Tab sites going down?
 

Song sites face legal crackdown
<!--Smvb--> <table> <tbody><tr> <td valign="bottom"> <!--Smvb--> By Ian Youngs
BBC News entertainment reporter <!--Emvb--> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>
<!--Emvb--> The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics. The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US 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".
Bitter battles
The move comes after several years of bitter legal battles against unauthorised services allowing users to download recordings for free.
Publishing companies have taken action against websites in the past, but this will be the first co-ordinated legal campaign by the MPA.
The MPA would target "very big sites that people would think are legitimate and very, very popular", Mr Keiser said.
"The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income," he said. "But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we're taking a more proactive stance."


<table> <tbody><tr> <td width="5">
</td> <td class="fact"> <!--Smva--> Music publishers and songwriters will consider all tools under the law to stop this illegal behaviour
<!--Emva--> <!--Smva--> David Israelite
National Music Publishers' Association <!--Emva--> </td> </tr> </tbody></table>
David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association, added his concerns. "Unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing," he said.
"Music publishers and songwriters will consider all tools under the law to stop this illegal behaviour."
Sandro del Greco, who runs Tabhall.co.uk, said the issue was not serious enough to warrant jail time and sites like his were not necessarily depriving publishers of income.
Learn
"I play the drums mainly but I play the guitar as well. I run the website and I still buy the [tab] books," he said.
"The tabs online aren't deadly accurate so if someone really wants to know it they'll buy the book.
"But most of the bands I listen to don't have tab books to buy so if you get them online, that's the only way you can really learn it unless you work it out yourself."
The campaign comes after lyric-finding software PearLyrics was forced off the internet by a leading music publishing company, Warner Chappell.
'No alternative'
PearLyrics worked with Apple's iTunes, searching the internet to find lyrics for songs in a user's collection.
"I just don't see why PearLyrics should infringe the copyright of Warner Chappell because all I'm doing is searching publicly-available websites," PearLyrics developer Walter Ritter said.
"It would be different if they had an alternative service that also provided lyrics online and also integrated [with iTunes] like PearLyrics did.
"But they don't offer anything like that at all."
Warner Chappell were unavailable for comment.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...nt/4508158.stm

Fuck, of course this happens right as I'm trying to buy a guitar.

Doesn't seem at all wide spread. It would suck if Tab sites started getting nixed; I use the guitar and piano sites myself. I can't read notes for the life of me.

IT won't be "widespread" per se, but it'll affect a lot of bands these days, since big acts like Green Day and your boys Linkin Park have sheet music and songbooks out. IT's becoming more and more common.

Also, since these are not the official tabs (Normally), but user interpretations (This is what most site disclaimers say anyway), I'm not sure they have grounds to shut down any site not using SPECIFICALLY their arrangements.

I agree. This is a touch stupid.

I think we should all go out and copy and paste a whole load of tabs, so when it does close down we still have them. :y:

In the US, legally you cannot.

This is more or less the same reason you can hear a song you swear is a rip-off of someone else's work, or why TNA/WCW haven't been sued for their themes.

I used tabcrawler, but they're been using more popups and spyrware of late, so I've been using AZchords.com

I don't knowhow great it is, but it serves my limited tab/chords needs.

I dont care because this will only affect tabs for shitty bands and I dont want to play their crap.

WE ARE ALL ON DRUUUUUUUUGS

damn, so thats why i havent been able to get on mxtabs. Im so pissed about that...People are just cracking down on everything nowadays!

I can't imagine this actually panning out for them though.

OTOH, I just downloaded like 20 Aimee Mann tabs, to make sure I had them...

http://olga.net/

OLGA is currently offline while we resolve legal issues with the archive. We greatly appreciate your support and hope to return to providing resources to the aspiring guitarist as soon as possible.

mx was the best. :(

Is it down too?

Woah... hold on, do you mean plain tab sites? I knew something like this would be coming when Mysongbook wasn't working, but that was for Guitar Pro, so I kinda figured... but normal tab sites are closing to?

tabulature at all.

Yeah MXtabs shut down a few months ago got threatened etc.

I usually used OLGA, tabcrawler (Which got subsequently more shitty over time, so I stopped) and AZChords. So I never looked at MXtabs.

Yeah I used to be a tabcrawler person too. It had some relaunch maybe a year or two ago and got all shitty. Is it still even about? Recently been using ultimate-guitar.com its not too bad I guess.

Yeah, it's still on, but every page gets you like 10 popup ads, nobody adds anything new, and it's a whole ungodly clusterfuck.

Spsssh, you lazy whores, learn to read music!

Anyways, some of the groups on Yahoo have sheet music. For instance, I found a Regina Spektor group that has sheet music for the whole of her "Soviet Kitsch" album. Sure, it ain't official, but so far the notation seems pretty much exact. Though, the person who has done it, could do with having some lessons on how to write music on Sibelius.

if it looks odd they probably just opened the midi of the song into sibelius or something

www.ultimate-guitar.com

It has bass tabs too. I use it for everything guitar related.



I don't need bass tabs anymore, I'm too uber.

I can read sheet music (comes from years of music theory, music lessons, etc.) But many songs aren't available in sheet music format.

I think tabs are much more practical than standard notation anyways.

Only if you're musically illiterate. Fortunately for tab sites, most guitarists are shit at sight-reading.

I disagree.

I've been reading standard notation since I was about 6 years old, music is practically a second language to me. I still think tabs are easier and more practical.

and I wrote for the Beatles.

http://ultimate-guitar.com/ Thats a great website for tabs, I used to use it when I was trying to learn how to play the guitar...Ahhh the good ol' days. They boast over 200,000+ tabs.

Wow, is there an echo in this thread?

I dunno. Did you say you wrote for the Beatles? :shifty: