff that is literally physically impossible to play, at 200bpm. Hmm.
Peer-reviewed tabs written by people who have worked it out by ear, tried it out to see if it's right then published their work for recognition and to help facilitate others to play the song produces tabs of far, far better quality than tab books. Perhaps Olga's tabs weren't always reliable, but there are other sites with peer reviewing that far, far superior to tab books which cost >$20 and aren't even correct (I won't link them because the RIAA are probably reading this and I don't particularly want to give them any more ideas).
In fact, shoudn't music labels be sued for producing tab books that are incorrect?! Perhaps someone should get on with doing that, maybe that'll shut them up?
This is just yet another damn example of corporate greed ruining all that is good in the world. Let's hope there's an outbreak of sanity soon. Please people. These are the same sort of people who sue Open Source projects for patent infringement.
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
mpe
·
· Score: 1
I'm curious how often you buy any kind of guitar tabs or music books from a store. In my experience, probably 80% of the guitar books are worthless, sound awful, and aren't anywhere close to being correct. I highly doubt the artists are directly involved in the publishing process and it's probably the exact same process as the online sites, with the only difference being that these books aren't free and aren't corrected by others.
The addition of corrections (which could easily also include derivations) adds value to the product. It almost looks as though someone is deploying a legal weapon to protect a poor product. Wonder which would actually be the cheaper option "buying" new laws keeping lawyers well paid or putting out a decent product.
Sometimes I wish there were a single word to express all the rage, disgust, shock, and horror in a single instance..."fuck" doesn't do that anymore. Is the industry that delusional to believe that copyright is the incentive for creating new material? Last time I checked, love for the art form was the main motivation for creating music, but I guess I could be wrong. Yes, obviously professional musicians need money to continue along, but where the hell does posting guitar tabs/lyrics to the internet come into play in taking that away from the artist? Instead of buying the CD, I'm going to record all the songs myself and distribute it to friends...yeah.
So I suppose I should stop listening to songs and figuring out how to play them on my guitar. I should stop putting music quotes in my away messages. I should stop singing along in my car. I don't want Big Brother detaining me for violating DMCA. Music has become a commodity, far from an art form. Minus a few diamonds in the rough over the years, for the most part, it is rubbish. It's a fucking shame that it has come to this.
Re:Fucking 1984 speak - OT
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
> That region is called Palestine since ever... they only changed the name in the past decade > since it's much easier to support the Israelis fighting the Palestinian people in Middle East > than it is to know that the Israelis are attacking the Palestinian people in Palestine.
They've been using the term "Middle East" at least as long as I've been alive, which is 30+ years...
Insane
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
For someone who is trying to learn to play the guitar, these legal moves are tremendously frustrating. Let's point out that tab sites aren't giving out free copies of the publisher's property - these are fan interpretations of the songs, not copies of original sheet music.
In a related move...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I have just copyrighted instructions for driving from your home to your job.
From now on, you will pay ME everytime you go to work, or face the death-of-a-thousand-lawyers!
Bwhahaha!
Finding a way to compensate the artists
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
One of the major tablature sites, http://www.chordie.com/ has started to put non-profit links to the artists song at iTunes and MSNMusic. They are doing this to support the artists/composers. A longer explanation can be found here: http://www.chordie.com/supporttheartists.php
Re:Legal Failure corrected by Innovation and Marke
by
aqui
·
· Score: 1
You make a number of good points, Thank you.
I think you're correct in that the record industry will try to block these changes in anyway they can.
Although when one starts to try to "own" original content through derived work ie "fair use" etc... you come to the point where you start try to control thoughts, ideas and their communication.
Although the record industry is powerful, they cannot succeed in taking on everyone, although as you correctly stated they will try and fight to the last man.
At best they can make a big mess and buy some time.
-- -----
"Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
Mod parent up
by
commodoresloat
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm sick of hearing about artists supporting this kind of crap. If you don't want people to learn from your creative output, don't make it public! Sit in your room and play your fancy guitar chords through your headphones. All intellectual progress has come from open sharing of ideas, not from hoarding them. I'm a DJ, and this reminds me of early DJs who used to soak their records in hot soapy water to remove the labels so that people couldn't see what record they were playing. It's yet another logical leap of absurdity, since they were playing music recorded by someone else to begin with. Luckily, the world of turntablism appears to have moved beyond that embarrassing history, as most well known DJs today share their techniques and "secrets" through classes, videos, etc. I think suing people for sharing ideas in general is nonsense, but doing it in this way - specifically attacking people for figuring something out on their own and sharing what they've learned - is uniquely execrable.
I wonder how this affects music teachers
by
dvNull
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Since the MPA and NMPA are now claiming that tabs violate their copyright, how does this affect music teachers? When I learnt how to play a guitar from a private teacher, he used a combination of sheet music and tablature to teach me how to play. He wrote down the music notation as well as the tabs and did not use any published book.
If they MPA and NMPA are shown to have rights concerning music tabs, then teachers will find it much harder to teach since they HAVE to purchase *AA authorized sheet music and cannot 'reverse engineer' the sounds into notations.
The scary part is that in the future other forms of media will be restricted so much that any cultural development will stagnate so much that we all might as well be zombies.
When Marilyn Manson or some rap dude writes lyrics and there is an uproar at the content, every one says "don't take it literally." But John Lennon writes something that can enevr be achieved and feels good, it's like he got the words straight from God.
Re:Legal Failure corrected by Innovation and Marke
by
jez9999
·
· Score: 1
You really don't need the line breaks, you know. We're not on Usenet now.
The best way to learn
by
enharmonix
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I'm a musician, like music theory, and a guitarist, and I started with tabs and playing by ear, and I can tell you from personal experience what works and why. I am very familiar with OLGA, but all this "lazy way to do it" stuff is driving me crazy! Moxley is 100% correct. Here's the scoop:
Playing by ear: This is the best way to learn to play. All classically trained students take Ear Training - you are expected to be able, upon hearing a note, chord, or rhythm, transcribe or perform what you've just heard. Music is aural.
Reading a staff (not tab): This is the international, trans-era, agreed-upon method by which musicians have communicated for centuries. Everybody who studies music quickly learns there are a lot of things wrong with our notational system, but it was developed over about a millenium, and its too late to change it now. But it's still got a huge advantage over learning by ear and over tablature: I can communicate everything to everybody, regardless of what instrument they play, instantly. Any group larger than a garage band just can't learn a song "by ear", and nobody but guitarists can read tablature (technically, tablature exists for certain other instruments, but it's probably even harder to read than tablature for guitar).
Tablature: Anybody that thinks tab is legitimate, it's not. This really is lazy (and it's how I first learned). Tablature was designed to give people a chance to play the guitar without taking lessons, but I can speak from personal experience: if you are at all serious about music, drop the tab and struggle with the staff and playing by ear. Even if it means you are playing kid stuff. It is possible to pick up a guitar and learn to read tab in a day. Learning to read a staff can take a lifetime. However, the classically trained musician is more skilled by an order of magnitude than somebody "taught" by tab... Tab does have one distinct advantage over standard notation, however: it translates easily to ASCII.
</rant> Sorry, but the whole ear/reading argument is moot - a good musician is expected to maintain both these skills. Tablature is good for hobbyists and for learning over the web.
OT: intentionally destroyed?
by
nurb432
·
· Score: 1
Sorry to veer so far off topic but do you have some pointers to this reference that the burning of alexandria was *intentional*?
And back on topic, wouldnt your campfire actaually be a problem, since you were a 'audiance' and im sure the book ( or music that came with it ) was not licensed for 'performance'...
You're right; it seems there is a lot of controversy as to when the library was destroyed and whether it was intentional or not. I was thinking of Theodosius's decree to have the pagan temples burned, but it seems that this is a myth. I honestly didn't know that. Thanks for the tip.:)
My point in noting that the book was licensed - by which I mean sanctioned for publication by the rights holders - was to show that the materials that (one could argue) were put out to preserve the Beatles' music through the official channels were unnecessary, since everyone already knew the songs anyway. We could have had a Beatles singalong from memory.
As for it being a problem under the current copyright laws, I'm pretty sure private performance still falls under fair use, especially if its from memory. I dearly hope I'm not wrong, because I sing in the shower all the time, and those RIAA fines can be pretty steep.
Re:The day the music died
by
minuszero
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· Score: 2, Funny
Why is it in RIAA's interest to destroy music?
by
robbak
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· Score: 3, Interesting
People become musicians by playing with music. First step is often chord based from sites like OLGA. Then progressing to full tablatures, again from OLGA. Then they are good enought to start making money. Then they start paying royalties on songs they cover when they start selling music, or mildly serious public performance. RIAA starts making money. But it all starts from those guitar tabs! RIAA makes money from talent. Talent starts from OLGA. So RIAA makes their money thanks to OLGA. What a great reasong for RIAA to shut it down. If I thought that they had any logic, I'd be puzzled. But this is just so typical.
-- Prediction for end of Universe #42:
Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
No, you cannot whistle your favourite song on the street. That is a public performance, and is a violation of copyright. Remember, stores selling instruments have to pay royalites, in case a customers noodling happens to resemble a copyrighted work. Oh what a borken web we weave.
-- Prediction for end of Universe #42:
Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I'm quite sure that this is actually done already.
by
robbak
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· Score: 1
Many published lyrics and chord sheets (I'm a keyboard noodler, so I don't try the tabs) seem to contain obvious errors. Things that anyone with an ear will know are wrong, not just mishearings. I've usually considered these to be inserted for legal reasons.
-- Prediction for end of Universe #42:
Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
It is Obvious to me that if I hear something, the law should protect my right to tell someone else what I heard.
I also agree that if it does not take away from the common wealth, we should have special laws to help artists and inventors be compensated more than non-creative citizens. (Via Copywrite & Patents)
For better or worse, I see evolution of personal communication as one of the most important developments our age is producing; so No, I'm sorry, it is not obvious that repeating the chords of a song hurts an artist more than it helps our culture.
