Re: Another guitar tabs site taken down by MPA

Clubsprint wrote:
Obvious stuff - People have always written down the chords of songs
they've worked out from a record or a recording from the radio. They
only shared these with a few mates though. The copy write laws were,
obviously, initially written to prevent people print and distributing
sheet music without making a payment to the musics rightful owner.
Shouldn't that read "The copy write laws were, obviously, initially written
to prevent people print and distributing for MONETARY REWARD sheet
music without making a payment to the musics rightful owner.

It has nothing to do with monetary reward as you imply above. It's not that the perpetrator is making money, it's that the rightful owner of the copy is NOT. Even if you give the copyrighted material away for free, you're still infringing because you are depriving the rightful owner of his right to make a profit off those copies.


Some guy at home works out a tab from a CD, not much different to the
old days, then he posts it on a tab site which, is making a profit for
advertising and freely distributing the tab of this song to an
unlimited number of people.
Except that OLGA (the site in question) existed solely on donation of
resources and time. No-one was making a profit out of OLGA.

See above



Will people buy sheet music if they can down load it free. I think not.
Maybe they will, I've bought much TAB that I could and have downloaded for
free because I knew the commercial stuff was an accurate representation
of the actual performance..

Will people buy more CDs because they have down loaded some tab.
Tab does not have the ability to convey time so it is an incomplete music
comunication medium. You still need to hear the tune to get the timing
and structure for the parts.

For the most part there is no accurate sheet music or tab commercially available
to the majority of the tab that is out there on the net.
The copyright owners for Yes' "Perpetual Change" lose no money if I download
that TAB (and a million others) as there is no sheet music available to purchase.
So wether or not I download it makes no difference to anyone's bottom line.
However if I learn the tune, play it in my band, impress the hell out of someone
and they go out and buy Yessongs because they heard me play it then the record
company will make a few bucks and maybe if they're lucky the guys in Yes will
make a few cents.

I doubt it's ever been proved that internet TAB hurts any form of commercial
sales.

Of course OLGA would never have the resources to fight MPA even if they
could win.

I absolutely beleive that artists livelyhoods should be protected but lets get real here,
this is so not about the artists.

I agree with that. It's not about the artists. But it is about the law. And for the time being, it's all a matter of opinion as to whether tabs are a violation of copyright or not because, as far as I can see, no court judgment has been made either way. Sites have shut down but not because of legal action, only because of the intimidation of lawyers' threats.


I love it that some bands (eg. Foo Fighters) actually supply TAB for their songs
on their sites.

So tell me who are the MPA representing?

They are representing the legal owner of the copyright whether that legal owner is the record label, the artist, the composer or or the artist's uncle, Charlie is irrelevant.


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