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Threat To Free, Legal Guitar Tablature Online
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 15, 2007 09:31 PM
from the you-would-prefer-piracy? dept.
from the you-would-prefer-piracy? dept.
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."
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Guitartabs.com Suspends Under Legal Pressure 348 comments
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.
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Infuriating (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Its just a 'machine' like spam, it just gaming the largest distribution of cheap opportunities and attempting to get a few hits. Its also maximizing any other opportunities it can along the way that may come of it, charging more for licenses, and creating markets for DRM.
Some day they will make a 'legal' mechanism against this 'racket
Re:Infuriating (Score:5, Interesting)
A young guy picks up a guitar and messes around with it. He can't play a thing, and isn't really interested in investing the time to take proper lessons. He discovers OLGA. He downloads a few simple tabs of Nirvana songs. He works his way up to Metallica, Alice in Chains. He eventually realizes his technique could use some improvement. He starts downloading Bach, Beethoven, etc., because they present more of a challenge. Eventually, he is playing complex works like Leyenda and Capricho Arabe.
Eventually, he notices there is something fundamentally different in the approach modern music takes from classical music. It "moves" differently. He starts to pay attention to the notes, chord changes, rhythms, and eventually decides that the IT career that he never really cared for just doesn't compete with the idea of learning and perhaps teaching music. He signs up for music theory at his local college. It turns out his technique is good, and he has a knack for music theory, he has perfect pitch, and has such a knack at piano that he has gone from barely being able to read a staff to playing Bach Preludes and Beethoven. All in all, a promising student. He has a 4.0 GPA and a letter of recommendation to one of the most prestigious music colleges in the US where he will study music theory.
Not so far fetched, that's me. I wouldn't be going for a masters in music theory (or composition, I haven't quite decided) had it not been for OLGA helping me learn that I have quite a knack for music to begin with. If I had to stick to public domain stuff, I probably would have given up. I simply didn't expect it to be anything but a hobby I did when I came home from programming all day. But OLGA got me started enough to realize that, for me at least, it was worth the investment.
Society benefits from the free and open spread of information. Copyright is just a means to that end: provide incentives for artists to continue creating. But IP is not Freedom of Speech or Habaeus Corpus - it is not a fundamental right. The DMCA hurts society, and I hope to God that somebody important pays attention to the fact that it is being used to shut down educational sites.
In fact, now that I think about it, nothing that was copyrighted after I was born will move into the public domain before I die of old age... That goes for me, you, my kids, anybody born within the past 20 years. Do you remember when it came out? Then you will never see it in the public domain. But no, apparently we need even tougher copyright controls, can't have people learning how to make the music that got you rich enough to buy the politicians who keep sponsoring idiotic legislation like the DMCA in the first place. Idiots.
Parent
Re:Infuriating (Score:4, Insightful)
Communist countries may forget that society does not function without individuals, but America seems to have forgotten that individuals operating outside of society can bring it down.
BTW, congrats on your new career. I wouldn't call it a common path, but that's besides the point. Nothing like discovering what your true love is.
Parent
It's somewhat sad, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Infuriating (Score:4, Insightful)
Time was I used to buy albums every couple of weeks, I must have spent thousands. I was so offended by their criminalising kids for doing what kids do, share, recommend stuff to each other, and have a laugh without understanding the 'consequences' (what kid ever does?). Now they're criminals, advised to drop out of college and wreck their futures as an example to others.
Bullshit. Nothing produced by an industry like that is of interest to me.
Parent
Re:Infuriating (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
All your brains are belong to us.
- Music industry
Parent
Re: Your Brains (Score:3, Funny)
- Music industry
Re:Infuriating (Score:5, Funny)
When you think about it, the there are a few similarities between the RIAA and a shambling herd of zombies.
Uncanny!
Parent
Not true in the U.S. (Score:3, Informative)
This is why, for example, the RIAA can go after
Make music illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:Make music illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...
it is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet.
It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential
consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which
could eventually lead to The Death Penalty (or affect your parents'
credit rating).
Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you who do wrong things...
and many of them were driven to these crimes by a horrible force called MUSIC!
Our studies have shown that this horrible force is so dangerous to society at large
that laws are being drawn up at this very moment to stop it forever!
Cruel and inhuman punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they
won't conflict with the Constitution (which, itself, is being modified in order to accommodate
THE FUTURE).
Parent
Re:Make music illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait. It'll happen.
Parent
OLGA taught me guitar. (Score:5, Insightful)
Already Killed (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Already Killed (Score:5, Informative)
Evil bastards.
But we showed them; we learned how to download MP3s.
BooYah!
Parent
Re:Already Killed (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
educational resources DO have exemptions (Score:4, Insightful)
I began playing guitar in 1995 and discovered OLGA [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:educational resources DO have exemptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:educational resources DO have exemptions (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Self defeating? (Score:5, Interesting)
mod parent insightful (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
this is spot on ... isn't their game "maximizing profits"?
if they tighten the belt too much it stifles learning and enjoyment of music. If you don't enjoy it, you are less likely to buy.
