# Tab to be chased off internet



## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Could the end be in sight for major online tab sites? Looks like there will be some legal scuffles coming up this year.

_Song sites face legal crackdown 
By Ian Youngs 
BBC News entertainment reporter 



Unauthorised guitar tabs and other musical scores are widely available 
The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics. 
The US Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006. 

MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed. 

He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were "completely illegal". 

Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective". _


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## Accept2 (Jan 1, 2006)

They can only control the World Wide Web. They cant control Usenet............


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## Calgary Slim (Feb 21, 2006)

If you go to the Powertab.org site and check into the forums, boy, will you see a lot of debate.


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## imbackagain2 (Feb 6, 2006)

I posted a petition on this site to keep tab alive


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## JSD's Guitar Shack (Feb 24, 2006)

Seems kinda silly don't you think? Most tab files are a personal interpretation of a song and some aren't even %100 correct. I can see it being a different story if someone posted copies of a licenced songbook.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

JSD's Guitar Shack said:


> Seems kinda silly don't you think? Most tab files are a personal interpretation of a song and some aren't even %100 correct. I can see it being a different story if someone posted copies of a licenced songbook.


Thats very true. Most everything I see is just someone that has worked out a tab and uploaded it. Far worse is the actual downloading of recorded material. I hope they dont get rid of it becuase I use it now and again. You might hear a tune and think "I would like to learn that riff or solo" and you can usually get something that comes close to it pretty quick.

We will see what happens I guess.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Accept2 said:


> They can only control the World Wide Web. They cant control Usenet............


Are Usenet fans vulnerable to copyright lawsuits?
Last modified: February 24, 2006, 12:13 PM PST
By John Borland 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

FAQ In a new series of lawsuits, Hollywood studios for the first time are targeting companies that provide access to Usenet newsgroups. 

This corner of the Internet, largely a leftover from the days before the Web exploded into the mainstream, rarely gets much attention. It's still primarily a forum for text discussions (and overwhelming amounts of spam), where techies help one another with Windows and driver problems, and animal lovers share cat stories. 


Q: What are newsgroups?
A: Also known as Usenet, newsgroups are one of the earliest forms of sustained conversation online. Initially started by Duke University graduate students in 1980, Usenet evolved over the years into thousands of individual newsgroups that focused on specific subjects such as dogs, science fiction authors, politics or pornography. 

Readers post messages similar to e-mails to a specific group. All the content of that group is relayed through servers across the Net, and can be read with a newsgroup reader such as Forte's Agent, or inside some other Web browser and e-mail programs. Most ISPs subscribe to a newsgroup feed, though these are becoming harder to find. Google archives much of Usenet's traffic, all the way back to January 1981, at groups.google.com. 

Another historical note: Before becoming a Web standby, the "frequently asked questions," or FAQ, format was widely popularized on newsgroups (though it didn't originate with them).


Q: What does this have to do with piracy?
A: Early on, people learned to send pictures, movies or even full software applications through Usenet groups by breaking the large files into small individual pieces and sending them separately. These large files, called "binaries," could be reconstructed by most newsgroup software, as long as all the pieces came through. 

Q: Is this the same as file-sharing?
A: In a sense. Uploading a copyrighted file to a newsgroup is illegal, and the recording industry has targeted individual posters in the past (though largely before peer-to-peer networks emerged). 

But unlike peer-to-peer networks, the files uploaded are stored in pieces on the Usenet servers around the world, not on individual computer users' hard drives. 

Q: Isn't all this harder than using BitTorrent or eDonkey?
A: For most of Usenet's history, it has been much harder, and more inefficient. Big movie or software files can be broken into hundreds of individual pieces, for example, and if one or two get lost, it can make the whole movie or application unusable. 

But in the last few years, several technologies have emerged to make this easier. 

One, called Par files (shortened from Parity), lets big files be reconstructed even if some of the individual pieces are missing. Par files are used in other places where data transfer is unreliable, and they are becoming increasingly common on Usenet. 