If it is so obvious to you, that's fine, but it does not help your position to pretend that the other viewpoint is so worthless that you didn't even notice it.
"It is Obvious to me that if I hear something, the law should protect my right to tell someone else what I heard."
The existence of that right depends upon the circumstances of your having heard what you heard.
In the case of radio communications (not broadcast type, but things like ship to shore, cell phones, et cetera), there are several circumstances where you may hear things, but communications law forbids you to reveal what you heard to others.
Then, of course, there are doctor-patient, lawyer-client, sanctity of the confessional, and other privileged communications, including your IRS returns and your census form.
--
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Those are all Obvious to me because they are all private communications which are never committed in or to public.
Music... Not so; That is why many people do not "Get" that it should be restricted. It is the public VS private guideline that people intuitively use, and that is the principle that the RIAA has to quash if they want these personal judgements to be "obvious" to the public.
Classically trained musicians can read pretty much anything, even notation invented by the composers (as long as this is explained of course), which was not uncommon in the second half of the XXth century. If you mean sight reading, then we are talking about a completely different thing.
They may not play it as well and with as many nuisances as somebody completely embeeded in a certain musical genre, but if it is written, it can be played.
Good musicians can infer from what is written a load of details that are not written in order to give a credible performance.
-- IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I can't belive it. a music troll!
by
jotaeleemeese
·
· Score: 1
But I'll bite, such a little unusual troll has to be cherised!
If we did not have termperament, then western music would be in pretty much the same stage that oriental classical music is (Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Balinese or Indian), or come to think about it, Irish fiddle.
We would have millions of beautiful melodies but no harmonic development. Anything more complicated than Mozart from an harmonic point of view would be impossible, simply because tunning beyond one neighbour tonality would be pretty much impossible.
Debussy, Mussorgsky, Wagner, Chopin, you name it, such music would have not existed.
We sacrified perfect tonality in the sake of convenience, and this allowed the development of musci way beyond what would have been possible.
The sacrifice was worth it IMHO.
-- IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Re:I can't belive it. a music troll!
by
nessus42
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· Score: 1
Could you please explain your reasoning in a bit more depth. As I understand things, equal temperament is required if you want to modulate keys. And it saves you the cost of having to have a different instrument for every key you might want to play in. But harmony is perfectly possible in perfect temperment.
Now perhaps Debussy, Mussorgsky, etc., were very fond of modulating keys -- I don't know. It is Bach, though, who is most famous for it, and harmony is not generally considered to be Baroque music's strong point.
|>oug
Re:Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingeri
by
AnalogDiehard
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· Score: 1
Naftule Brandwein, the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso, turned his back on the audience in order to keep the secret of the finger he used to achieve certain effects.
Robert Johnson, the great blues quitarist of the 1920s who is universally accepted as the grandfather of rock-n-roll, also turned his back to the audience when performing. Stealing techniques was rampant back in the delta blues era of the early 20th century.
-- Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Then it died 3 or 4 thousend years ago.
by
jotaeleemeese
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· Score: 1
Or maybe even more.
-- IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I dont know if this is true everywhere
by
geninstability
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· Score: 1
but the public library system in San Francisco has numerous books of sheet music, from classical to fairly contemporary works, for free to the general public (well, they do charge you $0.50 for the card).
We all remember the library, right? Its that place with all the books that people used to frequent for information before the internet was invented and we all became scared of venturing outside.
-- I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection
...and I'm not going to TAKE it anymore.
by
MrPinstripeCom
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· Score: 1
If you go to olga.net, they have a link to the legal firm handling their "letter"....
I found a handy contact us button there!:)
I'm going to hell/jail
but...Fuck it.
To whom it may concern:
The acts of demanding a "Take down" letter to the providers of OLGA.net are ridiculous. Your clients sad attempt to control their "property" under copyright laws, though I'm sure legal in nature, are an aberration to the law itself. Just because it's legal does not make it right. Olga provided no COPIED material. People just FIGURE OUT how to play songs. Where does this stop? do all bar bands now get busted for playing cover songs? Do all kids trying to learn songs at home on their guitars without the help of your clients precious "Content" violate these same laws? I may be misinformed but OLGA and their provider were seeking no profit (save maybe ad revenue to handle bandwidth issues) from their representations. it is something that is a valuable asset to those people trying to learn guitar, and to be quite honest, your clients attempt will backfire. The "geek" community is a large one, and this type of ridiculous attempt at controlling data and information on the Internet has failed and will continue to fail as long as the geeks among us are resolute in keeping information free. Many geeks play guitar, gentleman, and in choosing your path, you have alienated a large percentage of your customer base. I for one will never purchase any sheet music again, and I have a considerable library of legal, copyright protected and fully licensed material. The customers that you are attempting to salvage will be of little or no significance when the majority of these same customers boycott your products on principle. Enjoy you last days.
--
"Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain
-- Scott
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
cweber
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· Score: 1
I sort of understand the concern too, but the reality is what makes me furious. OLGA has a ton of bad quality stuff, I agree with you on that. The official music publishers, however, also put out a ton of shit, maybe even more. Very often, sheet music for popular music is so dumbed down it's not even funny. And quite often it's not in the key it was recorded, so once the poor amateur has worked out the song, she can't even play along with the CD. That's after shelling out $3 - $5 for single song sheet music or $15 - $20 for an entire album's worth. How awful is that?
In my experience (and talking about popular music from 1960 onwards only, not jazz or classical), the only official sheet music worth the asking price is the complete Beatles book. Most everything else is a waste of your time and money. I wish OLGA and all similar sites the best of luck in their battles. They possibly do less disservice to the song writers' art than the 'official' guys do.
MPA
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I sent an e-mail to the MPA right when they started closing down tab websites about a year ago. I emailed all of the board members as well as all of the officers (about 20 people overall). I got a reply from ONE person, and the reply was basically "we don't care what you think it's all about money." I told them they were helping ruin the face of music in not so harsh terms. Since the email, all of their emails have been taken off the website, but I may have a list of them still in my outbox if you guys need them. The person who e-mailed me back was from MusicNotes.com which sells overpriced individual tablature that is poorly written. Just look at their free partial tab of Classical Gas....What a piece of crap
I guess it all depends...
by
brooke_nobody
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· Score: 1
1) Are there tabs on the site directly copied from a sheetmusic book endorsed by the NMPA?
or
2) Are all the tabs generated by ear from the users contributing data to the site?
If the answer is 1 (even a little bit), I think the NMPA has a case, however, if the answer is 2, then they have no chance in hell and any copyright lawyer worth his salt could defend Olga in court. If the answer is 1, they should just remove the offending content and put a disclaimer on their site. Or, make contributers check an EULA that removes liability from Olga in the future.
I really like the exponential potential of screwing the NMPA here by getting thousands upon thousands of people to virally spread the Olga tab database. Eventually, the lawyers will have to stop because all the "poor" artists won't be able to maintain the cost of chasing after phantoms on the Internet.
Re:Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the conc
by
Sabalon
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· Score: 1
1) And where do I buy the sheet music for non-mainstream bands? Silly Wizard, Marillion, Fates Warning? OR in the case of Anthologies, what if the song I want to learn wasn't deemed good enough to go in the book?
2) Yeah...it is poor. But it's a start. Many tab books are poor too.
3) no counter for that. I remember in alt.guitar.tab years ago when someone just flat-out scanned parts of a tab book. There was disgust and anger at that person over it. I guess as a slight counter is that this is not a straigh copyright violation. It's no more than you as a teacher showing someone that Louie Louie goes G C D C.
On the other hand, picking up bass lately has done me a world of good. I don't really care what the as-played bass line was, unless it's something pretty noticable. I get the chords from the guitarists and just go with it on my own...it has done me a world of good in music understanding. When playing guitar I was too concerned with playing what the tab said and not learning the music.
The letter from the lawyer posted at http://www.olga.net/ is very clever. Note that it is not a DMCA takedown notice. Instead, pages 1 and 2 are a letter that insists that OLGA and its members are infringing copyright, and that if they don't take down all infringing material they will... be sent a takedown notice. The "unsent" takedown notice is then posted as pages 5 and 6 of the first letter.
Why do this? I think for three reasons. First, I think it's because the lawyers want the whole site taken down, and the DMCA takedown process limits them to identifying each piece of copyrighted material that they say is infringing.
Second, the DMCA notification process allows a counter-notification from the person who put the material on the site to begin with. If OLGA gets a counter-notification, it can leave the material up pending a real court order, and even then only risk being told to take it down by the court.
Third, sending a DMCA notice requires the sender to swear in good faith that copyright is being infringed. Note that the "unsent" takedown notice doesn't say that the web site is infringing -- only the cover letter does. As Diebold found out, sending notices when the material isn't infringing opens oneself up to damages. This appears to be a clever way to avoid that trap....JZ
Slashdot Mirror
I still fail to see the harm in guitar tabs.
Website breaks copyright law, gets shut down. Film at 11.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing his copyrights, John Lennon might have to quit music and get a day job! Then where will all the Beatles fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new Beatles music, I'm sure.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
...shut down all the p2p networks! DOH!
Let me get this straight... somehow showing somebody how to play a song will prevent people from writing new songs? I'm sorry, Logic has just stuffed it's head so far up it's own ass that it disappeared.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Without somewhere to get the pass on the music it will be lost.
I would feel great pride if I were a composer having my tune played around the world by people, its like having your code used all around.
Its not like knowing the chords will give anybody an advantage to become an international star, and I doubt it would lost anyone money.
liqbase
What's so horrible about tabs that will destroy the future for composers and songwriters? Is an imposter band gonna spring up and take their places? What the hell are they afraid of?
