I knew it was only a matter of time before they came after us for singing around the campfire
Fire mine! U no steal!
Posted on 08/29/2006 5:09:31 PM PDT by grjr21
Music publishers are taking action against guitar fan websites which they say infringe songwriters' copyrights. Publishers have started to use copyright lawsuits to shut down sites which share notations to help musicians to play songs at home.
Called guitar tablature, or tab, the notations indicate where players should put their fingers. Books filled with tab are available in shops, but a number of websites make tab notations available for free. Now trade bodies are taking action against those sites.
The New York Times reports that the Music Publishers' Association (MPA) and the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) have shut down several websites or forced them to remove all tabs using threats of copyright lawsuits. The sites are typically fan-run and not significant profit-making enterprises.
Some of the tab notations are copied from paid-for books, but most of them are worked out by players just from listening to performances of songs. Some legal commentators in the US suggest that tabs generated by users may have free speech protection.
"People can get [tab] for free on the internet, and it's hurting the songwriters," MPA president Lauren Keiser told the New York Times. The trade associations represent publishers, who share royalties from tab book sales with the composers of the material.
Many of the websites that publish tabs are online communities rather than businesses and claim that much of the music involved would never have tabs created commercially, since only the most popular material is published in tab books.
"The company which owns this website has been indirectly threatened with legal action by the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) as well as the Music Publishers' Association (MPA) on the basis that sharing tablature constitutes copyright infringement," said a statement at one of these sites, Guitar Tab Universe, from its manager Rob Balch.
"At what point does describing how one plays a song on guitar become an issue of copyright infringement? This website, among other things, helps users teach each other how they play guitar parts for many different songs. This is the way music teachers have behaved since the first music was ever created. The difference here is that the information is shared by way of a new technology: the internet."
Publishers argue that copyright legislation protects the tablature because they are "derivative works" of the original songs, which means they enjoy the same protection. So far, none of the sites has fought the orders to stop publishing the tabs.
"When you are jamming with a friend and you show him/her the chords for a song you heard on the radio, is that copyright infringement? What about if you helped him/her remember the chord progression or riff by writing it down on, say, a napkin...infringement?" Balch said in his statement. "If he/she calls you later that night on the phone or emails you and you respond via one of those methods, are you infringing? I don't know."
The recording industry is doing their damndest to destroy any new talent.
I knew it was only a matter of time before they came after us for singing around the campfire
....and to further put a light on this....
How much $ is going to the artist and how much to the lawyers?
.....slime bags
Just keep it under 4 bars.......[/sarcasm]
Next the music industry is going to try to charge you for wearing spandex and snorting coke.
these sites simply need to move offshore.
Very little of that money ever went to the artist. My understanding is that unless they own the record company most artist only recieve about .25 cents for every album sold
Lawyers and Demorats are destroying this country. (Include gutless Repubs in that too).
they came after us for singing around the campfire
"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree......here what's this?
A summons????"
yes, but they are winning these cases. getting new laws passed, etc.
DCG
FC right after "love the Guv'ner"
That's the chordprogression to Sweet Home Alabama and a million other songs.
Horrible copyright infringment.
Its reached the point of being ridiculous.
Greedy bastids.
chordprogression = chord progression
It couldn't be the fact that today's "music" is terrible, could it?
How can they prove the tabs were stolen from published material and not just worked out by someone with talent and a good ear?
I knew it was only a matter of time before they came after us for singing around the campfire
Man, you got that right. I noticed the tab sites going down one-by-one a few months back. There are still some left (don't tell the lawyers.) I'm snatching everything I might want to play.
Online tab is superior to tabulate books because many are written for specific programs that allow the music to be played back on your computer. You can vary speed or repeat certain sections; Far better that a book and CD. I'd pay for good online tabs, but that's not an option currently.
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