The other technology is an innovation similar, in a sense, to BitTorrent's torrent files. Dubbed NZB files (and created by a company called NewzBin), they automatically group together all the disparate pieces of a big binary file, allowing it to be downloaded and reconstructed with a single click.


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## Accept2 (Jan 1, 2006)

Usenet is becomming popular in countries like Russia. They can target companies here, but they cant really do anything about the Usenet servers over there...............


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## Mahogany Martin (Mar 2, 2006)

GuitarsCanada said:


> Thats very true. Most everything I see is just someone that has worked out a tab and uploaded it. Far worse is the actual downloading of recorded material. I hope they dont get rid of it becuase I use it now and again. You might hear a tune and think "I would like to learn that riff or solo" and you can usually get something that comes close to it pretty quick.
> 
> We will see what happens I guess.


I do the same thing. It's great because you don't have to wait maybe until the weekend to go out and buy an entire cd just for that one song that you want to work on. So far, I believe that here in Canada that peer-to-peer sharing of music files is allowed and maybe the same thing will apply to tabs. Like you said, it's someone's interpretation of a song. Regardless, I think it'll take a long time before sharing of tabs completely disappears. We'll see.


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## MaxWedge (Feb 24, 2006)

Sounds like more *attourney* employment on the way. Those guys are never out of work. "then came the lawyers then came the rules"-Love Over Gold by
Dire Straits.(

And this Keiser jerk threatening to jail 'offenders'. What an abuse of the legal system. Use of such a punitive measure just to protect questionable profits, is unthinkable. Think about it people, he feels justified in taking your freedom for what is a non-violent offence. If indeed it is an offence. As pointed out tabs are usually an interpetation. The artists this ******* represents should be boycotted.


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## WarrenG (Feb 3, 2006)

So, is the next step to go after software manufacturers who create programs that allow you import songs and rip a score or analyse a passage (although there may be errors in the chart that you can fix manually)? I think Finale and a few others do this.

Shall I pay a fee every time my friends and I woodshed songs in the kitchen? Will somebody come bashing down my front door and arrest me for infringement of intellectual property?

There's a big difference, in my mind, between being in possession of copywritten source material (i.e songwriter-endorsed transcriptions) and freely distributing it through the Web (you a$$holes know who you are), AND posting an interpretation of a song.

I like Brian May's rant on the issue . You know, that guy from Queen! See the December 18th entry.


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## MaxWedge (Feb 24, 2006)

****in' eh! Let's hear it for Brian May. I can't agree more. I'd like to hear from other artists. After all these are the people who can influence the money grubbing mealy mouthing element in the industry. Once again Brian May has balls. Thank you sir.


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## bucky (Mar 4, 2006)

Either way, ultimate-guitar is staying. They pay licensing fees, so they aren't under target.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Here is a quote off the Guitar Tab Universe site that I frequent. Seems like things are heating up.



> July 17, 2006
> 
> To all "Guitar Tab Universe" visitors:
> 
> ...


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## Tarl (Feb 4, 2006)

One thing to note is that most tabs out there are not always correct and/or they are incomplete. Also what about the instructional videos on the net or hard copies that show people how to play songs? These publishers are just pushing this thing too far. Next thing you know a review of a movie or video game that mentions anything about plot, character names etc, will be seen as copyright infringement.


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## Xanadu (Feb 3, 2006)

that's bullshit. It's not like you're stealing the artists work. You're merely learning how to play along with their cd that you purshased. Seriously, what is this world coming too, when we cant even learn how to play music anymore:frown: What about books and stuff, that people are paying for? Is this copyright infringement?


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Well music books that you would purchase in a store would have money going back to the owner of that material. The artist/record company. Where these guys are coming from is.... people will duplicate in tab the same thing you would have to pay for and then post it on the web, therefore bypassing them altogether. 

The argument has been... if I sit down and listen to a song and tab it out.. then it's "my" interpretation of that song. I guess there is a bit of an argument there. But on the other hand whats to stop someone that has a music book from simply copying that tab and posting it for everyone else to get. Is that not the same thing as music/song sharing? There is where the argument lies.