Continue to have incentive blah blah blah... What is this bullshit? Quit spinning the reasons. You think the website hurts sales, so you want to shut it down. Fine. JUST SAY IT THAT WAY.
In my opinion, the creepiest part of 1984 (go reread it) is that language is being dumbed down so as to control modes of thought. The Big Brother ideal is that in 50 years people are too stupid to remember complicated concepts, since the simplified language no longer allows for them to be formed. It's why I want to shoot anybody who actually buys this sort of phrasing, such as what the RIAA is giving us.
Thanks corporate America, for trying to make us all that much dumber.
"The online Guitar Tablature Archive OLGA.net has been shutdown again, to "ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come." Scant details exist"
Obviously not so scant that you can't pull quotes from it.
In a democracy, we get to discuss what the law should be.
Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law. Should it be law?
Wikileaks, no DNS
I've never understood how they can make guitar tableture a copyright violation when you have a gazillion sites out there posting lyrics. How is that any different? The tableture is someone's interpretation of what the artists are doing on the guitar or bass. From experience, I can say for a fact that it's rarely entirely accurate, so it's not really a copyright violation. It's artistic interpretation. Lyrics are far more likely to be accurate and therefore far more likely to actually violate copyrights. Still, I don't really think that either should be a violation.
Besides, this is just as likely to help the RIAA as any of their other foot shooting methods. I mean, how much can you piss off your customer base before they simply stop being your customer base?
too bad this isn't Soviet Russia
?giS
azlyrics for example.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Now the big record labels can rename and rerelease old classics to later generations and they will have no way of knowing that it isn't new and cool and young and hip!
"Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing his copyrights, John Lennon might have to quit music and get a day job! Then where will all the Beatles fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new Beatles music, I'm sure"
Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing the GPL, GPLers might have to quit free programming and get a day job! Then where will GPL fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new code, I'm sure
How many times have I heard "honey get me that CD with that song on it - you know, the one that goes naa na naa naa naa - no, not the one that goes na naa naa na" - the fricking RIAA should be praising lyrics sites. They probably think that they can come up with some way to make money off a copycat site. Boy, I'll give them money for that - not.
(OK, so the preceeding was a bit of a fabrication to prove a point - my wife is a librarian and can find stuff better than I can and I buy my music fome a russian website to prove a point to the RIAA that all they need to do is hit a resonable price point)
Programmatically generate all possible guitar tablatures between 0 and 30 minutes. Then shut down artists who write new songs under 30 minutes for copyright infringement.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Prior to the intarweb, jazz musicians would buy these illegal books called 'real books'. They were photocopied/cheaply bound collections of sheet music for a couple of hundred jazz standards. Pretty dang pricey too. You can still get them, the same way as always- by asking for one from the local music shop guy. The legal versions are called 'fake books'... and they pretty much suck huge hairy donkey balls.
Shutting down OLGA, which was an online real book for many musicians, simply means that now guitarists will have to search through the dozens of sites that copied the entire archive onto their own servers and assault the user with pop-ups and spyware.
Which is lame on so many levels...
Can you point me to the transcript of the trial which took place proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the OLGA website infringed on any copyright at any time? Please. Because, otherwise, someone might accuse you of libeling a website with false accusations that a law had been broken by them.
It's "its", you insensitive clod!
But exactly what copying should constitute infringement?
I think what the companies need are some proper business analysts. Free tabs are like grassroots marketing in a way. They get the word out to people who are actively searching for the product. But because, in most cases, the tabs aren't completely accurate, they point directly to your local music supply store or internet site that sells the "official" tab and sheet music books. It doesn't seem like that hard of an idea. But this way, you just make the customer mad, the tabs show up on a usenet group and nothing gets done (in the eyes of the corp.) It's ridiculous how these media companies think they can run a business.
--- these days, what with business and stuff, you gotta get your emails...
I think that the online tab revolution has been wonderful for amateur musicians all over the world (of course, especially guitarists). I've used the tabs, and I think that it is possible to make the case that this is often a fair use of copyright (though, often, not).
That said, I can understand the music industry has concerns like these:
1. They do sell sheet music, and this practice cuts into their profits. I'm guessing that some revenue-sharing model could work, but that the RIAA/BMG/etc. aren't (yet) interested. In fact, I have actually seen some bands distribute their own tabs (or tabs contributed by fans), which I think is a fantastic idea.
2. The quality of most tab is fair to poor. I teach music and guitar, and I always end up correcting tabs (even chords) for students. On some level, this is OK, but the chunky and too-often incorrect chords can really make a tune sound much worse than it is. If I were an artist and thought everyone was learning some ham-handed version of my tune, I'd probably be a bit pissed.
3. In this copyright-dominated world, it does seem that you risk losing your rights if you don't defend them.
I wish it weren't so. I'm a big fan of Lawrence Lessig, and believe that the stifling of things like OLGA make us less creative as a culture. I also love that there are still amateur musicians out there who want to play music for themselves and their friends for the pleasure of making muisic. I hope a good compromise or capitulation (on part of the music industry) is in the works.
It is McCartney, you moron. John Lennon was killed a number of years
ago, you douchebag.
Here is a quarter...buy a clue.
Move overseas.
Seriously, it's a crying shame that pretty soon "good stuff" like this will have to be not only hosted overseas but run by people who are outside the jurisdiction of American courts. If I were an American running something like this overseas, I'd be very afraid of a lawsuit for "aiding and abetting."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well if thats not a reliable source of information, I don't know what is. Next up, Slashdot referencing itself in an orgy of navel-gazing.
Folks, there is more out there than MySpace.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The contents of OLGA are ascii, very low bandwidth high density data. It should fit onto a single CD. It can be served by a simple httpd. The online archive should be moved to two new hosts. The hosts do not have to be powerful machines. Nor do the temporary operators need to see themselves as the "new" archive, merely temporary mirrors. The only requirement for an operator is that they should know at least TWO friends or colleagues who will host the archive on their machines and the skills to set that up. At the first hint of a takedown notice each operator should comply after stalling only long enough to replicate the archive. Let's show these cunts the power of the hydra and what exponential bifurcation means.
Here's one, for example. Can't just go to the root page via archive.org and start clicking links, though, as the links to the artists and tabs aren't modified, even though the tabs are in the archive. And if it hasn't happened already, I'm sure these small text files will be compressed into an archive and posted regularly to Usenet.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
If this is the case, then OLGA might again rise from the ashes as a sort of "errata sheet" to the official translation, explaining every single error in every single song book. Criticism of a copyrighted work is likely to be ruled as fair use of that work and thus not an infringement (17 USC 107).
The lyrics sites are just as much in violation of copyright as OLGA; they just haven't been caught yet.
Naftule Brandwein, the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso, turned his back on the audience in order to keep the secret of the finger he used to achieve certain effects.
Of course, we're talking "trade secret," not "copyright" here.
I wonder whether he ever considered patenting his fingerings? I wonder whether that's possible. It seems to me that it might be.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This cease and desist had nothing to do with the RIAA- it was brought by the NMPA and the MPA (if you read the letter). These organizations publish sheet music, not music. They could care less about the popularity of the music itself, and only care about their own sales, which probably are hurt by the availability of tab.
I just copied nine words of your automatically copyrighted comment into mine. So sue me. No wait, you'll be laughed out of court, as some instances of copying are obvious fair uses and thus not actionable infringements. The issue here is what should and should not be a fair use.
How did Lennon and McCartney learn to play guitar? That's right - by learning to play their idols' music as teenagers. These days they would be prosecuted for it.
I wonder whether he ever considered patenting his fingerings?
If he patented them, he'd have to disclose them. And there's probably not enough money in chasing after small-time artists that would then copy them to be worth losing the mysterious aura he's generating by keeping them secret.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
The quality of music tabs in the stores is absolutely sh*te. I have spent much money on these (pop, rock) and they are about as much use as a hamster trying to play lead guitar.
Online efforts by people, on the other hand is very good.
The RIAA deserve a medal for saving me shelling out on music and sheet music. I know what they publish and support is about as nice as HIV.
I use http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/ - it has everything I need. The ratings system is a welcome addition, and the forums and reviews are nice.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Give me a break! This is the gayest thing I have ever heard of. Not only is it OLGA... but several guitar tab sites have been "temporarily" shut down... it is guitar tab!!! NOT THE SONG! It is just several guitarists ideas of how they think the song should be transcribed!!!!! This pisses me off so much! THis is so wrong on so many levels... I am pissed trying to write anything about it.
Do you know how many times I have gone and BOUGHT the track that I am trying to learn how to play? Guitar Tabs SELL music....
I really wish music companies would think before acting like dicks. If you could find me a band who MIND that kids out there are learning to play their songs from sites like OLGA, I'll be a surprised man. It's free publicity if anything, most bands/albums I like don't have tab books to purchase so I look online. It's hardly like these sites offer mp3s of the songs along with the chords, what's the issue? As far as I can see it'd encourage people to check out the rest of the band's music. In my personal development as a guitarist I use tab sites all the time to learn songs I like and it definitely isn't hurting the bands. It's just another way for the big corporations to harness a popular industry and either spoil it for everyone or try to make money off it. That Lennon quote comes to mind: "Music belongs to everyone; it's just publishers who think they own it" (or words to that effect).
1. listen to song 2. find song great 3. create tabs so you can play it with your friends 4. ???? 5. be a criminal fucked up world
Part of the reason RIAA is going after the free music databases is that they would like to sell you the sheet music for about $5 per song. Checkout MusicNotes. In fact I've seen songs for more than $10 bucks on there, depending on the format.
I never got tabs, they're often incorrect and missing a lot of information. But there is no way guitarist are going to spend $5 per song for sheet music en masse. Personally, I prefer buying books of non-RIAA songs.
They saw that legal online music only took off after iTunes started selling music for $1...
PS. Does anyone know of an online database of public-domain MusicXML sheet music?
