What you get if you try to learn to play a song from here
Based on this, I wonder if teaching a baby to talk is copyright infringement on some level. You’re teaching the child words used in copyrighted books. What about teaching someone a foreign language? Is that preventing someone who wrote a book on teaching that language from getting their royalty? I don’t know what one is supposed to do here to stay legal.
Guitar Tab Universe — Open Letter To Users
To all “Guitar Tab Universe” visitors:
The company which owns this website has been indirectly threatened (via our ISP) 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. At what point does describing how one plays a song on guitar become an issue of copyright infringment? 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.
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? If he/she calls you later that night on the phone or e-mails you and you respond via one of those methods, are you infringing? I don’t know… but I would really like to know. If anyone has information on this, please email support@guitartabs.cc.
Apparently, the NMPA/MPA believes that the Internet may be on the foul side of the legality line they would like to draw here. For me, I see no difference. It’s teachers educating students and covered as a ‘fair use’ of the tablature. The teachers here don’t even get paid nor do the students have to pay this website to access the lessons.
An attack on this website is really an attack on every one of you who have told someone (in person, or via the written word, telephone, or e-mail) how you play a song on guitar. And who, especially among small websites, has the deep pockets to fight the NMPA/MPA? They use scare tactics while there is, in fact, no legal precedent on this matter (to the best of our knowledge). If you are interested in expressing your opinion to the NMPA/MPA, contact them via their respective websites. Please do not resort to vulgar language or insults.
Millions of people use the Internet to learn guitar, in one form or another. It appears the NMPA/MPA and their members do not want to support us and help us further our education. To you visitors from outside the USA or UK, can you find your favorite artists’ “official sheet music” at your local music store? Even in the United States and United Kingdom, we often can not. The NMPA/MPA have a choice to make: either they support us as aspiring guitarists, or they choose to alienate their customer base. To date, not one sheet music publisher has contacted this website to either inquire as to our activities or to express interest in any type of dialogue or collaboration whatsoever. All we deserve is a cold, indirect, impersonal threat without any explanation? They should embrace new technologies or else become relics of the old economy.
Since I’m now ‘worried’ about working around tabs at all, I’m in a tough situation! Luckily, I’m fairly confident that if I alone listen to a song and then figure out how to play it by ear, I will then be able to enjoy using that knowledge to practice and improve my guitar playing skills. Is that what is necessary for everyone to do? Work these things out alone? What a sad situation.
Sincerely,
Rob BalchManager of “Guitar Tab Universe”
For this amateur guitarist, the guitar chord/tab sites on the internet are truly important.
Assuming there was a reasonable paid internet site for chords and music I would understand the recording industries approach, but since there isn’t they really are being unfair and completely shortsighted.
I’ve used that site for help on playing a lot of songs, songs that I have purchased on CD, and songs from bands that I have paid to see in concert. Going after guitar tab web sites is pretty low.
Bah! People should learn how to read sheet music anyway. 😛
Seriously though, it must have been nice for all the current musical copyright holder to have had all of those classical works in the public domain to influence their melodic composition/counterpoint techniques.
I agree that going after tab sites is asinine.
However, I’m also old enough to remember a time before they existed and we had to learn songs by —get ready— listening to them!! (sorry, as an old guy I’m obligated to jab the young guys)
Anyway, the examples Rob gives in the article are classic fair use…small snippets or samples. But what he’s hosting are complete works. In the paper publishing world that’s all the difference.
Thinking is copyrighted as well – everyone stop it now!!
So where does it stop? AFAIK, tabs are just people’s interpretation of the song. What if I just shared the chord progressions? Will they threaten me? Would I be infringing on all the artists whose songs contain a C-D-G chord progression?
And, isn’t this double(triple) dipping? The radio station that I hear the song on was paid by BMI/ASCAP. The retailer / record company / Artist. was paid when I bought the CD. Fees were extracted from me when I bought the blank media to make my one legal copy. The venue pays ASCAP for any song I cover in my show. Now they want me to pay for the sheet music which I cant read?
