Gah. That's ridiculous. I can't afford to buy entire songbooks, and a lot of the tabs I want aren't from people who have been around long enough to have easy to find tablatures.
What's next, do I have to pay royalties whenever I hum a song walking down the street? I can't figure out a song, write it down, and show it to a friend?
Yeah, and that's not to mention that most artists who aren't of superstar status don't release songbooks anyway.
This is totally unjustified. If they're interested in protecting intellectual property, there would far more effective and less draconian and alienating ways of going about it than setting arbitrary restrictions on how people can enjoy music that they pay for (e.g. DON'T READ LYRICS).
Considering how much albums cost, legible lyrics should be included with every cd. I say 'legible' meaning not printed on dark colored background or so small print that it takes a magnifying glass to read the words. How hard can that be?
It'll be interesting to see how this pans out if it gets to the courts. Given the past legal battles over other copyrighted print materials posted on the web, I wonder if the courts will call the posting of tabs 'fair use' provided they aren't copies of someone else's print books.
Are the sites that offer them for free offering their own original transcriptions, or are they just scanning a print version that someone else has released and disseminating it without approval?
How do these music business killjoys sleep at night? Are they just that clueless?
Sure they're trying to make a living and they're trying to keep their entire industry's head above water, I understand that. But to prosecute those who just want music? That's just insulting, if not infuriating.
Most of these websites don't scan music books onto PDF. Most of them slave for hours over a notepad TXT file making the tabalature from scratch. Most of these people are huge fans of the music. People who run these sites are huge fans of music, period. To prosecute them is as insensitive as it is insane. It's like holding your hand up, threatening to slap to your customer base across their collective face. Someone should tell these geniuses that people don't respond well to that kind of thing.
Those that do copy the exact booklet material should be given legal slaps on the wrist, justifiably, but shutting down the sites altogether would be grossly overreacting.
It would seem to me these suits are trying to scare site owners and "perpetrators of copyright infringement" into submission.
Chances are, though, that most cases they would prosecute as actual, criminal misdemeanors wouldn't even get to court, much less hold water in front of a judge.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Yay!,
this is fucking bullshit, and it doesn't make much sense, I mean, fuck, it's not like we're stealing the song or something, since when does anyone care if you can play a song or understand what someone's saying in one....
this is bullshit and it's ruined my morning, fuck.
Originally posted by Yay!: Most of these websites don't scan music books onto PDF. Most of them slave for hours over a notepad TXT file making the tabalature from scratch. Most of these people are huge fans of the music. People who run these sites are huge fans of music, period.
That was what I thought.
I think any pressure to this, at the higher court level, would probably find those who transcribe the music themselves to be in the clear. If someone were actually just making PDF scans of someone else's work, I think they'd deservedly get punished (cf International News Service v Associated Press) but I'm not really sure who they think they're targeting here.
It reminds me of the 'home taping is killing the industry' noise in the 80's and the 'bootlegs are killing the industry' in the 90's. The people who were buying bootlegs of live shows were NOT the casual fans of band X. They were HUGE fans of band X, who already owned all of the bands records and wanted more.
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