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
portfolio
Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law.
No, this is not apparent at all. The site owner of Olga says so, and I agree with him completely.
Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs, which is a clear copyright violation. Nor do they publish lyrics (although they do sometimes). They primarily publish tab files (tabulature), which are specifications of where to place your fingers on a guitar (not even notes), and chord files, which are lists of chords. Now, to see how ridiculous the 'copyright' claim is, consider the case of chord files.
A typical chord file contains something like "G D Em C" - which are all the chords you need to play for quite a lot of rock/pop songs (up to modulation to a different key). A lot of others are covered by "G D C" (even simpler). There are only 6 basic chords on the guitar (in a specific key). Most songs use only a few of those (except for people like e.g. David Bowie, who uses dozens of chords in some songs). Basically, to claim copyright violation here, is to claim that "G D C" is copyrighted. But by which of the 1,000,000 songs that use it? It isn't unique in any way (unlike, say, lyrics or mp3s). Chord files (usually) only contain names of chords, not rythym or anything else. They are brief and nonunique in the extreme. To claim copyright violation would be amusing if it weren't sad.
The case of tab files is different, as these can be fairly specific to a song. However, even here it is far from clear that a copyright violation is being committed. A perfect, note-for-note transcription may seem to be an obvious copyright violation, but 99% of tabs are far from that. They are more like a guess or an interpretation of the song (for example, in nearly all cases they contain only notes, not durations of notes - and again, not even notes, but positions on the guitar).
As a guitar player who has enjoyed Olga for many years, this (repeat) development is sad, and I believe unjustified.
... was all the rage the last time I heard any grumblings about the OLGA. As I recall, Cherry Lane Publishing sued to have it shut down and this was about three or four years (decades in teh interweb-time) before the rise of file-sharring and Mp3s. Looking back at this time period you can't help but see what a huge waste of time it was to go through all the trouble of launching a legal campaign against something you 'perceive' as dangerous to your revenue stream, just to have another technology come down the pipe a couple of years later that makes your crys of malfeasance seem about as legititmate as people complaining that the deck chairs on the Titanic don't have sufficient lumbar support. The whole thing is going down, my friend.
I picked up my first guitar at 15 (which was in 1995). It was a Sunburst Fender Mexi-Strat and it's about two feet away from me right as I type this. The OLGA, as well as programs like Tabit (ah, DOS, remember DOS?), played more than an integral part in helping me to learn to play and I'm grateful to all of those random soandso@soandso.coms that tabbed out the music that I consumed and callused my fingers to. If Cherry Lane or others want to go after people that are scanning sheet music and posting PDFs, more power to them. That's a copyright issue, go get 'em boys. But if I'm sitting with a copy of StringWalker open for three bleary-eyed hours, trying to make "I Just Want Some Skank" by the Circle Jerks sound right, don't tell me what I'm doing is illegal or in any way detrimental to the music industry.
It's not.
It's cultivating interest via a medium that the publishing community obviously, obviously either fears or is woefully ignorant of.
The enemy of my enemy is quite possibly also my enemy. I've made a lot of enemies.
I never used OLGA, it was always or seemed to always be spotty and there are plenty of other sites online that provide tabs and links to tabs more efficiently. Having said that, it's sad to see it go. One more avenue for free expression of user made tab interpretations of songs gone. Gone but replaced already. And if anything, being able to learn guitar, to be able to call up in an instant a tab or five for one song I'm learning on my guitar has sent me off buying those Mel Bay tab books and compilation tab books all the more quickly. So the scummy, evil lawyers and their false claim of harm is on the face of it, absurd. It's also just the grinding justification that such lawyers use to justify their own existence as they troll along like lampreys looking to attach themselves to something bigger and better. On the other hand,I pat myself on the back for buying Guitar Pro 5 early while they still had the whole catalog of guitar pro tabs to download with it so I have a good sized library of tabs I can hear. Yup, they closed down that tab collection down but it sprung right back up in a couple of places.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Back when I was first learning guitar before the internet became big, I would buy all kinds of books that had songs I wanted to learn. Then when OLGA came along I had no incentive to buy them anymore because a song was just a search box away. I don't think it has much to do with artist incentive as much as profit from those books. Music instrument stores have walls of those things.
Eddie Van Halen used to do this back in the early 80s to conceal his 'tapping' technique for songs like Eruption.
anybody that has to "hide" anything he does with a musical instrument is cheating pure and simple. I have never known any musician of any discipline to hold back anything that might make someone go "WHOA" unless they are generating that wow factor through dishonorable means. Vanity is a delicate thing but going as far as hiding what your doing from your audience,that's almost as crazy as Buckethead wearing a mask and a chicken bucket and talking through a toy.
If you're criticizing the errors in the official song book throughout the whole song, then it's not so obviously an infringement.
I went there about four or five days ago and they had a sign up saying they were sorting out legal issues. I was a little depressed as there are thousands of sites around offering this service and it's easy to walk in the newsagent on the weekend and memorise the stuff out of magazines (or the books in the music store). I personally can't imagine the few people who make money out of the music they find on OLGA are statistically relevant. Also, any guitarist worth their salt can figure most pop songs out without thinking twice. Most are three chord wonders.
I really don't tink any recording artist is going to notice their income going up.
It takes a heartless recording corporation to believe that the only incentive for creating music is money.
$8.95/mo web hosting
The site was not "shut down by the DMCA". It was shut down by copyright law.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm curious how often you buy any kind of guitar tabs or music books from a store. In my experience, probably 80% of the guitar books are worthless, sound awful, and aren't anywhere close to being correct. I highly doubt the artists are directly involved in the publishing process and it's probably the exact same process as the online sites, with the only difference being that these books aren't free and aren't corrected by others.
Not OLGA, but the commercial sheet music. I've found many examples where the sheet music I've bought is of lower quality than that available from OLGA. It smeels of the publishing compamies putting out music unrelated to what the original artist actually plays. Protecting a crappy product with lawyers isn't the way to make your customers happy ...
Thirty years ago people like Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan rip off the music and lyrics of blues and folk singers before them (many of whom died poor) and become multi-millionaires. Now you get sued for just showing amateur musicians how to play those chords. Nice.
In my area (Tampa Bay FL) a restaurant owner was sued [sptimes.com] for playing songs (cover bands and on the stereo) owned by BMI without paying them an additional fee to the ASCAP fee he already pays. I guess the moral of the story is, P2P-related lawsuits were just the beginning. Media companies are going to extort every penny they can until someone stops them.
I never got tabs, they're often incorrect and missing a lot of information.
Well, that's why they are independent works and the take down is harassment. From the site owner:
I have long been of the understanding that an original, by-ear transcription of a song, which is a duplicate of no copyrighted work and which generally deviates substantially from the work on which it is based is the property of its transcriber, and not the original composer of the song.
If you are doing cover songs with a band, you might spring for the $5 to "get it right". The music industry itself gets things screwed up all the time as a quick glance at the career of Jimmi Hendrix shows. They got his album art wrong, his recordings screwed up and finally he's buried under a plaque of a right handed guitar and is still missing a promissed statue of himself. With screw ups like that, do you think they can get all the notes right? Maybe, maybe not. If copright did not live forever, it would all be fixed by now.
Outside the industry, where the vast majority of us live, people like my wife just want some basic directions to learn with. All most people care about are the basics. Before the internet, they would get them by listening to the record over and over again and meticulously transcribing what they though they heard. People still do that, but now they can share the results and everyone wins. The version people hear is often easier to play and sounds better than the original. Sometimes it's not, but you always get a choice.
Everyone but a few self defeating pigopolists that is. As you pointed out, the greed heads want to charge you more for the sheet music than an actual recording. This will really be the end of most of their sales. One of the only reasons people still listen to fifty year old music like the Beatles is because they are fun to sing yourself. If those idiots make it hard for people to enjoy what they sell, people will move on.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Knockin On Heavens Door
:(
g-d-c
Geez, I'm so glad we've got that outta the way.
Bob Dylan will be angry though
Except many many songs are composed
of g-d-c or variation thereof.
I should just copyright the g chord and shut down
everyone, everywhere.
Sue me.
I buy my music fome a russian website to prove a point to the RIAA that all they need to do is hit a resonable price point
Why the hell didn't anyone mod this funny?
They should forbid the sell of music instruments too, this is the root of all evil !
Here is an example : it all started with a guitar from my dad. I didn't knew how to play guitar at that time, so I used this Olga site to find easy Nirvana tabs so I could start playing. Then, Olga was not enough, so I searched, and turned to other tab site and I came to play Bossa Nova songs ! Do you realize what happened to me ? from playing Nirvana to playing Bossa Nova ? All of this just because of a guitar and using Olga/online tab sites ? that's insane.
So, I'm here to speak, and to prevent this from happening again to a child/teenager, because I still struggle everyday to refrain from playing a little "Corcovado" when I see my guitar.
That's why closing Olga is not enough and I request them to fight the evil at his root and to ban the sell of music instruments. These is the real cullprit perverting our mind, and making the world unsafe.
Let's go back to the ancient school tradition were masters and artisans of every discipline only shared is knowledge with fellow members and disciples.
Let's develope obscure societies with secret rules, strict hierarchies and stupid ceremonies all for the high and noble ideal of keeping the secrets away from the peasants.
Welcome to the future, welcome to the Middle Age.
***Game Over***Insert Coin***
If you have the sheet music, you can play a song you never heard.
If you have chords (or even most of the tabs in this sites) you just can't play them unless you heard the thing first (usually you need to practice with the recording until you can properly interpret the chords).
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Are they for real? Back in the days when I was practicing guitar I had to listen to the tunes myself and write down the chords.
Songbooks where to expensive and the web wasnt there yet. So would this mean I am breaking copyright?
Am I breaking copyright law by LISTENING to the music or what?? Its plain insane!