The conspiracy theorist in me says that they are not this stupid and their end goal is to have some sort of nazification of the Arts. Wanna own/play a guitar kid? You'll need a license. What are you playing? License. Playing in public? Upgrade your license. Singing a protest song? Jail.
Re:Self defeating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
That's not the point (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing New Here... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nothing New Here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what you'll do: you will get with a more experienced player and learn from him, go to the library, or *gasp* learn it by ear (which how the old school musicians did it).
It's not such a smart move to criminalize your would-be consumers. It's called shooting yourself in the foot. Especially considering the target audience for guitar tabs: teenage and twentysomething guys. Not exactly the most forgiving lot, especially for these kind of shenanigans.
Parent
How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nine years ago, I was interviewed for this article [augusta.com] 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 [google.com].
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.
torrents (Score:4, Interesting)
Why shouldn't I share my efforts ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Paging Larry Flynt .... (Score:4, Funny)
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?
Silly (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
IP landgrab (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
The strangest part of of all this is they have to know that no matter how many laws they pass they will never stop people from sharing simply because it is a natural survival trait that enables humans to pass knowledge and culture from one generation to next.
As a tin-eared wannabe, I despise them! (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of the copyright law should be full sheet music and tablature for all music submitted to the library of Congress. That wouldn't hurt the songwriters, who'd probably be able to make even more money because all you'd have to do to get their work is go to the Library of Congress, download it and pay them their royalty. It'd only hurt the companies that selectively publish tablature.
And it would also benefit bands because it would encourage them to do cover songs, which would be yet another stream of revenue.
But no, a songwriter and band really benefits by shutting down the only way I could have gotten tabs for their music, without providing me any legal way to do it.
Morons. I hope the welfare office runs out of money for them and their families when they go bankrupt.
the tabs must be accurate enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Greed is Blind (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Interesting move from this company (Score:5, Insightful)
Libel? (Score:3, Interesting)
It looks to me like MxTabs would have a good chance of winning a libel suit over this (and possibly other stuff like 'interfering with a business relationship' or something.) The letter repeatedly claims they are publishing illegal music, when in fact it is all authorized. Indeed, the letter is trying to convince people not to grant permission to MxTabs, which would be utterly pointless if MxTabs were illegally ignoring permissions. (Other bits might also be libelous, but this is the stand-out obvious one.)
However, the likelihood of winning in court does not guarantee that there is a good business case for suing.
Is there a lawyer in the house who might like to comment?
Feeling the Pain (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Feeling the Pain (Score:4, Insightful)
Be sensible. Post the contents of your Hal Leonard books on your website (preferably behind password guards) or on the Pirate Bay, where anyone with technical skills can find them. Surely that would be more fitting a punishment.
Parent
Tabs aren't going anywhere (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is that sites like olga.net get taken down because of OCILLA [wikipedia.org], which is ridiculous. I mean, how is posting tabs to popular songs bad? It's no different than what people did before the net, that is, teach other people how to play songs. It's not as though anyone learning songs from TAB is going to put the original musicians out of business (it's TAB!!! for goodness sake!). Besides, one of the biggest honors a band/songwriter can have is legions of cover bands playing their music.
OCILLA is just another example of the GREEDY MAFIAA stepping on musicians, both professional and amateur. I am sure you could count on your hand the musicians who oppose kids/cover bands playing their music, so this is obviously the suits. Sad. Don't they have more no-talent losers to ink deals with like Britney and Jesse McCartney?
Hal Leonard writes CRAP Music (Score:4, Funny)
I will post a guitar B Sharp cord (B# = C) lol. I dare almighty Hal 9000 to censor it!
Censor This HAL!
So what doesn't infringe? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I was to write down, for example, the button sequences you press in guitar hero to perform a song from the game, would that infringe artist copyright?
e.g. does:
'green green yellow red green green green green green green green green green green green yellow green red green' infringe an artist's copyright? If so, whose? and why?
and, if i wrote down:E E G B E E E E E E E E E E E B G A# F#, does that infringe an artist's copyright? If so, whose? and why?
and if i wrote down:does that infringe an artist's copyright? If so, whose, and why?
And if i was to assign a number to each note, who's copyright does:
001001003026001001001001001001001001001001026004 0025002 infringe?
I just don't see where the infringement comes from? Who am I copying here? Am I copying at all, or did I just make that riff up?
A songbook publisher doesn't like this... (Score:3, Funny)
No kidding.
In related news, Turkeys are said to be very concerned about the celebration of Christmas and US-based turkeys have expressed concern over thanksgiving.
Furthermore, the Pope shits in the woods and bears are generally catholic.
Porn? No. Tab! (Score:3, Interesting)
Quality... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But if guitar tabs for any given song are even based on the original song, that makes those tabs a derivative work. The original copyright holders are given some say on how derivative works are published--or in this case, not published.
Who's "they"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Oblig Simpsons Reference (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent