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Threat To Free, Legal Guitar Tablature Online
An anonymous reader writes "Recently Hal Leonard Corporation, the world's largest songbook publisher, sent an email to the music publishing and copyright community urging them not to license guitar tablature for free, advertising-supported use online. The email includes a number of factual errors and was potentially very damaging to the potential for a free, legal, and licensed destination for guitar tab online. Musicnotes and MXTabs have posted the full letter along with their response."
One thing i cant stand is big companies taking "legal" action against free services just so they can charge the user money. Infuriating.
If things keep progressing at this rate, and if they do start enforcing these fucking insane laws, it'll only be a matter of a few years before owning music is undesirable as it would be difficult ot prove any music is legit and could have you thrown into jail at any moment.
Why not just cut out all the BS and just make any kind of music ownership illegal. Musical instruments could be covered by the DMCA too since they can be used to copy (read play) a tune.
Oh that's we can't skip the BS right, because rich greed assholes can a make profit for a while this way.
Owning/buying music is quickly becoming no different morally to owning/buying blood diamonds. Hell, if they make musical instruments illegal perhaps the penalty for owning one could be that they cut off your hands.
IP law? It's just fucking entertainment. Get a grip!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Back in the day. This was a non-commercial use for educational purposes and they killed it, so screw them.
The Harry Fox Agency, which got its rights to "mechanical reproduction of music" by getting monopoly control over the piano roll market a century ago, has already taken down most tablature from the Web on its flimsy pretext to copyright (and its big lawyer and lobbyist payroll).
Tablatures are interpretations of the music as heard by someone. They're not even the public performance of music that whistling your favorite song as you walk down the street would be. But once public places are comprehensively wired for sound and video, Harry Fox will be sending you a bill for every time you do just that.
These insane government monopolies on content already part of folklore, from which folk activity they get nearly all their current value, must end. They are justified in the Constitution as a compromise with 1700s economics only "to promote progress in science and the useful arts". Instead, they now prohibit that progress. Copyrights must end no later than after a human generation of publication, shorter for media other than songs and books, and probably earlier than when 10x their registered production investment is recouped.
--
make install -not war
I began playing guitar in 1995 and discovered OLGA early on. Hal Leonard (the person) was a great teacher. The Corporation OTOH ... once again knowledge & your right (Hal and many of the great teachers used to call it an obligation) to pass it on once again comes up against the almighty dollar.
I spent a couple of years teaching in the late 90s. I'll try to avoid waxing lyrical about the philosophy of teaching but music is a LIVING thing. If you restrict it, less will find it and it withers. With regard to learning music (and any other discipline outside of Scientology and ITIL) information wants to be free.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
And I wonder what this will do to the next generation of musicians? Back when I began learning how to play guitar, much of my progress was because of the availability of free tab, which allowed me to play along with CDs. It would be grimly appropriate if the industries pushing this kind of litigation were shooting themselves in the foot when the talent pool in 20 years has shrunk down as a result.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Lots of the larger tabs sites have had takedown messages sent to them (example here), which, quite frankly, sucks if you're trying to learn to play.
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
Nine years ago, I was interviewed for this article about the original OLGA kerfuffle.
Nine years. You'd think that after that long, the traditional music publishing industry might have learned something from their complete inability to stop the spread of on-line guitar tabs.
Hey, publishers: It's over. You lost. You're not going to get to stop people from talking about how to play music. Quit whining, join the world in the 21st century, and you might yet find a way to profit.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
so this means to get tabs i go to piratebay and snatch a massive .RAR or every song i could possibly want to play, right?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
If I have spent my own time trying to figure out the tabs/sheet music of a song, why shouldn't I share it with millions of others who may want that song's tabs?? Just because it takes business away from some other people doesn't mean they can put restrictions on my freedom and willingness to share my effort. Its not as if I have stolen the tabs from someplace where they were being legally sold. Its my time that I've spent. So whats the solution to such a problem? Or does this end up as a stalemate? These people are curbing the free flow of information and knowledge. I myself have learned guitar by looking at countless tabs from OLGA and other sites.
Wait, you mean these sites Musicnotes and MXTabs feature BARELY LEGAL examples of rubbing and stroking and vibrating TIGHT thin little stringy things, all in a series of Web pages that have been deemed TOO REVEALING and EXPLICIT by the leading moral authorities?