I'd like to see just how much profit is made from sheet music. I'd find it hard to believe that any songwriter of any song featured on OLGA makes any worthwhile fraction of their money from sheet music. Surely almost all of it is from airplay royalties and record sales.
...and you need help. Humans are more important than guitar tabs and copyright law. Call your mother, go outside, talk to somebody. Your are in dire need of therapy.
Why should MMPA or RIAA worry about tabs when all over the world children are being taught to play music by ear? Near me, the Oldtown School of Folk Music routinely teaches students how to listen to and copy any tune, whether or not the material is in the public domain. This induces infringement, just like TPB and Google. It is beyond replaying it in your head--it's replaying it out loud for friends and family, and maybe even in sessions!
Worse than that, playing by ear is often passed on by families of criminals, similar to the mafia. This musical crime may have a genetic component. For example, generations of traditional Irish musicians have taught their young to play by ear, and then then entire family will sit and violate copyright law together. It's a good idea to lock up all the Irish to stop this sort of lawlessness. In my day, we didn't try to "make our own fun"----we paid for it, like honest citizens.
I can see why on a LEGAL level they would want to shut them down, asides from the DMCA. They have in effect created and distributed a derrivative work from the music. However, it's a really minor offense IMHO. It isn't mallicious or trying to shut people out of money.
It is indirectly (perhaps directly) shutting people out of money however. Artists actually make a TON more from their publishing (which includes music in films, on the cd itself, printed stuff, etc...) than from Record Deals (which rarely make anything). In fact it's one of the easiest ways for a new artist to legitmately make money. As well as songwriters, as that's the ONLY place they get their money from. Using the DMCA is odd, as they have other things they can use against them.
I think it's uncool however that they do this. OLGA first of all isn't really a good representation of the music IMHO. Tabs are, well horrid, for reading music. I can't see why they are getting so bent. This isn't going to push the amount of sheet music purchased up as they hope.
The good side is that maybe for a bit people will (either google other sites or...) learn to use their ears. A real musician doesn't really need tab for playing pop tunes (which most of these songs are). Just use your ears and boom, there they go!
Tibbon
tibbon.com
It only has to be proven that the tabs in question are the same as the copyrighted ones. Of course, this will never be proven because as anyone who has actually used online tabs knows...they're never 100% correct. Usually only about 40-80%, enough to get the basic progression down.
damaged by dogma
I've recently signed a small record deal with an indie label and i can honestly say that i would never have been as motivated to learn guitar and write songs had it not been for guitar tablature sites. The music that i listen to is often not even published (as sheet music) by the record labels and as a beginner i required other people's interpretations of my favourite songs so i could learn a version, work out chord structures and eventually write my own songs. If they want to close down guitar tablature sites i think record companies are hurting themselves in the long run, as they're erasing an entire generation of potential musicians.
...then you shouldn't be making music.
I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that people post on here. I don't agree with a lot of people's political views. I am against the war (which I would assume most here are). I'm against smoking bans in states and cities on private property (I think if you don't like a restraunt because it is smoke-filled you can do what my parents and I did when i was litte: tell them their restraunt smells like ass and we won't be back unless they ban smoking in their facility). I think private businesses (but not government or businesses with public contracts) should be able to discriminate against people if they damn well please, whether it be because they don't like gays, catholics, women, white people, or whatever the hell they like (but if they have public contracts they should have to adhere to non-discriminatory policies). If they discriminate I'll be one of the ones telling everyone I know not go there.
I'm a Christian and I believe God created man (not necessarily 6k years ago, but w/e) but I don't think we should teach creation in schools as scientific theory. I don't think homosexuality is necessarly right but I am 100% (and I argue with as many other christians as I can to try to convince them) pro gay-marriage because, thank God we do not live in a theocracy (look at the middle east). I am for drug legalization and against the death penalty. I agree with some and disagree with some of the views that are the norm here.
Yet this kind of shit is just RIDICULOUS. OF COURSE you should NOT be allowed to sneak into the studio, copy the sheets of music (or w/e if they are on a computer), paste them into a file, save it as a PDF and save it online. I think we can pretty much all agree that this should be a civil infraction (I think reasonable people should also agree that there is nothing *criminal* about doing that and the gov should not be paying to investigate copyright infringment either, but w/e).
But if someone figures out the damn chords themselves from listening to the fucking music, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY ABILITY TO PREVENT THEM FROM SHARING WHAT THEY HAVE HEARD WITH THEIR FRIENDS. GOOD GOD. If someone listens to your music, figures out how to play it on their instrument (lets not limit this to popular music) there should be NO LAW and NO PENALTY for them sharing what they have figured out. To try to control human thought is just unconciable.
There is a *HUGE* difference between trying to share the ability to play a song and infringing on someone's copyright. When copyright was invented (before the U.S. even existed) it didn't extend to people trying to figure out the notes to what they were hearing and playing them back to their friends.
It is already at the point where schools have been sued for performing music in plays etc when they did not have a license to perform it in a public performance. Is this what was intended?
I believe that if you walk up to someone on the street who is not familiar at all with copyright law and ask them questions about what they believe is right or not right, you would garner a pretty reasonable response overall. It is worthy of a lawsuit if you make a play about some guy's script and charge money for it. That guy who wrote the damn thing deserves to be compensated. But if your kid's elementary school finds that play on the 'net and performs it for the parents at Thanksgiving, fuck you if you think that is wrong and fuck you if you think the school should have to pay. Seriously.
There comes a point at which our society needs to decide which way it is going to go. There can either be a place for the modern day media corporations, or they can stay behind. That is their choice. But they cannot drag everyone else back in time with them. If they succeed in taking control of what people can or cannot think then it is only a matter of time before freedom of (or from) religion, freedom to own firearms, freedom to speak our minds (well, drugs are already illegal so we are getting there), etc... also fall to the same precedents.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
I see this as much more of a symptom of the perversion of the legal
system by the special interests of corporations (and their lawyers).
Unfortunately justice is still out of reach for many of us, and I
think the number of people who cannot afford to go to court is growing.
Corporations take advantage of their wealth and this financial imbalance.
Corporations in their short sightedness rather than competing through
innovation and invention seek to compete by controlling the market by
suppressing competition where possible.
Copyright and Patent laws were originally created to prevent this and
strike a balance between the rights of the user and the creator. The idea
was to create a functioning market where innovation is encouraged and
sufficiently rewarded, while retaining open competition and consumer choice.
Copyright and IP law is particularly vulnerable since its complexity and
the need to seek a balance between content users and content providers
makes easy to pervert. That combined with the general lack of knowledge
about copyright law and fair use and a systematic public campaign by the
content industry to confuse the issue, has lead to the current situation.
It is disappointing that judges, lawyers and politicians (the guardians of
our legal system) have failed to protect our legal system from growing
greed and corruption.
Despite all this the content industry middlemen (RIAA etc...) will lose.
The reasons are simple:
1) A new medium, the internet allows anyone to connect with customers.
2) A number of users are no longer interested in working with
the content industry middlemen.
3) A large number of users are willing to share their content for free.
This is creating a large pool of accessible content that the content industry
middlemen do not own or control in anyway. As this pool grows which it inevitably will
the very content "protection" laws lobbied for by the record industry will
protect the rights of the creators of this music. Since the creators have
the right to distribute their content under any licensing scheme that they
see fit (eg. creative commons) they can distribute it for free.
Consumers faced with the choice of easy free to use accessible content and the
choice of copy protected digitally managed "official" industry content
will simply vote with their feet.
These sorts of legal challenges just help create a hostile climate for traditional
industry content users and will hasten the decline of the traditional content industry
as these consumers move on.
These are the violent thrashes of a dying beast...
(which unfortunately will take time and cause much damage).
We've seen it with software... and we'll see it again...
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
1. They do sell sheet music, and this practice cuts into their profits. I'm guessing that some revenue-sharing model could work, but that the RIAA/BMG/etc. aren't (yet) interested. In fact, I have actually seen some bands distribute their own tabs (or tabs contributed by fans), which I think is a fantastic idea.
Does that not cut into the RIAA's profits? By your logic, the artists definitely should be allowed to distribute tabs.
Take ASCII versions of the tabs and embed them in the mp3 metadata, along with the lyrics. Once released in the wild via .torrent or your favorite p2p app, it's one-stop shopping for starving guitar players.
If the music biz was serious about embracing tech, they'd be selling these files on iTunes / whatever right now -- you could probably sell them for $1 more than the "regular" version of the .mp3. Instead, they bitch and moan about OLGA, shut it down (again) while giving some bullshit excuse (just say you want the publishing revenue already!), and we're exactly where we were ten years ago -- except now you can get .pdf rips of their "official recorded version" tab books that sell for $24.95 or more on eMule etc. for absolutely nothing.
Idiots.
This has GOT to be a joke! Only, it isn't!
How can a business like the muic industry continually attack their customers? It is not going to work forever!
What really shocks me about this is as a guitar player, I KNOW had i not had access to tabs to learn from, i'd have never have been able to. Actions like this may someday end in a severe lack of artists to produce what the industry i trying to protect.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
So what happens next? A torrent containing the entire OLGA database, available for anyone, findable with google within few days, or some.
-flashback- hej this already happened in 1996 or so, same OLGA, same legal stuff and somewhere in my basement a dusty CD containing a dump of the olga archive - it came with a magazine.
Let me clearify my remark about this torrent thing. At the time of napster, i i wanted to hear a particular song of say, Madonna, i downloaded that song and listened it. Nowadays, as most mp3 p2p networks are polluted with crap, what do you do if you want to listen one Madonna song? The easiest way is to download the torrent containing Madonna's full discography. 18 Albums if i remember correctly. And priotize the song you were after in Azureus in listen 5 minutes later. It's not necessarely the torrent, it is just that you'll force distribution of data to the darkest underground suburbs of the internet.
Keep them poor. Keep them dumb. Take the money. Make home-written interpretations of music evil. I've get a much better idea, close all schools now! That will keep them dumb! They will never learn how to read, and never abuse services like Olga again! More opium for the people!
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Hooey. This is an awful business decision, simply because no kid sitting in front of his computer picking out Beatles songs is in the market for sheet music or legally published fake books.
There is, then, effectively zero downside.
Publishers apparently do not recognize that they moreover give up substantial upside. The network effect of their compositions being made available by amateurs, for amateurs, is not inconsiderable. OLGA and other resources maintain and extend the hold of a given song on the mass audience's attention. This has several salutary effects. It actually increases the very small likelihood of sheet music sales for their works. It increases the somewhat less tiny probability of the recorded originals being sold. It increases the miniscule (but incredibly lucrative) chance of placing their work in commercials, films, or other directly compensated outlets.
They're not cutting off their nose to spite their face, they're just cutting off their nose.
That said, the music industry has been shooting itself in the gut for decades (since long before "home taping is killing music"). I am not shocked at yet another preternaturally stupid move.
Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.
Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?
Also, "Climate Change" is more accurate. We're in a period of "global warming" right now (1 to 2 degrees), but we just finished with a "global cooling" - the "Little Ice Age". See here. See how our climate is changing, not just warming? And that this isn't a recent phenomenon? Not that global warming/climate change isn't an issue - climate change just isn't newspeak.
Bushspeak != Duckspeak
DATABASE WOW WOW
So, what's the "source code" for music? Is it the files encoded on the disc or mp3? Or is it the instructions on how to reproduce that music, ie. tabs and lyrics? Look, I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here, no one likes the RIAA and it's resonable to look for tabs from songs without hassle. But if software companies can hold on to source code, which unless you knew code it would be usless to you... just like playing music. -EW
"Finish your dinner." -Your Mom
I've been a rock musician for 25 years, and I can tell you I've never known one single time where a rock band actually buys sheet music for an upcoming performance. ESPECIALLY in the pre-Net era. Venues requiring sheet music purchase? Huh? Oh please, what mushroom have you just fallen off. The average bar owner thinks sheet music is the soundtrack to a porn vid.
Three reasons why rockers don't buy sheet music:
1) Rock musicians for the most part cannot read music. Something like 99% of them.
2) Rock musicians are typically poor.
3) Sheet music can't get you high or drunk.
Buying sheet music for a rock gig. What a crock.
When they're done with Olga.net, they can get a jump on all those people who hum the songs from memory!
a .net/
I've noticed that the artists get unfairly represented when crazy, loud people sing along to the Dixie Chicks on their way back from work. We must put a stop to memory, it is a tool of terrorists against the Artists.
On the other hand, any evil people who wish to attack Freedom- can find Olga.net on the WayBack Machine (circa 13AUG02) - http://web.archive.org/web/20020802061040/www.olg
If I were an artist and thought everyone was learning some ham-handed version of my tune, I'd probably be a bit pissed.
Maybe so, but would you not also feel a little bit satisfied that nobody could play your song as well as you do, and they don't even know why?
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
...essentially they're saying that their business strategy is no longer profitable due to advancements in technology and human ingenuity. Aww.. Diddums.
They should host the site overseas. Malaysia is a good bet.
For some insight see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnLB8wysMbY. Possibly not safe for work...
!ERR: Signature not found.
Eddie Van Halen used to hide his speedy fingering tricks back in the Van Halen videos in the 80s. It really might not have been anything at all, since people can play much more technically and quickly than him - even in those years there were more talented guitarists. Maybe him just seemingly hiding something gave that allure that many musicians and their fans feed upon. More or less, it seems like an ego thing.
I don't know where I'd be, personally, without OLGA. I even printed out tabs for songs I was trying to brush up on or learn anew while I was deployed to the middle east. It really helped bring out my natural playing ability and also to re-train where I have stopped practicing for so many years. It'll be back, it's too valuable a tool for aspiring guitarists to let go down the drain because of some RIAA schmucks.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
with the low quality transcription there, it's hardly copyright infringing, it's almost different tunes
Live Electronic Music
I teach guitar, among lots of other instruments and voice. Every so often, someone wants to learn some song from tablature, or they come to me only knowing how to read tablature with no acutal experience with regular notation. This is all fine and good -- I can help the student learn notation then -- but I typically point out several limitations of tablature (several of which apply also to chord diagrams, which are not the same thing as tab; a lot of people confuse the two):
I am sure there are other issues as well. That said, I cannot see how shutting down a tablature site benefits the musicians at all; if anything, it encourages recording sales.
While the recording artist could potentially be disappointed with other musicians' inferior performances of their tunes, anyone in the U.S. can record and sell an original rendition of anything that has already been recorded, thanks to compulsory mechanical licensing, whether the original artist likes it or not. Of course, few amateurs are going to be able to pull off any kind of publishable album, but with the ubiquity of computerized recording tools (ProTools, etc.), it's not hard to make independent CD's anymore. Not that anyone but friends and family will buy them...
Lyrics are just a way for musicians to impress people by sounding smart anyway. If they really had anything important to say they would write a book.
Seriously, when is the music industry finally going to realize that no one in the entire world, ever, will refrain from buying a CD because they have already read the lyrics for free on the web?
Has anyone ever listened to the BBC stuff of the Beatles? Their early career was nothing but covers. How do you think they learned to play? or compose?
Many painters begin by trying to paint one of the masters. This is a very good way to learn to express your own creativity.
They even gave the following notice at the beginning of each file:
w ww.olga.net/
(due to slashdot's stupid "lameness filter", I had to remove several "pound signs" and "hypens")
--
PLEASE NOTE
This OLGA file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation
of the song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or
research. Remember to view this file in Courier, or some other monospaced
font. See http://www.olga.net/faq/ for more information.
--
You can see for yourself using the wayback machine at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050401045224/http://
Rirelobql xabjf gung EBG-13 vf gur yrnfg frpher rapelcgvba rire, ohg jbhyq lbh jnfgr lbhe gvzr npghnyyl qrpelcgvat vg???
I was under the impression that most guitar tabs were legal because they were not in any way copies of the original work, and in fact most state: This is an interpretation of the original song by the author of this tab, and should not be taken to be accurate.
Either way, as an amateur guitar player I think this is really sad, but fortunately there are a multitude of other guitar tab sites out there to fill the void. I like Ultimate Guitar
RIGHT: Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000
... it's Father Bush and is personal friends that help put Son Bush in the presidency. Iraq has the largest oil reserves in the world and you are dumb if you think that the war USA conducted in Iraq was to free the people of Iraq ... that you have to admit, live in much worst condition now than they did before the war started ... ah oh, no, the USA went to Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction and they were building "nucular" weapons ... yeah, now I remember that was what you said before.
PERHAPS RIGHT ALSO: The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000
IMPORTANT PART: It's not America that is making money of the oil in Iraq
Numbers are very pretty, but it's their meaning that maters.
Insightful mod parent up, and add that we would not have Jazz at all if there had been strong "intellectual property" laws at the turn of the century. For most all Jazz is variations of standards and most Jazz musicians were too poor buy sheet music for everything they played.
d eas_pr.html
Screw the asset planners those are the people John Lennon fought against all his life from "money can't buy you love," to "give peace a chance." The asset planners never created anything in their whole lives and act like vampires on the truly creative person.
I'll end with a little quote from Thomas Jefferson on how absurd the whole idea of intellectual property is:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Thomas Jefferson
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.i
The rest of this essay might teach you something as well.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Most venues would be overjoyed if they could play the radio, have bands, and have a jukebox without paying ASCAP or BMI. It's an expense, and I've seen a few venues that don't pay it. When pressed, they say, "Why should I have to pay to play the radio? It's free in my car and in my home!"
So, you're wrong. So wrong in fact, that you could be right - if you were talking about 60 years ago, or an orchestra, but we're talking about TAB and chords, guitar and popular songs. Single note playing intruments in orchestras use music written for the instrument they play - and are not required to own, purchase, or otherwise HAVE sheet music by any! venue. (Maybe a bandleader who's a copyright nazi or a published composer whose music is being played might require it, but those days are fading fast - if not gone already!)
So, please. Either get back in your time machine and join us in the present, pick up a manual on what the hell is going on in the real world, or shutty.
When Mozart was in Italy, he went to the Sistine Chapel to hear Gregorio Allegri's Miserere performed. He then proceeded to write it out from memory, returning the next day to correct some minor errors. Miserere was a closely guarded work of the Vatican and what Mozart did would have been illegal.
Kind of funny that one of the first instances of music "theft" came from one of the most brilliant composers of all time.
Learning how to play an instrument could become illegal:
3 8&tid=141 to write 'hits' and subsequently ram the product down our collective throats.
When you learn how to play an instrument, you gain the skills to be able to 'reverse-engineer' and copy just about any piece of music. What's to stop you from learning the notes to a melody then?
I suppose if the RIAA had their way they would use software http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/18/13292
After all, if they use software to write the music, they no longer need artists.
If they never need to pay an artist, they keep all the profits.
Finally, by discouraging the freedom of sharing of musical exploration and discovery among people, they hope to make us unable to compete.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
This is obviously a feeble troll attempt.
Naftule Brandwein, the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso, turned his back on the audience in order to keep the secret of the finger he used to achieve certain effects.
Which was idiotic considering that most likely he was not playing the same kind of clarinet his audience was. Most clarinetists play Boehm system clarinets, but both New Orleans Jazz players and Klezmer players traditionally have played Albert system clarinets. The finger wouldn't matter since the fingerings are different between the two systems.
"ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come."
Because without profit there's no reason to write music?
-Styopa
Let us never forget what was the original intention of copyright. It was to reward people not for merely creating material, but for actually sharing that material -- in the form of a promise to release it into the Public Domain some day soon.
..... Is a temporary monopoly on distribution still really the best way to reward people for sharing their creations with the world at large, or might there now exist a better way of accomplishing the same end?
Which raises the question. Times have changed
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
There are OLGA mirrors in Australia, Germany, Russia, and Sweden, all of which predate the latest OLGA shutdown. Presumably they are run by locals. It's probably going to be a long while before the Russians get shut down.
I think it's only a matter of time before people will get enough pissed at RIAA and start launching virus attacks and all kind of shiznitz against them
-m10
Disclaimer: This comment probably has legal mistakes in it, IANAL, and the topic is complex. Feel free to reply with fixes.
--
A track on an album is covered by two different classes of copyright: the copyright on the actual audio waveform, and the "publishing copyright" on the melody line (usually, what the singer sings) and the lyrics. The second one is what is at issue here.
Note I said "the melody line and the lyrics". If you could in fact copyright a chord progression, and if the rules for how many chords a new song could "borrow" from an old song before it became "theft" was patterned after the rules for melody lines, then there would be a few extremely wealthy heirs of the writers of early songs who would be collecting royalties on practically all new songs written. And this goes for drum beat patterns (if they were covered by publishing copyright) even more so than chord progressions.
This is the theory the OLGA folks are basing their case on, I'd guess. The only thing their database usually documents about a song is "this song uses these chords, strummed like this". Which is not far away from "this song has a tempo of 110 Beats Per Minute" or "this song is in the key of A" or "this song has an ABABCA structure". It's about where the line is between "meta-data" and "data" on a song -- OLGA is drawing it one place, their opponents are drawing it another.
My subject heading refers to the fact that in the age of Hip-Hop, these rules make no sense -- what most listeners think of as "the song" isn't covered by publishing copyright in theory. Most raps don't have melody, only lyrics and "flow" (which is seen as a performer's technique, not composition). In practice, producers make deals with rappers to get a percent of the song copyright in exchange for using their track.
Like so many other parts of IP law, song publishing needs a refresh for the 21st century.
I wanted to play the guitar because it was cool. After a while, my mom got tired of me pounding on it in the basement, so she signed me up for lessons. Every week my teacher, Paul, wrote out tabs or sheet music for a few songs and expected me to learn them by the next lesson. Typically it was old blues tracks or Beatles or other older stuff with the occasional Nirvana track in there. I really wish I knew where Paul was these days so I could call the RIAA and work out a deal for a reward for turning in Paul because he violated their IP copyrights by not only being so bold as to teach other people's songs, but also for being so willfully infringing as to write them down for his students. In all seriousness, RIAA, this goatse's for you: ()0()
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
Despite all this the content industry middlemen (RIAA etc...) will lose.
But they will probably try to "fight to the last man".
The reasons are simple:
1) A new medium, the internet allows anyone to connect with customers.
2) A number of users are no longer interested in working with the content industry middlemen.
What the existing industry is fighting is a paradigm shift in the economics of distributing music recordings. Copyright originated with the technology of mechanised printing. Which produced cheap books, newspapers, etc in large quantities. The deveopment of copyright law is tied up with the business model of having a middleman to publish/print/distribute, etc. When music recordings were invented the business models already in use for books were taken and adapted.
Originally copyright was a permission granted by the state to publishers. In the 18th century things were changed to make copyright something authors had. Ironically it's the likes of the RIAA and MPAA trying hardest to modify copyright "back" into something held by publishers. Whilst they have had considerably sucess in modifying copyright in the last few decades of the 20th century into something more "publisher friendly" something else has happened. Machines have appeared that can copy information and transport it anywhere on the planet have appeared. Not only can a single copy be produced and transported cheaply the machines are themselves cheap enough for a substantial proportion of people to own (at least) one.
3) A large number of users are willing to share their content for free.
The industry's method to tackle this is to bend the law in such a way that authors, poets, playwrites, song writers, etc. do not "own" their works (preferably that their members do). They do this by using the "derived work" part of copyright laws. There is, in practice, no such thing as an original work (no doubt the RIAA and MPAA are trying to work out a way to own plotlines which are at least half a million years old).
when people will learn - no such servers should ever reside in United States. Too much redicilous IPO laws, lawyers and patents.
Olga would be fine if the server is in Russia, China or Mexico.
Because allofmp3 isn't funny - it's cheap music that's not technically pirated.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I've found over 90% of the tab books I've bought have been inaccurate, some ridiculously so. One even advised I play a riff that is literally physically impossible to play, at 200bpm. Hmm.
Peer-reviewed tabs written by people who have worked it out by ear, tried it out to see if it's right then published their work for recognition and to help facilitate others to play the song produces tabs of far, far better quality than tab books. Perhaps Olga's tabs weren't always reliable, but there are other sites with peer reviewing that far, far superior to tab books which cost >$20 and aren't even correct (I won't link them because the RIAA are probably reading this and I don't particularly want to give them any more ideas).
In fact, shoudn't music labels be sued for producing tab books that are incorrect?! Perhaps someone should get on with doing that, maybe that'll shut them up?
This is just yet another damn example of corporate greed ruining all that is good in the world. Let's hope there's an outbreak of sanity soon. Please people. These are the same sort of people who sue Open Source projects for patent infringement.
I'm curious how often you buy any kind of guitar tabs or music books from a store. In my experience, probably 80% of the guitar books are worthless, sound awful, and aren't anywhere close to being correct. I highly doubt the artists are directly involved in the publishing process and it's probably the exact same process as the online sites, with the only difference being that these books aren't free and aren't corrected by others.
The addition of corrections (which could easily also include derivations) adds value to the product.
It almost looks as though someone is deploying a legal weapon to protect a poor product. Wonder which would actually be the cheaper option "buying" new laws keeping lawyers well paid or putting out a decent product.
Sometimes I wish there were a single word to express all the rage, disgust, shock, and horror in a single instance..."fuck" doesn't do that anymore. Is the industry that delusional to believe that copyright is the incentive for creating new material? Last time I checked, love for the art form was the main motivation for creating music, but I guess I could be wrong. Yes, obviously professional musicians need money to continue along, but where the hell does posting guitar tabs/lyrics to the internet come into play in taking that away from the artist? Instead of buying the CD, I'm going to record all the songs myself and distribute it to friends...yeah.
So I suppose I should stop listening to songs and figuring out how to play them on my guitar. I should stop putting music quotes in my away messages. I should stop singing along in my car. I don't want Big Brother detaining me for violating DMCA. Music has become a commodity, far from an art form. Minus a few diamonds in the rough over the years, for the most part, it is rubbish. It's a fucking shame that it has come to this.
> That region is called Palestine since ever ... they only changed the name in the past decade
> since it's much easier to support the Israelis fighting the Palestinian people in Middle East
> than it is to know that the Israelis are attacking the Palestinian people in Palestine.
They've been using the term "Middle East" at least as long as I've been alive, which is 30+ years...
For someone who is trying to learn to play the guitar, these legal moves are tremendously frustrating. Let's point out that tab sites aren't giving out free copies of the publisher's property - these are fan interpretations of the songs, not copies of original sheet music.
I have just copyrighted instructions for driving from your home to your job.
From now on, you will pay ME everytime you go to work, or face the death-of-a-thousand-lawyers!
Bwhahaha!
One of the major tablature sites, http://www.chordie.com/ has started to put non-profit links to the artists song at iTunes and MSNMusic. They are doing this to support the artists/composers. A longer explanation can be found here: http://www.chordie.com/supporttheartists.php
You make a number of good points, Thank you.
1 /30/1739226) and
I think you're correct in that the record industry will try to block
these changes in anyway they can.
Although when one starts to try to "own" original content through derived work
ie "fair use" etc... you come to the point where you start try to control
thoughts, ideas and their communication.
At this point you start interfering with freedom of speech and other fundamental
democratic rights. In this they play a very dangerous game, as we've already
seen with other uses of the DMCA in suppressing security research
(http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/1
more (http://www.eff.org/legal/victories/more.php).
Although the record industry is powerful, they cannot succeed in taking on everyone,
although as you correctly stated they will try and fight to the last man.
At best they can make a big mess and buy some time.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
I'm sick of hearing about artists supporting this kind of crap. If you don't want people to learn from your creative output, don't make it public! Sit in your room and play your fancy guitar chords through your headphones. All intellectual progress has come from open sharing of ideas, not from hoarding them. I'm a DJ, and this reminds me of early DJs who used to soak their records in hot soapy water to remove the labels so that people couldn't see what record they were playing. It's yet another logical leap of absurdity, since they were playing music recorded by someone else to begin with. Luckily, the world of turntablism appears to have moved beyond that embarrassing history, as most well known DJs today share their techniques and "secrets" through classes, videos, etc. I think suing people for sharing ideas in general is nonsense, but doing it in this way - specifically attacking people for figuring something out on their own and sharing what they've learned - is uniquely execrable.
Since the MPA and NMPA are now claiming that tabs violate their copyright, how does this affect music teachers? When I learnt how to play a guitar from a private teacher, he used a combination of sheet music and tablature to teach me how to play. He wrote down the music notation as well as the tabs and did not use any published book.
If they MPA and NMPA are shown to have rights concerning music tabs, then teachers will find it much harder to teach since they HAVE to purchase *AA authorized sheet music and cannot 'reverse engineer' the sounds into notations.
The scary part is that in the future other forms of media will be restricted so much that any cultural development will stagnate so much that we all might as well be zombies.
When Marilyn Manson or some rap dude writes lyrics and there is an uproar at the content, every one says "don't take it literally." But John Lennon writes something that can enevr be achieved and feels good, it's like he got the words straight from God.
You really don't need the line breaks,
you know. We're not on Usenet now.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
- Playing by ear: This is the best way to learn to play. All classically trained students take Ear Training - you are expected to be able, upon hearing a note, chord, or rhythm, transcribe or perform what you've just heard. Music is aural.
