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.

Comments

Copyright delenda est

[russotto]

The letter essentially says "Die. Now." And faced with overwhelming force, that's just what guitartabs.com did. The ugliest part of the letter, though, is probably this:

"Under the circumstances, both the transcriber of the compositions and you as the owner of the website are copyright infringers."

And they're right. Under copyright law, merely transcribing a song by ear (even without sending it to a website) is copyright infringement. Specifically, unauthorized creation of a derivative work. That is an illustration of how nasty and flawed the entire system of copyright is.

Re:Copyright delenda est

[spiritraveller]

And they're right. Under copyright law, merely transcribing a song by ear (even without sending it to a website) is copyright infringement. Specifically, unauthorized creation of a derivative work. That is an illustration of how nasty and flawed the entire system of copyright is.

Transcribing a song for your own study and private performance is covered under the Fair Use exception. Publishing it is not.

The rights owner can prevent others from publishing an exact copy or a derivative work. That's what makes a copyright valuable. Publishing a composition in a different notation style is still publishing the composition.

Sure it's sad that there isn't another source for these tablatures. Maybe the publishers are thinking of getting into the tablature business. Maybe they are just really short-sighted and think that they can force people to buy the standard notation versions. Maybe the publishing companies will suffer by doing this. But that is their prerogative.

Fair use.

[khasim]

What's the difference between listening to a song so you can guess at the tablature and publishing that
and
Reading a book so you can publish a review (with spoilers and character names)?

You cannot use those characters in your own book without licensing them. You cannot use that tablature in your own song without licensing it.

This is about personal, private usage.

Re:Fair use.

[shark72]

"It is bleedingly obvious that tablature is made and distributed for scholarship. In fact, I was attempting to teach my self how to play bass guitar. I got relatively good at it until the tab sites started shutting down. Now I haven't practiced in months."

While you make some good points, I think you go too far in inferring that the copyright holders' defending of their rights is to blame for your not practicing.

I learned to play guitar in the days before the Internet. I did so using books of songs. I had a Beatles songbook that probably cost all of $10, and similar collections. They did just fine in giving me songs to learn to play. On occasion I would buy the sheet music for one particular song -- at two or three bucks, it was not a bargain compared to the collections -- but it was not a financial hardship.

"The sheet music publishers need to get over themselves. People who want to casually learn to play an instrument aren't going to go and pay hundreds of dollars for lessons and buy the sheet music of their favorite artists."

Paying for lessons and buying sheet music aren't linked. One can do one, the other, or both. Sheet music is readily available pretty cheaply; this is unrelated to the cost of lessons.

"The really sad thing is that these lawsuits are killing what copyright was designed to protect, promotion of the arts."

The music publishers are doing this because they want to launch their own ad-supported sites with tabs, lyrics, and sheet music. Keep in mind that music publishers are very often the composers and lyricists themselves; with few exceptions, composers and lyricists get a much bigger piece of the pie vs. CD sales, and the revenue stream for music publishing typically bypasses the record company altogether -- and this is a good thing. We talk about ways to support the artists without supporting the record companies... this is a great way to do it.

Here's how it works out for supporting the composers and lyricists for the various methods of getting your sheet music and tabs:

• Using an ad-supported lyric/tab site sanctioned and operated by the publisher: the composer and lyricist make money.
• Buying sheet music or tabs the old fashioned way: the composer and lyricist make money.
• Using an unauthorized ad-supported site like guitartabs: The webmaster (who likely has no relation to the composer and lyricist) makes money. The composer and lyricist make doodley squat fuck all.

Now, back to guitartabs. Here we have the situation of a third party (the webmaster) making money off of somebody else's work even though they were not part of the creative process. This is exactly why we hate the record companies, because they do something very similar.

If you want to support artists, that's great -- I agree with you 100%. Why not buy the sheet music and tabs you want, or wait and use the tab/lyric sites operated by the publishers themselves? That way, you support the artists, not some guy who's making a living by making unauthorized copies of others' work.

Your support of guitartabs sounds similar to the common rationale for P2Ping music -- sure, the artist doesn't make any money, but you are "supporting" the artist by reproducing their work. I think a majority of artists would agree that financial support is better.

Re:Fair use.

[leathered]

Why not buy the sheet music and tabs you want, or wait and use the tab/lyric sites operated by the publishers themselves? That way, you support the artists, not some guy who's making a living by making unauthorized copies of others' work.

