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.

Stairway

No stairway. Denied!

Re:Stairway

Moderators: this is an on-topic reference to Wayne's World, where one of the two of them picks up a guitar in the shop and starts playing the famous PbZ song.
Store worker yanks the guitar from (Wayne, IIRC?), points to a sign posted that says "No Stairway", at which point Wayne and Garth look at each other and say "Denied".
They would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the meddling employee!

Re:Stairway

..... PbZ, now I really feel like a fucking nerd.

Re:Stairway

Not only that, but the first five notes of Stairway to Heaven were only played in the theatrical release. Due to the sorts of copyright rulings that drove guitartabs.com off the internet, the producers of Waynes World were forced to change the riff for all subsequent releases.

Re:Stairway

By the time "Wayne's World" made it to Europe (2 weeks after its release in the U.S.), that scene had him play a single note. Even though that note starts off many rock songs, it was enough for the store employee to deny Wayne the pleasure.

I had so much sympathy for the guitar shop employee. Imagine every wanna-be rocker coming in to try to play Stairway, butchering it every single time. The whole idea of a single note being enough to identify the song was at the same time good for a laugh, and scary to think that American copyright law kept the film makers from using more than a one note before violating the law.

the AC

Re:Stairway

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

IP issues.

First of all, I'm against the whole 'I thought of it first so I have the only rights to it forever' thing.

But if a song is IP, why does it matter how it was copied? Copying it by looking at the paper, or copying by listening... It only takes a more talented individual.

It's like saying that it's legal to copy DVDs, but only if you're talented enough to crack the encryption yourself, with no help.

It either IS or IS NOT legal to copy it, there should be no 'only if by this method' BS.

Fair use.

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.

Reverse Engineering

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.

Re:Reverse Engineering

It's like, as I say elsewhere, writing down the script of a play. Or to be /.ish, decompiling the source code of a compiled program.

No, I don't buy it. Writing down the script of the play would give you the exact script. However, a song is a human interpretation of written music, much like a binary is a computer translation of source code. The difference is that humans do not perform exactly what is written, while computers do. Further, other humans attempting to reverse-engineer the written music from the performance would also not transcribe the exact music as it was played. So, like the old game of "telephone" with one person whispering to another person, to yet another person, and then trying to figure out the original message, no transcription of a performance is going to get you the music as it was originally written. You would have a parody of the original written music - similar, but not quite exact.

parody (pr'-d) n., pl. -dies. [answers.com]
3. Music. The practice of reworking an already established composition, especially the incorporation into the Mass of material borrowed from other works, such as motets or madrigals.

And of course, parody is protected under copyright law.

Re:Reverse Engineering

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.

Fair use is not republishing

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.

How is that different than my book review example?

"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.

I can publish a movie review complete with character names, plot and spoilers.

You can read my movie review and write your own, private, screen play with that same plot and characters and events.

Two examples of "fair use".

Re:How is that different than my book review examp

""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:Fair use.

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.

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.

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

Re:Fair use.

"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.

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.

Granted, that is the law as it stands.

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

Re:IP issues.

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

Shall we outlaw whistling next?

Re:IP issues.

That site may very well be a commercial enterprise. Other [olga.net] 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:IP issues.

It is, isn't it?

I mean, I can't even sign "Happy birthday!" to my kid, I have to use some open-source song such as "Today is the anniversary of your birth!" with similar hooks, but not quite.

Thank you very much, copyright laws. You've made our world a better place!

Re:Is it their property

Well, it's usually more the composer's copyright that is claimed to be violated.

Re:Is it their property

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.

Appropriate response

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.

Re:Appropriate response

Your ISP simply cannot remove your material if you follow the procedure.

Yes, they can. What they lose if they do that is the DCMA's protection against a civil suit.

The notion that if you follow the anti-takedown notice rules, the ISP is *prohibited* from removing the material in question is a popular one, but it's flat-out wrong:

(g) Replacement of Removed or Disabled Material and Limitation on Other Liability.--
(1) No liability for taking down generally.-- Subject to paragraph (2), a service provider shall not be liable to any person for any claim based on the service provider's good faith disabling of access to, or removal of, material or activity claimed to be infringing or based on facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent, regardless of whether the material or activity is ultimately determined to be infringing.
(2) Exception.-- Paragraph (1) shall not apply with respect to material residing at the direction of a subscriber of the service provider on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider that is removed, or to which access is disabled by the service provider, pursuant to a notice provided under subsection (c)(1)(C), unless the service provider--
(A) takes reasonable steps promptly to notify the subscriber that it has removed or disabled access to the material;
(B) upon receipt of a counter notification described in paragraph (3), promptly provides the person who provided the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) with a copy of the counter notification, and informs that person that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days; and
(C) replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice, unless its designated agent first receives notice from the person who submitted the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) that such person has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider's system or network.

