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."
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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
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?
Re:I don't get it...
by
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?
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.
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.
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.
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: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. --
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
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
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:HOW SAD
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krewemaynard
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think maybe you should keep the quarter.;)
-- I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
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
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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: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
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!
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.
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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
Source Code...
by
eemerton
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· 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
Missing some things here...
by
Saxophonist
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· 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...
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.
Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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?
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.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
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.
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.
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.
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. --
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
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.
I think maybe you should keep the quarter. ;)
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
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
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
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 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."
> 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.
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?
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.
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 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...
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.