Consider too “maps”. Some map makers will deliberately put false roads in there to detect when their work has been misappropriated.
But few map makers probably survey every town and road themselves.
“This seriously needs to be put to rest by the courts. I can’t see how the courts would allow intellectual property to be stretched to individuals’ interpetations of the exact notes of riffs or even chord progressions. As someone above wrote, many are off and some are not even close. Now, consider that many of the tabs posted are not available in any format that you could purchase where these publishers would get a fee.”
Agreed. The music industry is money grabbing anywhere it can, without addressing the main fact that they are losing money because they have nothing people want to buy. Artists are not nurtured or allowed to grow anymore, it’s all big hit big money right now, or we drop you - the greed has been killing the golden goose and they’re feeling it now. Talk to most musicians these days,from national/international level down to bar level, they’re all seeing it - no tour funds, no advertising, no support, bands being dropped before they have time to mature, lower royalty rates, and lawsuits and threats of lawsuits over their material that they signed away the rights to and most certainly don’t see the profits from lawsuits and settlements. They won’t talk about it in the press, but it’s all anyone talks about, how bad it sucks right now, how the labels are getting worse, and bands are slowly being forced out of existence because they can’t make any money.
All tabs are is a *portion* of the song, like it’s been said, often innacurate. You can buy them, but those are often wrong as well, as the publishers hire people to tab them quickly, or are cribbed from the sheets musicians have done to file for copyright, which carry the main melody and lyrics and little else. You can get tabs from guitar magazines, but they’re generally the same quality. I bought a tab book, and it was translated from Japanese, poorly transcribed, wrong, and the lyrics were phonetic “guesses” at the songs.
Online tabs have always been free. I’ve seen pay-for-tab sites get started, and they never last. Online tabs are often collaborative efforts to figure out how to PLAY the song, not sell them or rip the musician or label or publisher off in any way. It’s not a performance. It’s not a recording. It’s like a NASCAR driver suing someone who posts on an online archive how he shifted and turned the steering wheel in a winning race, or a baseball player suing a sports website for decribing his performance in a game. A tab is a description of a performance, it is not *THE* performance, or a recording of it.
Enough is enough. We ARE close to being sued for humming a song unless we pay a fee. It’s gotten to the point where it’s ILLEGAL to play a song on your guitar in front of anyone, even one person in your living room, and if you do that, you OWE MONEY. Yes, the law CAN support a lawsuit like that, it just has’nt happened yet, the industry has’nt gotten that brazen yet.
I know personally two musicians who have posted trabs of their music online, helped correct wrong ones, and don’t care if people trade them. Are his rights being protected here? What about the musicians who WANT people to be able to access tabs?
It’s just so far over the line in terms of greed. It’s got to stop. The music industry and their greed is killing music. They need to fix their own houses, then they would’nt need to sue for things like this - tabs have been around forever, but because they made money hand over fist they never cared about tabs.