A friend at work sent this along over the weekend: BBC: Song sites face legal crackdown:
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”.
Lo and behold, my favorite tab site on the web shut down in reaction to it: Powertabs.net.
Back in 1998 this happened to OLGA, it went overseas and relaunched. OLGA has a solid claim on being the first collaborative file archive on the web – 1992. Guitar tablature written by fans, for fans, in plain text. It is still running today. But probably not for long.
Make archives people. Quickly.
Karl – Pretty soon breathing will be illegal
Neo shakes his head
umm….the MPA should be murdered
Nobody likes these people. But thats ok, theres some online petitions and stuff, and right now we’ve got like 15,000 people who wont buy their “official music” anymore.
http://www.petitiononline.com/mioti/petition.html
I’m sorry why in the hell should it be illagle, I put my real name(not full I dont want recurrsions due to i have no money) down for a reason. The mpa is retarded give me one good reason sure some people the very select few use it for improper reasons other then that its all about the learning. Fuck you !
Music is my life. People don’t understand that instead of beating things up when I get mad, I simply go to a tablature website and take my anger out on six steel strings. What’s next? Having lyrics online be banned? What if your kid had anger problems cured by beautiful music Lauren Keiser?
When will it end? Pretty soon it’ll be illegal to sing your favorite song in the shower, tap out it’s beat or play air guitar (if thats your thing). If these guys had their way you’d have to pay them to even talk about copyrighted music.
p.s. who the hell buys sheet music. ive only ever seen five actuall tab books
Well, thank The Lord I’ve still got what I refer to as my “Library Of Fools” guitar magazine collection which dates back to the mid-80s; so AT LEAST I’ve got something to fall back on (Though it’ll take a lil’ digging to find what I want). BTW, not that I wanna give ’em any “ideers”(As O.C.C.’s Paul Teutul Sr. would say), but I wonder if Guitar World’s brand new, user generated Tab archive is next(Since that went online not too far back)? Still, regardless, it sure doesn’t beat the old PowerTab transcriptions. Hey GW! I’m not holding my breath, but if the MPA EVER DOES come after you, maybe you could work something out w/ them that would allow users to start posting Tabs in PT format. But alas, the greedy goons at the organization only care about ONE THING: M-O-N-E-Y!
Kinda reminds me of the rich, fat cat ogre on Warrant’s DRFSR album (Okay, now I REALLY AM showing my age! Yikes!). Well, that’s my two cents, guess we can always pray & hope for the best, though! Laters!
Well, thank The Lord I’ve still got what I refer to as my “Library Of Fools” guitar magazine collection which dates back to the mid-80s; so AT LEAST I’ve got something to fall back on (Though it’ll take a lil’ digging to find what I want). BTW, not that I wanna give ’em any “ideers”(As O.C.C.’s Paul Teutul Sr. would say), but I wonder if Guitar World’s brand new, user generated Tab archive is next(Since that went online not too far back)? Still, regardless, it sure doesn’t beat the old PowerTab transcriptions. Hey GW! I’m not holding my breath, but if the MPA EVER DOES come after you, maybe you could work something out w/ them that would allow users to start posting Tabs in PT format. But alas, the greedy goons at the organization only care about ONE THING: M-O-N-E-Y!
Kinda reminds me of the rich, fat cat ogre on Warrant’s DRFSR album (Okay, now I REALLY AM showing my age! Yikes!). Well, that’s my two cents, guess we can always pray & hope for the best, though! Laters!
What this really all comes down to guys, is as cyberman put it, money. It doesn’t matter what format we put tablature in or how to play a song. It is illegal to get music in anyway shape or form with out paying for it. That is honestly the way it is going to be. That is their goal. To slip out every little cent that middle to low class America has so that they can buy their Lambos and Ferarris. 20 years from now, with the movement of technology, they will be able to know if your listening to someone elses music. they will make it so indiviualized that it will be illegal to fuckin look at another person and say the words to a song that they don’t know. They’ll have a way to detect what ipod your listening to, how about in the car. you can only listen to music in the car when its only you. because thats sharing music. Who knows what will be next, but I know one thing the world wont be free and it will be just like george orwell said “Hes watching you”.