Guitar Tabs Illegal???

[LydonB]

Well...I went to powertabs.net to look up a tab for Innocence Gone by Darkane. When the site loaded, I wasn't able to get the tab because there is legal action being taken by the MPA because there are sites offering illegal scores of music. I guess that powertabs.net is one of them.
Here is a link to the article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm

What do you guys think of this?

Personally, I think it is a bit of a let down. I don't really see what is so bad about putting tabs or lyrics online. Oh well. Hopefully we can still look at tabs and use them to learn some cool tunes.

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

I don't really see what is so bad about putting tabs or lyrics online.

I think this is called "intellectual propriety" or something...

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

The excuse for shutting down these sites seems a bit suspect; do songwriters really get any significant share of the profits from Tab books?
Perhaps the next step is some form of copy protection where it becomes impossible to hear what notes are being played (I think Waves' upcoming L4 limiter plugin has this function ).
EDIT:

I think this is called "intellectual propriety" or something...

Agreed wholeheartedly. However, the "you're HURTING the ARTISTS!" argument that these MPA/RIAA people always make irks me. They should just tell us that we're hurting the book publishers that put this stuff in a cheap paperback and charge $29.95 for it, and then shut down the sites- which is of course fully within their right, and I repect that right 100%. But I hate when they play the "guilty-conscience" card and sugarcoat this stuff; it's condescending and disingenuous.

 

[Sinister Mephisto]

I bet the bands actually benefit from having people learn their songs and the artists have nothing to do with this. It's all about money.

 

[LydonB]

I kind of feel like it is about money as well. I think if bands were upset about their music being written out by a fan, they would have made a fuss about it a while ago. I can understand the whole MP3 thing...but this seems a tad bit unreasonable.

 

[Ermz]

I think this is called "intellectual propriety" or something...

Well, no. What's it's called is 'individual interpretation', which is clearly outlined on the disclaimers of pretty much every tab site. There's nothing illegal about tab sites... and holy crap, to say that tabs are hurting artist profits is ludicrous. I thought that I've heard the end of all that rubbish but they come back and get more irrational than ever.

I can't believe what a big 'fuck you' this is to musicians worldwide.

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

The biggest problem I see with this is where to draw the line; if someone asks for it, is it still legal to post that "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie goes G-D/A-C-G/B-G/A? If not, does it become illegal when you draw it out in ASCII like this?
|3-------23232---|0----(3)---(3)--|
|3-------3-----3-|3-----3-----3---|
|0-------2-------|0-----0-----0---|
|0-------0-------|2-----0-----0---|
|2-------0-------|3-----2-----0---|
|3---------------| ----------------|
Have you now crossed some sort of line into the deep, dark world of back-alley crime?
Moonlapse is spot-on; most free tabs I see are text files that pretty much say "this is how I think it goes", and they only really tab out the hook and the tricky parts. Although, I have seen stuff that was fairly complete and probably transcribed from a tab book. That is indeed illegal, and that's the stuff I was referring to that I think that publishers have a right to take down... but just because it's hard to enforce does not give these groups the right to shut down entire sites full of mostly interpretations and "this is what I think it is" files.
The "lyrics" part of it is absolutely ridiculous.
"HAY GUYS WHAT DOES LORD WORM SAY DURING THE END PART OF 'SLIT YOUR GUTS'"???
"We can't tell you; that's ILLEGAL".

 

[LydonB]

lol, Gruesome. I agree with you about the lyrics. I also agree with you and Moonlapse about the tab thing. I think it all is going a bit overboard.

 

[madbutcher]

That's crazy......I just recently got a cool guitar tab program called guitar pro 5. It plays midi to tabbed out songs. Even drums are tabbed out.

 

[006]

I saw that on Powertabs.net a few days ago as well. The thing with tabs is people are just doing what they've been doing for decades...only they are writing it down. First off, when an artist is already at platinum status with their latest record, I highly doubt that tabs of their songs are going to impair their income. Last time I checked, the mass majority of the tabs out there are of well-known bands that are already established in the business and have a great following. Meaning, they already make the money.

Obviously there can't be music around here without SOMEBODY having SOME rediculous problem with the way things have been done for the past ten years. Downloading music had been around forever until all of a sudden somewhere along the line somebody figured they could make more money and said it's illegal. Which it is...but why out of nowhere? Why not right in the beginning? And then Apple creates the iTunes store, where you can pay 99 cents for a song. Now correct me if I'm wrong, BUT, when I go to buy my Opeth albums (or whatever), and say there's only 8 songs on it which would bring me to $7.92. *NOT* the $17-20 the store would be charging. Huge difference. To me, something doesn't add up. But whatever. You can add the distribution, packaging costs..bla bla. For each disk it would still not cost another $10-13 more for that. And say I get only one song. 99 cents. How much does the artist get of that? 1/43rd of a PENNY? Wouldn't surprise me. Man, they really are missing out on a lot of dough With that said I still don't approve of downloading music for free, I just hate the idiocy behind the campaign to ban it.

I have a great idea. Why not just ban music altogether? If it's not there, we can't fucking learn how to play it by ear and write it down and share it with people that can't learn it that way (and must I say...for FREE). If it's not there, there wouldn't be artists putting on controversial shows. If there were no music, we couldn't download it. If there were no music....wow it would be boring as hell around here. Hell, while we at it, why not ban art too! Then we could be in a movie called "Equilibrium" and Christian Bale can help bring down the emotion nazi's and let every one listen to music and look at paintings again! YAY!

It seems to me that it is getting to that point though.

~006

 

[kaomao]

Say that the most of the times sheet music of a particular artist isn't available and when it is, it's not well transcribed even if you pay a lot for it.
Pay attention to the transcription of Fade to black from metallica, on the first solo there are missing notes and mistakes etc etc
Those people are crazy.
Tell me if I can find sheet music from darkane, soilwork, nevermore etc etc
Shame on those people! may the devil take them


Maurizio

 

[RemoWilliams]

I was wondering what was up with Powertab.net latley. Its pretty damn sad. I thought the "Tab Scare" was gone years ago, but I guess the business has got to go back to easy targets sometimes. Most of the tabs are interpretations, and most of the time not even 70% correct. Also it is pretty damn hard to find any Darkane, Soilwork, Origin, or what ever heavy band you like "sheet music" or tab. Most of said bands rarely if ever post any tabs of their songs (I know Christopher Malmstrom from Darkane does on his site, and he's one of the few). I always enjoyed tab just from learning other forms of music and styles and for informations purposes. Hopfully somebody in the corperate higher ups with get a brain.

 

[Skyweaver]

Fucked ! no other way to describe it.

The reality is that they cant close it down, most of the tabs were put together by guitarists , not all were straight copies of sheet music.

This type of bullshit, actually hurts the musicians - the less people playing their tunes (live or otherwise), the less people that actually get to hear their music.

Example, I recently picked up the tab to "Mother" Danzig and played the song at a gig, after the gig there a load of people asking about the song etc - next gig, brand new Danzig fans who had bought the album.....

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

yeah you have to wonder about the amount of tabs that are actually less than 100% spot on, are they a breach of copyright?

 

[SPLASTiK]

I can understand magazine/tab book/sheet music scans... but otherwise it's just silly.

 

[006]

Speaking of magazine tabs...does anyone know if publications such as GuitarWorld and GuitarOne actually pay the artists or whom it concerns when they print the guy's interpretation of the songs? I mean, we're talking radio bands that are getting tons of cash from album sales, airplay, MTV time, movie soundtrack deals, etc. I would expect the corporate side of these artists to want some compensation for those transcriptions. Wonder if they do or not...

I didn't even see the thing about lyrics being illegal to post up on the net or otherwise. I won't even blab about that since it's absurdly stupid.

~006

 

[Atheist]

<A Gruesome Discovery> said exactly what I thought too.

 

[Executioner213]

Don't a lot of the tabs say that they are individual interpretations of the songs? I'd understand on the ones that say "taken from Guitar World Oct 05", but the ones that those of us do from scratch shouldn't matter. Thats like all the cover bands out there (and even the bands who are signed that play the occasional cover) getting arrested for playing someone elses music, because maybe the original artist won't get paid for it. Unfortunately, nobody will be able to change shit like this, because the media giants (i.e.: Warner Brothers) will dump all the ducats they can into legal battles for it because they think that in the end they will make all that back and more by producing shitty paperback tab books (that they probably didn't even pay the guy who transcribed jack shit for) and charge $20-$50 for it to the consumers. If it's an "interpretation" of it, though...can they even fight it?

 

[vile_ator]

We were talking about this yesterday on the Decrepit Birth forum. Heres my take. First its not the same as MP3 downloading. Downloading hurts smaller artists who barely make a dime anyway, and this just nails the coffin shut. Also the reason why downloads are available at 99 cents each is beacuse this is what they have determined people 'will' pay. Better to get something than nothing they figure.

Ok on the tab thing; many, many major label artists have signed away their rights to sell the sheet music. Its the publishing companies that are making this money. The artist may get a tiny royalty on it. Also only very large artists have the popularity to warrant offering TAB books as a seperate form of income. So the publishing companies feel these TAB sites are cutting into their profits, and they are. BUT, the smaller artists usually like people getting their tab. It just helps the bands popularity and it isnt taking away from their profits because they dont offer tab books for sale anyway.

I think what will happen is the bands that have rights to their own sheet music(almost all indie bands), will be e mailed by these tab sites and asked to sign a release sheet. Once you give this permission, its cool to post it. I cant think of one underground band that would object to this. Maybe some bands dont want tab that is wrong on the net, but they probably dont even care about this.

If you know the tab to a bands song, what can you do with that knoweledge to hurt the band or label or their income? This only effects bands that have signed away their sheet music rights and its the labels and publishers that want this income by selling official sheet music books.

Colin

 

[RemoWilliams]

All you got the idea. Plus I've always enjoyed playing along to song. Granted most tabs, as stated before, arn't eve probably 70% correct, but its still fun to play along to them. Plus some of the idea you get from them. Hell, I even enjoy playing to along to Colin's band Vile.