Copyright delenda est

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

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.

WTF???

National Music Publishers Association?

The Music Publishers Association of America???

Isn't the RIAA enough??

You Americans hate music... huh?

Re:WTF???

You Americans hate music... huh?

Nah. We just love Associations.

finally a reason to thank the RIAA and DMCA

guitartabs.com was just a large ad circle and never really brought you to much music. thank you RIAA/DMCA. now google will stop listing guitartabs.com as the highest rated response when i look for music

Evolving definitions

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.

Do a rot13 equivalent

What a coincidence. When I take this fantastically bad composition titles "Fgnvejnl Gb Urnira" and alter the notes in a certain pattern, I get Stairway To Heaven.

Metaltabs already went through this

Metaltabs.com [metaltabs.com] recently went through this as well. Their solution was to get the permission of either the record labels or the bands themselves to publish tabs on their site. Of the ones who have responded, about 90-95% are giving permission. I wonder if guitartabs would have the same luck.

Insanity

This more or less is one step away from the music industry filing a complaint against someone for remembering, and whistling to a melody under their copyright. I do believe that the correct response to this is to simply ignore all products coming out of the MAFIAA companies. No purchases, no pirating, nothing. Maybe ignoring them totally is a lesson they will learn from. //Svein

Good Luck

Another dead revenue model that they haven't realized won't work anymore. Search yer favorite P2P client/ torrents for PDFs named $band tab . Have fun!

Re:You reverse engineer patents, not copyrights.

I'm going to start with the usual IANAL.

Copyrights are weaker than patents in that they cover specifics rather than the abstract. However, copyright also has stronger rules about what is and isn't allowed with copyrighted works.

For instance, in the US it's illegal to create a derivative work of a copyrighted piece without permission of the copyright owner*. Not surprisingly, tabs and sheet music (objects created with the express purpose of allowing someone to recreate the original work), are covered by that rule. It may surprise you, but there are companies out there that produce tabs and sheet music for songs that have actually licensed the rights to do so. Not surprisingly, these companies are also not happy about people creating their own tabs/sheet music and (more importantly) distributing them over the Internet.

* Other provisions of Title 17 need to be taken into account, particularly Section 107 Fair Use. For example, a movie review only contains minute details about a movie's plot, so that is exempted from copyright law, as opposed to a (tran)script of the movie.

Culture Growth

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.

3 chords

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.

they should start suing each other.

Since apparently the only requirement is something sounding similar, I recommend they start suing each other. There are hundreds if not thousands but these are a few suggestions off the top of my head to get them started:

Metallica has a good case against Kid Rock since American Badass sounds like Sad But True.

The Beatles should have sued the Monkeys for ripping off Paperback writer to bring up Last Train to Clarksville.

How about Don Henley's End of the Innocence and Bruce Hornsby's Thats Just The Way It Is".

Rod Stewart should sue Kiss for Hard Luck Woman its a complete copy of You Wear It Well.

A-Ha's take on me completely lifted the Police's Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.

Linkin Park should sue itself for making Pushing Me Avway and Numb which are nearly identical musically. Ditto for Nickelback.

While we are at it, lets just make it illegal to play any song using 12 bar blues

Copyright

A
Blah blah blah blah-dy blah blah blah,

D                      A
Blah blah blah blah-dy blah blah blah.

D
Blah blah-dy blah blah, blah blah blah,

A
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

E7               D
Blah, blah blah; blah blah blah.

A
Blah!  Blah blah blah.

There, I've just written some chords for a song I made up.  But you know what?  Those chords are NOT COPYRIGHTABLE.  The lyrics are (and if you record and distribute a song with these lyrics without paying me royalties, I'll come after you).  The melody is, but I haven't written that down.  The arrangement is (harmonies, instrumentation, etc.) but I haven't written that down either.  The chords themselves are not.  This is data, information about how the song is put together - not art.

By the way, this particular series of chords (transposed into all 24 major and minor keys) is used in hundreds if not THOUSANDS of different songs.

What if....

A web site allows anonimous upload of a track, and returns a computed tablature for this track. Is chord computing illegal in the USA?

That's simply foolish, please someone set up such a web site to show how ridiculous is to forbid musical notations.