And we can get all this too-racy-for-the-Web content for free right now for a limited time only in the privacy of our own homes, and it will help us learn to "play" like rock stars?
Hott.
Wait, what were talking about again?
All of OLGA can be zipped into like a 40mb file.
The music industry can't stop me from downloading a 300mb album.
The movie studios can't stop me from downloading an 1.4gb XviD.
The software industry can't stop me from downloading an 8gb ISO.
Who are these people kidding?
You will see companies battling for information controls for a good while. We are living in the IP landgrab. Current speculation is that information is property, and probably far more valuable than goods. An ear of corn is pittance to the knowledge of the process of raising, harvesting, and distributing corn. 1000 years ago, you couldn't restrict someone from telling their neighbor or son how to do any of those. Today, we have patents, copyrights, patent-copyrights (for software), process patents, plot patents, etc, etc.
We will see new instruments of IP control before this is over. The current consensus among MANY think tanks, blowhard economists, and business leaders is that if it has value, it should be owned and exploited. In that case, expect to see the future demotivator poster and lolcat memes protected. Memes have value, specifically cultural value. You may even see a day in which safety and consumer protection information owned and protected.
In the dark past, we had to band together to form libraries to preserve our knowledge and culture, and to share it. Today, we are the librarians, and we MUST do our jobs to protect our collective knowledge and culture, and to make sure it is freely sharable. All we are is flesh and knowledge. We cannot let either be subject to trade.
As an aside, when did capitalism become about giving trade rights to those who can charge the most? Shouldn't that argument fall on its face? Capitalism is a method to efficiently manage resources, in which those who must charge the most are the least efficient, and those that are more efficient are rewarded with the most or all profits. The most expensive price is the red-headed stepchild of capitalism, not it's pinnacle. The capitalist hero is not the whiny John Gault, it IS the busy looter or pirate. The pirates are the ones that realized a far more efficient method of production or distribution.
Hal Leonard claimed that the tabs are inaccurate, made by kids. If the tabs are really inaccurate, then I would think that the users of the tabs wouldn't be happy with them, and this alleged tab black market would disappear.
The tabs must, on the contrary, be reasonably accurate for Hal Leonard to be noticing any loss of business, which, as TFA explains, they probably aren't.
It astonishes me that the morons at Hal Leonard can't see that MXTabs is analogous to the iTunes Music Store: a different-yet-profitable delivery system. The letter refers to the easy availability of digital sheet music, ignoring the fact that a single song typically costs US$5.00, far more than it's worth to garage musicians. Licensed tabs that are ad-supported or reasonably-priced will generate revenue.
Equally astonishing (well, not really) is that the *AAs haven't realized that tablature is useless without a copy of the song it represents. Basic tablature doesn't completely specify a work in the way that standard notation does, so someone who downloads a tab will need an audio file. And not all of those audio files will be pirated, as recent studies indicate. It's a gain for music sales in general.
Morons.
Considering this company is capitalizing on the old Real Book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Book an illegal book (songs in there were unlicensed) used by jazz musicians for decades, I am curious as to where they intend to go with this. For a perspective on a similar experience in the past, back in the day jazz musicians could only find the standard songs in the lead sheet format (Chord chart and melody line) through illegal means, the most prevalent one being the Real Book. They were difficult to find though and were only available through word of mouth (though the internet helped a little). Recently however Hal Leonard has published "New Editions" of the three main volumes of the Real Books which I have found to be quite good, but unfortunately missing many of the standards that the original Real Books had. The biggest advantage these new Real Books have is that they are extremely easy to find. One of the biggest differences here however, is the Real Books were completely unlicensed and illegal, there was no consent by the authors of the songs. Though many of them probably owned the illegal books themselves and may have benefited by the fact their songs were now standards. It seems that with this online database however, with the intent to hold only licensed songs and an easier to find product, they stand on better grounds than the Real Books of old. It may be a battle of who can provide a better service, and if Musicnotes and MXTabs can keep persuading artists to release their tabulature freely. With the record store going away, I don't know how long the printed music store will be able to hold out against the internet.