Most of the sheet music and tabs I want aren't available for purchase anywhere, yet they're still subject to takedown notices on every tab site I know. So please tell exactly what am I to do in this situation?

Re:Fair use.

[stinerman]

Granted, that is the law as it stands.

Pray tell, how does that promote the useful arts and sciences?

Re:IP issues.

[multisync]

But if a song is IP, why does it matter how it was copied?

Shall we outlaw whistling next?

Fair use is not republishing

[AHumbleOpinion]

What's the difference between listening to a song so you can guess at the tablature and publishing that ... This is about personal, private usage.

"Publishing" is not "personal, private usage". Fair use is not republishing. Fair use is sitting in your personal space looking at the tablature and playing. It probably includes looking at your tablature and performing it in a public venue with the appropriate payments made to whatever organization "collects" the performance royalties. However publishing that tablature on the web (distribution) is something entirely different. I *am not* saying it is something bad, just that it is something that is not fair use.

Culture Growth

[mux2000]

I don't think this is legal, but nevermind that. This isn't Right(tm).

How does new music come to be? Do you think a good (and creative) musician got to be that good all by himself? The way I learned music is (1) by listening to good music, (2) by trying to figure out how the piece worked and what made it satisfying and (3) trying to recreate the same effect on my own. Most of the times, on at least one of those steps, I needed somebody else's help. Either in getting to know new music, in figuring out the chords or in learning to play in new ways.

I couldn't have played the way I do without this help, and I have OLGA to thank for a large piece of that. Of course, I got a lot of help from my friends and teachers, but the sort of collaboration that is possible on the net is, I believe, a real boon for every musician, of every level, from beginner to professional. Then again, who's to say if my friend telling me (or writing down for me to play) the chords to a copyrighted song is legal!?

My point being, this kind of litigation has only one effect, and that is to suffocate creativity and the growth of our culture.

Re:How is that different than my book review examp

[AHumbleOpinion]

""Publishing" is not "personal, private usage". Fair use is not republishing. Fair use is sitting in your personal space looking at the tablature and playing."

In that case, no book reviews or movie reviews or any other review would ever be legal without express permission.

That is a straw man argument. It is also severely flawed on its face, reviews contain excerpts not the entire work.

Re:IP issues.

[multisync]

That site may very well be a commercial enterprise. Other sites were communities of music lovers, who learned from and shared with each other. I have no doubt we are depriving some deserving collection of investors and speculators of their income by giving away our derivative works for free, just as I am no doubt stealing from someone by simply teaching my neice how to play the intro to Purple Haze.

So to expand on my last post, be careful what you whistle. Some day soon, someone may come along and tell you that you that you owe them a royalty for that performance of their intellectual property.

Re:Is it their property

[ketilwaa]

So, most people judge a composers work by how the the sheets look on a site that's unrelated to the composer? In a related thread, The Beatles are no longer popular due to a huge amount of bad versions of Yesterday in primary schools. I'm officially wiser than 2 minutes ago.

Re:Reverse Engineering

[buswolley]

Furthermore, the very process of listening to music involves the transcription, transformation, and interpretation of the music.

The brain is identifying the tonal root, rhythm, chords, and the relations between chords. Is this illegal also? Is it illegal to tell your band buddy: Hey did you hear that? That was an awesome change to the parallel key when they went from the A to the C chord? Silly stuff.

Re:Stairway

[Jarik_Tentsu]

I am in a band and Guitar Pro 4/5 has always proved invaluable to us. Back when www.mysongbook.com allowed you to actually download all their tabs, it was easy to find a good, high quality tab for whatever song we were covering. All of our compositions are also made in Guitar Pro and spread to each of the band members - both for the ability of being able to listen to a theoretical version of the song, and being able to convey our ideas to the other members better.

This was in no way making us money, or losing any money for the record companies. We weren't choosing to listen to Midis over buying CDs or anything like that. Oh sure, you can argue maybe we were abstaining from buying sheet music over using the tabs, but at the same time - most of what we played did not have sheet music transcriptions for all instruments.

And being able to have your song in tab notation, sheet music notation and have it playable as a Midi (for all instruments) is a lot more useful than just having the sheet music for one instrument in a book.

With mysongbook.com down, not only are tabs a lot harder to find, but it's harder to find the higher quality ones, or ones that include all instruments (instead of just guitars+bass).

This is nothing but greed - record companies trying to work out if they can make money off tabs...and until they can work that out, banning any other distributions all together.

~Jarik