Why should I fear exposure to lawsuits by learning a song? I think they are getting paid enough.
This kind of thing is starting to worry me. Whats next ? shutting down music schools, suing guitar makers because some kid might play a few bars from a pop song ?
“Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.” — John Lennon
Who the hell is telling the cops they are supposed to arrest people for taking pictures?? They must be getting this from some place high up.
Also, it’s already been ruled a long time ago that chord progressions can’t be copywritten…for one thing about a BILLION songs would all be in violation if that were the case.
But something else Todd said made me think of something. These tab sites are all just people’s “guesses” on how the songs are played. You read one tab and there may 3 or 4 different ways to play it, some saying theirs is more of a cheat and others saying it’s more the way the original artist played it. For instance, “The Rain Song” by Led Zeppelin, there are tabs out there that play it in “standard” tuning….but is that a violation? Because the original song isn’t in standard tuning, it’s in a special tuning that Jimmy Page came up with by himself (DGCGCD if I remember correctly…and in this tuning the song practically plays itself).
So again, is it in violation if the tab is wrong?
what everyone seems to forget is how many artists’ lives are destroyed by recording industry sharks that place inexperienced artists under crushing mountains of debt, promising them the moon and stars.
anyone who believes this industry is looking out for the artists is unbelievably and laughably stupid.
this industry knows that if it does not fire on all cylinders and maximize the monetization of their property, they will die off, quicker than you can say “dinosaur”
(my apologies to the christian literalists who don’t believe in dinosaurs.)
anyone who believes this industry is looking out for the artists is unbelievably and laughably stupid.
I agree; clearly they are trying to make up lost revenue, since the shift to digital music means they can’t horribly overcharge on CD’s anymore.
The way I see it, since these people are clearly not looking out for the artists they supposedly represent, they really should lose their copyrights on the music. Since when has litigation become a business model for music companies rather than lawyers? It’s dowright exploitation of the justice system, and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue. If anything, the artists who recorded the songs should own the copyrights, since it is really their intellectual property.
#5 – As a guitar player, it is really hard to just start listening to songs on the radio and figure them out as a beginner. It becomes easier as you learn a couple of songs and then you start to hear an open E chord, power chords, minor chords..etc. I learned from guitar magazines that licenced the songs from artists. If you just picked up a guitar and started copying licks from the radio you are some kind of god. I also bought a few tab books which were expensive. I doubt that really is a big market that is worth fighting for. Most guitarists after reaching a certain level don’t need them. I do look at tab sites out of laziness but usually they are incorrect and require corrections and don’t have any kind of rhythm notations. The PowerTab sites were awesome before they got shut down. You could play along to a MIDI version of the song. That kinda is a copyright violation because it plays a version of the song.
Excuse me, I just farted. I’m sorry, is the gas that I just expelled a copyright infringement because someone else smelled it, and my gas resulted from the ingestion of a recipe at a restaurant that is copyrighted by TGIFriday’s?
This is a hell of a stretch. So all of the instrumental instructors of the world are going to lose their jobs unless they teach students chords and songs of their own creation? I used to teach guitar and I have also taken many years of lessons. . . . if I weren’t able to learn how to play a song I enjoyed as a child, why would I have stayed with it?
Wonder how long till we end up with the Napster or Limewire of Guitar Tab. . . . 🙁
I’m still waiting for the backlash. It’s amazing the public still buys music from these people.
Of course it’s also amazing the public elected the global village idiot for president…. twice.
Guess I answered my own question. We get what we deserve on both counts.
School mathmatics books are copyrighted but the formulas they contain are universal. The public is prohibited from photocopying or reproducing the book itself but not the math. The NMPA/MPA wouldn’t bother to sue unless someone feels they are being damaged (losing revenue). It’s always about the money. How much are the publishers losing in sales as a result of “free” internet tab sites? Anyone have any idea?
#17 – Of course it’s also amazing the public elected the global village idiot for president…. twice.
Nope… Just once… But anyway —
This really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. We need serious copyright reform now, and it needs to be advised by serious minds who understand the issue, not just lazy media execs fueled by greed or lazy piracy advocates fueled by cheapness.
