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.
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It’s the end of the world as we know it!
fuck the fucking Indsutries
IF IT WAS NOT FOR PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO LEARN THE TRADE THERE WOULD BE NO ARTISTS.
DUMB ASSHOLES
oh well it’ll just move under ground.
You can find huge torrents of tabs files for the popular guitar pro program. It even transcribes midi files to tab.
I hope some of the people who are being asked to take down tabs that OTHER PEOPLE have worked out themselves tell the industry to go to hell! That is simply crazy.
As long as the material is not taken directly out of a copyrighted tab book I think any judge would throw this out!
What?!?!?!
That just makes me sick