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## Xanadu (Feb 3, 2006)

GuitarsCanada said:


> Well music books that you would purchase in a store would have money going back to the owner of that material. The artist/record company. Where these guys are coming from is.... people will duplicate in tab the same thing you would have to pay for and then post it on the web, therefore bypassing them altogether.
> 
> The argument has been... if I sit down and listen to a song and tab it out.. then it's "my" interpretation of that song. I guess there is a bit of an argument there. But on the other hand whats to stop someone that has a music book from simply copying that tab and posting it for everyone else to get. Is that not the same thing as music/song sharing? There is where the argument lies.


yeah i suppose. there are a lot of tabs that are like "taken from this book"


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Here is a copy of the actual letter sent to "GuitarTabs.com" 



> Today I received a certified letter from Moses & Singer LLP, a law firm in New York City which asserts that they are acting as counsel for the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. They have stated that guitar tablature hosted on my site violates the copyrights of several of their clients.
> 
> 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.
> 
> ...





> Moses & Singer LLP
> Via Certified Mail (Return Receipt Requested) and Electronic Mail
> 
> Peter J. Allen
> ...


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## Spikezone (Feb 2, 2006)

GuitarsCanada said:


> Well music books that you would purchase in a store would have money going back to the owner of that material. The artist/record company. Where these guys are coming from is.... people will duplicate in tab the same thing you would have to pay for and then post it on the web, therefore bypassing them altogether.


The thing is that there are a LOT of obscure songs on the tab sites that you will NEVER find in any book that has been published, so even though the MPA feels like they are losing revenue by people searching out tabs online (which I don't often do-I actually prefer to try to learn songs by ear), it is bullshit-they are protecting the rights to a service they don't even provide, in my opinion!
-Mikey
P.S. I DO use lyric sites once in a while to either try to find those lyrics you can't quite make out in a recording ('scuse me while I kiss this guy-LOL!), or to save time writing down the lyrics when I am making up my own chord charts for songs.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

A valid comment. Like I said it's a murky pond. There are pro's and con's to each side of the argument. I can appreciate the views from both sides. It's going to be a very tough thing to control. Where does it all end though. Music, tab.. whats next?


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## Mahogany Martin (Mar 2, 2006)

bucky said:


> Either way, ultimate-guitar is staying. They pay licensing fees, so they aren't under target.


Here's an article that was published yesterday http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/t...l=0&adxnnlx=1156252589-GrgS6VBZg22Lw4th9O4u5A . On page 2, there is this quote: 

"Doug Osborn, an executive vice president with Ultimate-Guitar.com said his site violated no laws because its headquarters were in Russia, and the site’s practices complied with Russian laws."

And then a reply to the quote: "Jacqueline C. Charlesworth, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Music Publishers’ Association, would not comment on the legality of specific sites, including Ultimate-Guitar, but she said she had seen no international licensing agreements that might make free United States distribution of guitar tablature legal."

Some sites have already taken down their tabs. If they do win in the end, who will want to pay for interpretive tabs? Nobody! So the only things that would be available (for a fee) would actually be (accurate) sheet music and I doubt that they could be sold for a buck a piece or so. It's going to be a long battle and I think that (free/interpretive) tabs will still be around. It's just part of early learning of guitar, it gets people going. Then they buy all sorts of other guitar/music related books and things and we're not even talking about money guitarists spend on instruments, amps etc.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Anybody know of any tab sites still open? All the ones I used to go to are down. Major bummer.


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## zao_89 (Feb 17, 2006)

I use Ultimate Guitar and sometimes XGuitar


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## tabforge (Sep 11, 2006)

maybe look out for http://www.tabforge.com/ they won't be able to get this site down - US Law doesn't affect the german one in any kind  - and you can be sure that this one will become one of the biggest tab site on the web !
keep on rockin' guys!!


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Perhaps you will be the only one left in existence.


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## Ripper (Jul 1, 2006)

Just waiting for the day they want me to pay them for sitting down in front of my stereo and figuring out a song. Or if I show another player how to do a tune, I guess I'll have to submit royalties then too.


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