This sounds like a job for Lawrence Lessig.
#18 –
It’s NOT always about the money. Otherwise how do explain Disney sueing a day care center after children painted a mural of their favorite characters on the building’s outer wall?
Part of it is that copyright claims are seriously weakened when companies don’t actively protect their copyrights, even when doing so creates bad press for them. Sometimes its a no-win situation. Owners of some intellectual properties spent a great deal of energy over the years sueing fan sites for using their images or IP when they created shrines to the cultural icons they loved, despite making no money and giving full credit to the owner.
I just know that sometimes the party agressively protecting their IP would rather not, but if they don’t, they’ll have less of a claim when some pirate comes along and steals their IP for profit.
It’s a bad situation.
As usual, blame Metallica.
“Part of it is that copyright claims are seriously weakened when companies don’t actively protect their copyrights, even when doing so creates bad press for them.”
Say it loud and say it proud: Bulllllshiiiit.
You are thinking of Trademarks. Copyright can’t be weakend, it can only expire. Trademarks can be weakend – which is why Adobe objects to people saying something has been Photoshopped, and they even have a web page up that is very funny about it.
#22 Gregory
Okay… Ya got me… Look man, my job isn’t very interesting and i have a lot of time on my hands, so I read this blog all damn day long. I spoke out of school…
I was thinking of trademarks. But cut me some slack. There is a tangental relationship. Can I have that much?
22, Gregory, Thank you for clarifying that. I was agreeing with OFLO until you pointed out the error. Would you accept I’m having a rough day too?
#:15 No, TGIFridays could not claim copyright infrigement on your fart – a fart is considered fair use of a meal, no matter who holds the copyright on the recipe (so long as the fragrance of the fart is at least 10% different than the fragrance of the food ingested).
On the topic of farts, however, the copyright on the resulting fart tends not go go to the recipe writer, restaurant, cook, or even the farter, but to fartees, as it were (those in receipt of a fart). As decided by precedent set US Supreme Court Case Smellor vs. Dealtor 1984, in which the concensus opinion was reached “He who first smelt it generally dealt it.”
Smells fishy to me.
LAMO….
Totally, and abundnatly..
Most musical instruments sold are used to play copyrighted music. And some of that music being played might not have been learned via the purchase of sheet music. So will instrument manufacturers eventually be forced to pay fees to the publishing industry (like blank media manufacturers already pay to the recording industry)? After reading this article, I don’t see why not.
The earlier comment (#13) about litigation as a business model is right on. Is this what’s being taught at Harvard Business School now?
Hate to have to say it in this company, but publishing guitar tabs of copyright-protected works _is_ clearly an infringement, just as publishing the sheet music would be.
Whether it is prudent for NMPA and MPA to be agressively enforcing their members’ copyrights in this manner is of course a separate question.
Posting song tablature on the internet is in no way different from say….burning a CD. Actually, it is because it’s not as bad.
But how is learning songs online different from figuring them out yourself. It doesn’t hurt tablature books because tab books are so much better then any post on the internet. Even if someone posts the same tab from a book online, they wont be able to do it as easily or in depth as it is in a book.
For those of you who say “figure it out yourself,” I personally can’t. I don’t want to sit down for a few hours just to learn a short riff I heard in a Chili Peppers song. If I want to learn a song in depth to play for my band, then yeah I’ll do it myself, and use the tabs as a guideline. This is unfair, and is a learning process and tool.
Bottom line: attacking a non-profit user run guitar tab organization is extremely low.
If a web-site were to post, say, a scanned copy of a Hal Leonard tablature book in PDF form, that’s most certainly copyright infringment if it’s done w/out permission.
If a web-site posts a homemade “guesstimate” (sometimes remarkably accurate, more often simply adequate as a jump-start) that is certainly not infringement.
Most tabs I’ve seen are clumsy .txt files, most w/only the bare bones of the song figured out anyway.
This is simply greed, as if ticket prices in the hundreds of dollars weren’t enough.