p2pnet - rss feed: ‘Shut down guitar sites’
p2pnet.net News:- Lauren Keiser, the man who wanted sites carrying the words to songs shut down with "jail time" thrown in, is now attacking web pages with guitar tablatures.
The president of the Music Publishers’ Association, Keiser says the sites reduce the earnings of songwriters.
“In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’ ‘Highway to Hell’ and thousands of others,” says The New York Times, continuing:
“The battle shares many similarities with the war between Napster and the music recording industry, but this time it involves free sites like Olga.net, GuitarTabs.com and MyGuitarTabs.com and even discussion boards on the Google Groups service like alt.guitar.tab and rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature, where amateur musicians trade “tabs” - music notation especially for guitar - for songs they have figured out or have copied from music books.
“On the other side are music publishers like Sony/ATV, which holds the rights to the songs of John Mayer, and EMI, which publishes Christina Aguilera’s music.”
People can get it for free online, “and it’s hurting the songwriters,” claims Keiser who, as well as running the MPA, is also ceo the Carl Fischer, a music publishing company in New York.
“So far, the Music Publishers’ Association and the National Music Publishers’ Association have shut down several Web sites, or have pressured them to remove all of their tabs, but users have quickly migrated to other sites,” says the NYT.
“The publishers, who share royalties with composers each time customers buy sheet music or books of guitar tablature, maintain that tablature postings, even inaccurate ones, are protected by copyright laws because the postings represent ‘derivative works’ related to the original compositions, to use the industry jargon,” it says.
“The publishers told the sites that if they did not remove the tablatures, they could face legal action or their Internet service providers would be pressured to shut down their sites. All of the sites have taken down their tabs voluntarily, but grudgingly.”
The story has Mike Happoldt, a member of the ’90’s band Sublime who now owns indie record company Skunk Records, saying, “I think this is greed on the publishers’ parts.
“I guess in a way I might be losing money from these sites, but as a musician I look at it more as a service. And really, those books just don’t sell that much for most people.”
According to Keiser, guitar licks and song scores, widely available online, are "completely illegal"
Also See:
jail time - Shut down online lyric sites!, December 9, 2005
The New York Times - Now the Music Industry Wants Guitarists to Stop Sharing, August 21, 2006
completely illegal - Close down lyric sites: II, March 28, 2006
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August 21st, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Why don’t they just stop making musical instuments all together! This is getting sooooooo __ASSINIGN__!!! All **AA Nazis need to be gassed!!! That’s all there is to it…
August 21st, 2006 at 5:21 pm
I hope that the artists these boneheads suck the life out of… er, I mean “represent” realise just how much they [MPA,RIAA] are alienating real music fans. There is a LOT of music out there produced outside the mainstream “big four” quagmire. These MPA-RIAA greed-machines are forcing us to look beyond the garden walls of “big music”. When the public figures out that there’s a whole world of music out there that big music does not have it’s ugly hooks into they will move on en mass and never look back.
August 21st, 2006 at 6:08 pm
What a scam!
Music publishers really publish a very small percentage of the music that songwriters have given them to manage. When someone is interested in the sheet music, to do a recording, for example, none is available and the recording cannot be done.
Yet these publishers tell songwriters that their music will be “published”. They lie, just to get ther lifetime assignment to the songs, for nothing.
Now they object to others that do the work that publishers have abandoned.
Speaking from personal experience with publishers that “publisher” is the last thing they are and songwriters who music is not published to their dismay.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I was walking down the street the other day and whistling a tune when an RIAA lawyer walked up to me and handed me a “cease and desist” letter because I was infringing copyright.
Then I went home and sang some Audioslave to my ferrets, and the RIAA called me on the phone and verbally harassed me and told me I was infringing copyright.
Then I went to Best Buy and turned on one of their stereos to listen to it and some guys in black fatigues beat me up, took me into a back room and interrogated me, then told me I owed them $3000 for infringing copyright.
August 24th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
When AMD reverse engineered Intels Micro It could be said they “reduced sales” for Intel. If someone copies a songbook that is stealing, but if they figure out the song themselves and post the tab I don’t see that as being any different from reverse engineering.