FMS-Blog : The Wildly Whimsical, Mostly Musical WebLog
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
GuitarTab Sharing & Copyright Infringement
I visited my favourite GuitarTabs website today, Guitar Tab Universe, because I was listening to a Bob Dylan song in my car and, although I could easily work out the chords for the song, I wondered if anyone had contributed a tab for the solo guitar parts that appear in the instrumental sections.
This is how Guitar Tab Universe works, you see : it is kind of like a forum where musicians can discuss guitar performance techniques and tell each other how to play many well known songs. This latter part works by people's free and willing submission of guitar parts as they have transcribed them. There's no copying out of published score books (this is actively discouraged by the site owners) but clearly the participants' intentions are to recreate the original songs in as accurate a fashion as possible - songs that ARE protected by copyright law. So, the line between a common sense way of sharing guitar playing techniques and actually infringing the copyright of the original artists and (more importantly) their super-rich corporate publishers is somewhat blurred. Clearly, the way these kinds of sites encourage their users to share information about music that we can all hear freely on the radio has ruffled some feathers in the music world, though : when I hit the Guitar Tab Universe site today the following message was displayed on its front page :
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 eachother 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 Balch
This is a tricky one - no musician would want to rip off their fellow writer or performer by stealing their work, in whatever form that alleged theft takes place. But, it does seem fair enough that people will always want to share what they know about a given song, show each other how it is played and demonstrate this by using the simplest methods, such as some form of notation / tablature. I can't honestly say exactly where I stand on this argument except to note that those who are against tab-sharing (and, for that matter, more clear-cut infringements of copyright law, such as file-sharing) tend to be the fat-cats who stand to make the most money out of the work of artists who don't themselves necessarily see much return for their labours. For this reason, for the time being at least, I'll be supporting sites such as Guitar Tabs Universe - I think their principles of sharing knowledge and experience are more valuable than the money grabbing motives of the corporate music industry.
This is how Guitar Tab Universe works, you see : it is kind of like a forum where musicians can discuss guitar performance techniques and tell each other how to play many well known songs. This latter part works by people's free and willing submission of guitar parts as they have transcribed them. There's no copying out of published score books (this is actively discouraged by the site owners) but clearly the participants' intentions are to recreate the original songs in as accurate a fashion as possible - songs that ARE protected by copyright law. So, the line between a common sense way of sharing guitar playing techniques and actually infringing the copyright of the original artists and (more importantly) their super-rich corporate publishers is somewhat blurred. Clearly, the way these kinds of sites encourage their users to share information about music that we can all hear freely on the radio has ruffled some feathers in the music world, though : when I hit the Guitar Tab Universe site today the following message was displayed on its front page :
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 eachother 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 Balch
This is a tricky one - no musician would want to rip off their fellow writer or performer by stealing their work, in whatever form that alleged theft takes place. But, it does seem fair enough that people will always want to share what they know about a given song, show each other how it is played and demonstrate this by using the simplest methods, such as some form of notation / tablature. I can't honestly say exactly where I stand on this argument except to note that those who are against tab-sharing (and, for that matter, more clear-cut infringements of copyright law, such as file-sharing) tend to be the fat-cats who stand to make the most money out of the work of artists who don't themselves necessarily see much return for their labours. For this reason, for the time being at least, I'll be supporting sites such as Guitar Tabs Universe - I think their principles of sharing knowledge and experience are more valuable than the money grabbing motives of the corporate music industry.
