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Guitartabs.com Suspends Under Legal Pressure
Music publishers are stepping up their campaign to remove guitar tablature from the Net. Recently Guitartabs.com received a nastygram from lawyers for the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. These organizations want to stretch the definition of their intellectual property to include by-ear transcriptions of music. Guitartabs.com is currently not offering tablature while the owner evaluates his legal options.
...and people are trying to convince us that it's ok because, honest guv'nor, these publications were reproduced by ear.
In other news, it's ok for me to put text files of random books on the web because I wasn't photocopying and OCRing, no really, I was memorising each page and typing out my near-perfect recollection of the content.
Look, you shits, this isn't an AIDS drug we're talking about, it's music. If you don't want to pay the artist or his agent so that you can enjoy his song, then find an artist who doesn't ask for payment or write your own work. I don't care if you're doing it so you can build the world's greatest MP3 collection or play guitar in your basement.
I am considering starting up an outsourcing service which simply copies any OSS-advocate's day job work and sells it to the highest bidder. To stop me (whether through his own actions or through his company's lawyers) would be tacit acknowledgement that he requires the protection of intellectual property legislation to remain in employment.