Threat To Free, Legal Guitar Tablature Online 223
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."
Infuriating (Score:5, Insightful)
OLGA taught me guitar. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Do they have say in this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Make music illegal (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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).
Re:Already Killed (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, really? [google.com]
Certainly, Harry Fox delenda est, and copyright-as-we-know-it is an idea whose time has passed (if it was in fact every a good idea to start with). But HFA has not been successful in removing tab from the web.
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.
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.
Re:IP landgrab (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.
Interesting move from this company (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:educational resources DO have exemptions (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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?
Re:Make music illegal (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't mean to veer off topic, but if parodies work acceptably as such under fair use, so should written interpretations of recorded music. I'd like to see somebody try to prove that a written interpretation of a song by a listener/fan/student would have the long-term effect of preventing artists from wanting to create more music. Isn't that one of the reasons copyright exists, to help keep the creators connected to their respective Muses?
So the net continues to cause tectonic shifts in the world of information, blah blah, &c. &c. As MXTabs.com points out, the people buying the printed tab aren't the same ones interested in another musician's interpretation. Paper music publishers have a choice of either adjusting to the inevitable widespread exchange of individuals' ideas, or cause a whole heap of trouble kicking and screaming through it. Maybe even set rotten legal precedents that blow the whole thing back a couple decades while they're at it.
Because of certain others (cough, cough) and their failure to adjust, recorded music in the audio format has been devalued to almost nothing. It's all about the live performance, that's where the money is to be made, for artists and the businesses that support and promote them. And let's not forget T-shirt sales!
I'd also like to share a very valuable link [cifraclub.com.br]. When things get hairy in the USA, the internet can always take you someplace better for it.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Self defeating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:educational resources DO have exemptions (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Make music illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait. It'll happen.
Re:Infuriating (Score:1, Insightful)
Copyright only applies to distributing.
Um ... it also applies to copying (even sans distribution).
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?
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.
Re:Why shouldn't I share my efforts ?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought this audiobook, and wanted a written version of it, so I listened to it a bunch of times, and transcribed everything that was said in there. I spent my own time making this transcript, why shouldn't I share it with whoever wants it?
Doesn't make quite as much sense that way, does it? But it's a pretty close equivalent. The (significant) difference here is that the transcript of an audiobook can be read and enjoyed directly, where guitar tabs have to be played to be enjoyed, and tabs have some educational use for learning how to play a guitar.
But you can still see how silly the argument is.
Killing online free guitar tabs is bad. I agree with that. The company that is doing this is not doing something that is good for society. Copyrights are *way* out of balance with where they should be, to "benefit the useful arts and sciences". (Obvious US perspective, yes.)
But your argument is still silly.
This is the same argument that companies (I'm talking about you, Lexis/Nexis) tried to use to get databases and straight compilations of facts copyrighted. "Sweat of the brow" was the legal term, I think. If you are interested, look for WIPO treaty proposals in the late 1990s. It was a bad argument then by companies, and it is a bad argument now by you.
There are better reasons to fight this.
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.
Re:Are cheat codes and walkthroughs next? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's face it, information wants to be free, but the corps don't want it to. Unfortunately, since the corps pretty much run the game, unlicensed sharing of information will become more and more illegal.