I very much miss easier access to tabs. They have taken down so many sites already. OLGA, of course, is most missed. I donated to several sites over the years, including OLGA. Figured it was like teaching someone a new dance. Who knows if Dance Dance Revolution will be going after people who imitate their dance steps 10 years from now.
The problem with the guitar tab situation has been that it is a difficult situation to explain to non-players. Everyone knows that almost all great rock players have openly admitted for 40 years that they learned by imitating records, writing down what they knew, and sharing it.
First it was the lyrics, now the tabs are gone. Not only will they ultimately hurt the music publishing business, but the instrument business as well. God knows how much money I have spent on guitars/music toys ONLY due to the existence of tabs.
On the next cool evening, I shall be burning any Hal Leonard books I own in the pit outside.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
I will post a guitar B Sharp cord (B# = C) lol. I dare almighty Hal 9000 to censor it!
Censor This HAL!
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
I really wonder if companies that go on the warpath over internet copyright violations really think in their long-term best interest.
You make a common mistake -- thinking that a "company" has a brain of its own somewhere. Obviously, it doesn't; it's made up of people -- and those people are working in their own best interest.
It may be, and probably is, that the interests of the people running the company, and perhaps even the majority of the stockholders, are not the same as the interests of the "company" as an organization.
For instance, it might be in the major stockholders' best interests to do idiotic things that will get them media attention, and run the share price up, so they can sell it, make a bundle, and leave some other people with the bag. Witness SCO -- I hate beating a dead horse around here, but it's a great example. If the people at SCO have any brains at all (debatable, sure), they could be making tons of money while simultaneously running the organization into the ground.
It's quite possible to crash and burn a company and come out on top; some people have practically made careers out of it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
That reminds me of this site: http://everything2.com/?node_id=1029506
He talks about a court case that determined only 4 notes had to be in common to violate copyright. With that logic, he determined that there are only 46,656 distinct melodies.
Assume that all songs use a Western musical scale and that such a scale contains twelve distinct intervals. Assume that a judge (not a musician but a judge) will distinguish three distinct note durations (which roughly correspond to eighth, quarter, and half notes, or through a trivial change in time signature, to quarter, half, and whole notes, or to sixteenth, eighth, and quarter notes). Thus, there are 36 possible distance vectors from one note to the next, and 36^(n - 1) melodies of n notes.
And not all of those would be worth listening to... so pretty much any 4-notes you play probably violate someone's copyright.
Two centuries from now I think there's going to be a big dead zone in cultural history. I refer to the bulk of 20th century art, which it will be difficult to preserve and keep relevant as long as *all copying without permission is illegal.
Millions of great pieces of pre-Gutenberg literature were lost because of inadequate technology. Millions of pre-Internet pieces will be lost because of politics.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
They do have a good point on the quality side of things...
Very, very few tabs on sites like Olga come even close to the quality of a decent tab book.
F5, A#5, G5, C5 may well be the chords to the main part of Teen Spirit but tells me nothing about strum patterns, rhythm, which strings I should be missing on certain strums, etc. It tells me nothing about C and F notes that chime out afterwards.
Ironically, for all the claims of "I'm not good enough to figure out how to play a song by ear..." - to use most online tabs, aside from getting pointed in the right direction, you really do need to have an ear for rhythm, an ear for when exactly the chord changes happen, what the strum patterns are, when to use up vs. downstrokes, etc.
There is a major problem in the printed music world that only better known artists merit the expense of producing a good tab book and that most of those books are only available via special order. Still, when they do exist, when you can find them (this is starting to sound like the A-Team), the world of difference between them and the average tab is astronomical.
I'm caught in the middle: I'd hate to see high quality publishing disappear but I also don't see low quality, text based tabs (that often have five different, all disagreeing, version) really being that much of a threat.
Then again, in a world where record companies are trying to shore up CD sales, about about including a DVD with video files of exactly what the artists' hands did when playing the songs, lyrics and scores included? Given the choice between iTunes' $0.99 a limited song and $1.29 an unlocked one, I'd rather drop $15 on an album that'll teach me how to play its content as well. Sure, on a one-off basis, those costs would be huge but if it were done for every album, economies of scale could turn it in to a day's filming, a quick editing job and a day or two of a cheap person transcribing it.