- Reading a staff (not tab): This is the international, trans-era, agreed-upon method by which musicians have communicated for centuries. Everybody who studies music quickly learns there are a lot of things wrong with our notational system, but it was developed over about a millenium, and its too late to change it now. But it's still got a huge advantage over learning by ear and over tablature: I can communicate everything to everybody, regardless of what instrument they play, instantly. Any group larger than a garage band just can't learn a song "by ear", and nobody but guitarists can read tablature (technically, tablature exists for certain other instruments, but it's probably even harder to read than tablature for guitar).
- Tablature: Anybody that thinks tab is legitimate, it's not. This really is lazy (and it's how I first learned). Tablature was designed to give people a chance to play the guitar without taking lessons, but I can speak from personal experience: if you are at all serious about music, drop the tab and struggle with the staff and playing by ear. Even if it means you are playing kid stuff. It is possible to pick up a guitar and learn to read tab in a day. Learning to read a staff can take a lifetime. However, the classically trained musician is more skilled by an order of magnitude than somebody "taught" by tab... Tab does have one distinct advantage over standard notation, however: it translates easily to ASCII.
</rant> Sorry, but the whole ear/reading argument is moot - a good musician is expected to maintain both these skills. Tablature is good for hobbyists and for learning over the web.Sorry to veer so far off topic but do you have some pointers to this reference that the burning of alexandria was *intentional*?
And back on topic, wouldnt your campfire actaually be a problem, since you were a 'audiance' and im sure the book ( or music that came with it ) was not licensed for 'performance'...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
were good old boys drinking whisky and rye?
What? No Dupe wisecracks?
Scott Swezey
People become musicians by playing with music. First step is often chord based from sites like OLGA. Then progressing to full tablatures, again from OLGA. Then they are good enought to start making money.
Then they start paying royalties on songs they cover when they start selling music, or mildly serious public performance. RIAA starts making money. But it all starts from those guitar tabs!
RIAA makes money from talent. Talent starts from OLGA. So RIAA makes their money thanks to OLGA. What a great reasong for RIAA to shut it down.
If I thought that they had any logic, I'd be puzzled. But this is just so typical.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
No, you cannot whistle your favourite song on the street. That is a public performance, and is a violation of copyright.
Remember, stores selling instruments have to pay royalites, in case a customers noodling happens to resemble a copyrighted work. Oh what a borken web we weave.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Many published lyrics and chord sheets (I'm a keyboard noodler, so I don't try the tabs) seem to contain obvious errors. Things that anyone with an ear will know are wrong, not just mishearings. I've usually considered these to be inserted for legal reasons.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
You are making a big logical mistake here by assuming that the same people who pay for the war are going to profit for it.
Truth. But you are making a mistake in assuming that they are profiting from it. A 6% net profit doesn't lend much to the theory of:
Maybe instead, the industry functions more like this.
I wonder what people think of the windfall profits from the 1500% markup on soft drinks. or the 16% profits aided by $8,000 per gallon ink.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Take it to the sumpreme court. http://dmcadoesntownearorpen.blogspot.com/
Please explain what makes that so "Obvious".
It is Obvious to me that if I hear something, the law should protect my right to tell someone else what I heard.
I also agree that if it does not take away from the common wealth, we should have special laws to help artists and inventors be compensated more than non-creative citizens. (Via Copywrite & Patents)
For better or worse, I see evolution of personal communication as one of the most important developments our age is producing; so No, I'm sorry, it is not obvious that repeating the chords of a song hurts an artist more than it helps our culture.
If it is so obvious to you, that's fine, but it does not help your position to pretend that the other viewpoint is so worthless that you didn't even notice it.
Classically trained musicians can read pretty much anything, even notation invented by the composers (as long as this is explained of course), which was not uncommon in the second half of the XXth century. If you mean sight reading, then we are talking about a completely different thing.
They may not play it as well and with as many nuisances as somebody completely embeeded in a certain musical genre, but if it is written, it can be played.
Good musicians can infer from what is written a load of details that are not written in order to give a credible performance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But I'll bite, such a little unusual troll has to be cherised!
If we did not have termperament, then western music would be in pretty much the same stage that oriental classical music is (Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Balinese or Indian), or come to think about it, Irish fiddle.
We would have millions of beautiful melodies but no harmonic development. Anything more complicated than Mozart from an harmonic point of view would be impossible, simply because tunning beyond one neighbour tonality would be pretty much impossible.
Debussy, Mussorgsky, Wagner, Chopin, you name it, such music would have not existed.
We sacrified perfect tonality in the sake of convenience, and this allowed the development of musci way beyond what would have been possible.
The sacrifice was worth it IMHO.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Robert Johnson, the great blues quitarist of the 1920s who is universally accepted as the grandfather of rock-n-roll, also turned his back to the audience when performing. Stealing techniques was rampant back in the delta blues era of the early 20th century.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Or maybe even more.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We all remember the library, right? Its that place with all the books that people used to frequent for information before the internet was invented and we all became scared of venturing outside.
I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection
If you go to olga.net, they have a link to the legal firm handling their "letter".... I found a handy contact us button there! :)
I'm going to hell/jail
but...Fuck it.
To whom it may concern:
The acts of demanding a "Take down" letter to the providers of OLGA.net are ridiculous. Your clients sad attempt to control their "property" under copyright laws, though I'm sure legal in nature, are an aberration to the law itself. Just because it's legal does not make it right. Olga provided no COPIED material. People just FIGURE OUT how to play songs. Where does this stop? do all bar bands now get busted for playing cover songs? Do all kids trying to learn songs at home on their guitars without the help of your clients precious "Content" violate these same laws? I may be misinformed but OLGA and their provider were seeking no profit (save maybe ad revenue to handle bandwidth issues) from their representations. it is something that is a valuable asset to those people trying to learn guitar, and to be quite honest, your clients attempt will backfire. The "geek" community is a large one, and this type of ridiculous attempt at controlling data and information on the Internet has failed and will continue to fail as long as the geeks among us are resolute in keeping information free. Many geeks play guitar, gentleman, and in choosing your path, you have alienated a large percentage of your customer base. I for one will never purchase any sheet music again, and I have a considerable library of legal, copyright protected and fully licensed material. The customers that you are attempting to salvage will be of little or no significance when the majority of these same customers boycott your products on principle. Enjoy you last days.
--
"Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain
-- Scott
I sort of understand the concern too, but the reality is what makes me furious. OLGA has a ton of bad quality stuff, I agree with you on that. The official music publishers, however, also put out a ton of shit, maybe even more. Very often, sheet music for popular music is so dumbed down it's not even funny. And quite often it's not in the key it was recorded, so once the poor amateur has worked out the song, she can't even play along with the CD. That's after shelling out $3 - $5 for single song sheet music or $15 - $20 for an entire album's worth. How awful is that?
In my experience (and talking about popular music from 1960 onwards only, not jazz or classical), the only official sheet music worth the asking price is the complete Beatles book. Most everything else is a waste of your time and money. I wish OLGA and all similar sites the best of luck in their battles. They possibly do less disservice to the song writers' art than the 'official' guys do.
I sent an e-mail to the MPA right when they started closing down tab websites about a year ago. I emailed all of the board members as well as all of the officers (about 20 people overall). I got a reply from ONE person, and the reply was basically "we don't care what you think it's all about money." I told them they were helping ruin the face of music in not so harsh terms. Since the email, all of their emails have been taken off the website, but I may have a list of them still in my outbox if you guys need them. The person who e-mailed me back was from MusicNotes.com which sells overpriced individual tablature that is poorly written. Just look at their free partial tab of Classical Gas....What a piece of crap
1) Are there tabs on the site directly copied from a sheetmusic book endorsed by the NMPA? or 2) Are all the tabs generated by ear from the users contributing data to the site? If the answer is 1 (even a little bit), I think the NMPA has a case, however, if the answer is 2, then they have no chance in hell and any copyright lawyer worth his salt could defend Olga in court. If the answer is 1, they should just remove the offending content and put a disclaimer on their site. Or, make contributers check an EULA that removes liability from Olga in the future. I really like the exponential potential of screwing the NMPA here by getting thousands upon thousands of people to virally spread the Olga tab database. Eventually, the lawyers will have to stop because all the "poor" artists won't be able to maintain the cost of chasing after phantoms on the Internet.
1) And where do I buy the sheet music for non-mainstream bands? Silly Wizard, Marillion, Fates Warning? OR in the case of Anthologies, what if the song I want to learn wasn't deemed good enough to go in the book?
2) Yeah...it is poor. But it's a start. Many tab books are poor too.
3) no counter for that. I remember in alt.guitar.tab years ago when someone just flat-out scanned parts of a tab book. There was disgust and anger at that person over it. I guess as a slight counter is that this is not a straigh copyright violation. It's no more than you as a teacher showing someone that Louie Louie goes G C D C.
On the other hand, picking up bass lately has done me a world of good. I don't really care what the as-played bass line was, unless it's something pretty noticable. I get the chords from the guitarists and just go with it on my own...it has done me a world of good in music understanding. When playing guitar I was too concerned with playing what the tab said and not learning the music.
Why do this? I think for three reasons. First, I think it's because the lawyers want the whole site taken down, and the DMCA takedown process limits them to identifying each piece of copyrighted material that they say is infringing.
Second, the DMCA notification process allows a counter-notification from the person who put the material on the site to begin with. If OLGA gets a counter-notification, it can leave the material up pending a real court order, and even then only risk being told to take it down by the court.
Third, sending a DMCA notice requires the sender to swear in good faith that copyright is being infringed. Note that the "unsent" takedown notice doesn't say that the web site is infringing -- only the cover letter does. As Diebold found out, sending notices when the material isn't infringing opens oneself up to damages. This appears to be a clever way to avoid that trap. ...JZ