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

Appropriate response

[QuantumG]

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. The NMPA and MPA clearly disagree, and are threatening to send a DMCA letter to my host, as well as pursue other undisclosed legal actions in the event that I were to fall short of full cooperation with their demands.

I have not yet decided what response is appropriate. Ummmm.. the appropriate response is to forward their communications to your ISP and wait until they send the DMCA takedown. When they do, file the appropriate DMCA response outlining why the material isn't infringing. Your ISP simply cannot remove your material if you follow the procedure. Then, if they were doing anything more than bluffing, they will send you a proper cease and desist, which you can then choose to ignore, and, very unlikely now, wait until they file suit. All of this will take YEARS and cost them many hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees which I'm sure they'll quickly realize they can't recover from you, and, as such, they won't bother.

Don't give in to bullies.. the law is on your side.

Evolving definitions

[Original Replica]

Are we to believe that there has been some new revolution in the ability of a musician to transcribe things by ear? Why would this longstanding exemption suddenly need changing? hmmm... perhaps Greed? Face it the only reason people are going to by a tabliture of your damn song is if they are a FAN. So they probably already own the album and love the song. They are just still developing as a musician and need the help of the more talented musicians at guitartabs to help them figure out how to play this song that they love. That is something to be encouraged if you want your music to have influence and you want to nuture growing musicians. The whole point of music copywright is to foster a good environment for new works. Or at least it used to be, but I guess that is an outdated idea this days.

Reverse Engineering

[Vicissidude]

They listened to the song and wrote down the notes for the separate instruments. That appears more like reverse engineering to me, which IS legal.

3 chords

[c_fel]

I wonder who is the owner of this tune :
1-1-4-1-5-4-1-5
Three chords that are the base, in that very same order, of at least one third of every rock'n'roll and blues tunes known by human.

Guitar tabs are not the tune. The tune is the combination of the melody, the lyrics, the chords, the arrangements and the feeling of the band. Finally, this story is all again a try to patent the wheel.