OLGA offline

[Laz]

ummm... like China?

Yeah, I knew that was coming. I was thinking more of when the Justice Department asked for all their search records for the past 6 months, Google told them to pound sand, while AOL (or was it MSN?) and Yahoo caved immediately.

But the point is, if someone stood up and said No to the MPA, would it survive in court? The other difficult question is how to put a value on these tabs. Unlike the downloading of real songs by the original artists (remember them - old timer's joke), which can be said to have equal value to the purchased music - what is the value of a hand-written tab that may or may not be accurate?

[webcrush]

Maybe google already does host them. Were the archives search robot enabled? Google might have a cache stored of the pages.

[pearlthekat]

My understanding is that a letter is sent to the site's hosting company at the same time. The threat being that the hosting company faces legal action if they don't shut the site down. I don't think the lawyers writing the letters actually expect to make it to court. As there's no guarantee they'd win the cases never go that far. Intimidating letters do the trick. And the cases are argued here instead.

I'm now thinking that the entire thing should be decided by the courts. It's an important issue to a lot of people and the courts should decide. There is probably a way to get the issue into court without someone actually being sued.

[NoteBoat]

There is probably a way to get the issue into court without someone actually being sued.

I'm not so sure about that... it's the first amendment thing: Congress can't make a law regulating speech. Take away the speech aspects, and it's all about property rights... and that means anyone beginning a court action must have 'standing' - the right to sue.

[Alan Green]

You could file a Test Case, based on one song that most people know on a popular website with the industry sharing the costs, and present arguments. The Judge would then decide if there was a case to go to full trial; that's when the class action should go in. It wouldn't be cheap either, but sounds a whole lot more effective initially than wholesale litigation; websites could legitimately say they were waiting for the results of the test case and then proceed to remove the Tabs if the test case decision went against them.

Far easier, of course, to just sue someone outright - that is the American way, it seems to us over here.

Just a thought.


A

[Laz]

You could file a Test Case, based on one song that most people know on a popular website with the industry sharing the costs, and present arguments. The Judge would then decide if there was a case to go to full trial; that's when the class action should go in. It wouldn't be cheap either, but sounds a whole lot more effective initially than wholesale litigation; websites could legitimately say they were waiting for the results of the test case and then proceed to remove the Tabs if the test case decision went against them.

Far easier, of course, to just sue someone outright - that is the American way, it seems to us over here.

Just a thought.


A

Well, sort of. You can't sue someone unless they have done something wrong and they refuse to correct it. In this case, the MPA told the tab sites that they were "illegally" posting tabs, and that if they didn't take them down, THEN they would sue. MPA can't file a suit unless someone refuses to take down the tabs and says "So sue me."

The tab sites can't sue the MPA, because they voluntarily took down their own tabs. One option might be for the tab site to say No, and if the web host shuts them down, then the site could sue the host for wrongful termination, claiming that the host reacted to an illegal request.

So long as no one says No, the MPA wins.

[Guitar Noise]

Either way your web site is offline. Your web host is free to tell you to take your business somewhere else. And that's probably written into your contract with the host somehwere. It would be different if you owned your own company or servers. Then you really could say "So sue me." But a commercial ISP is most likely going to cut you lose.

[LuciusEli]

I may be comparing apples and oranges, but what about when someone satires a movie or show on television? Is that not a "version" of the original?

[schwarztod]

You know there is an argument to be made that if we don't protect the intellectual property rights of others there will be no incentive to create new work.

true, if money is your only incentive to create music. If such is the case, then you should probably put down your guitar immediately because what you are writing isn't coming from within & is most likely garbage anyway..... ie 99% of the scrap that is being passed off as "music" thesedays. Just turn on your radios or television sets............ True art leaves no room for business!

[Misanthrope]

I may be comparing apples and oranges, but what about when someone satires a movie or show on television? Is that not a "version" of the original?

You're right, but satire is specifically mentioned and handled seperately in law - and we wouldn't get away with saying a tab was satire unless it was really, really bad

[Livermore-Music]

[quote="schwarztod"][quote="Nick"]You know there is an argument to be made that if we don't protect the intellectual property rights of others there will be no incentive to create new work.[/quote]

This is a very illogical stance to take. For those of you that have studied logic it is the "slippery Slope falacy". [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope[/url]
Since people create new work all the time for many reasons other than money I see no basis in truth for this argument. From a stand point of the arts how can you would have to qualify any artist that was not recognized until after their death as a deviant of the social norm or a mentally unstable.
Personally I have never made a dime for any of the songs I have written. I continue to write because it brings me personal satisfaction and helps me express myself to others.

[NoteBoat]

Personally I have never made a dime for any of the songs I have written.

That's probably true of at least 99% of all songwriters/composers/poets etc.

But it's also a telling point - although people will still create if they're not paid, if no one is paid everyone has amateur status. And it seems the majority of amateurs have no problem with diminishing or eliminating copyright protections.

I make my living with my guitar. One reason I'm a better guitarist than most I know is exactly that - I make my living at it. I'd still play if I didn't make a dime, but I wouldn't play nearly as well, because I wouldn't be able to play as much; there's a return you get on time invested. If you spend all of your available time on any single edeavor, you'll most likely be better at it than those who can't afford to.

So if you polled the tiny fraction of songwriters who <i>u</u> do make a dime (or a lot more) off their writing, I'll bet the trend would be reversed - they'd all still continue to write songs if the laws are changed, because it's what they love to do... but I'll bet the majority would not favor changes that lessen the value of their intellectual property; doing so would prevent them from spending all their time doing what they love to do.

[NoteBoat]

One more thought I had on the economics of the whole label/publisher/distributor etc. chain...

There's a valuable function they provide that won't go away (even if they do), and as we collectively brainstorm & maybe build a better world, it's worth thinking about.

Maybe one original band in 10,000 gets a label deal. I don't doubt that labels overlook some good music - but I'll bet at least 95% of the stuff that's rejected we wouldn't give a second listening to. And for every 1,000 that get released, maybe 100 get airplay. Of those, maybe 30 get significant airplay - enough so we'd notice and remember the song.

So to find 30 good tunes, the industry has collectively rejected 9,999,970. If we listen to everything written, around the clock, we'd only catch about 10% of the 'good' stuff - and we'd hear over 30,000 bad ones for each winner.

That screening function has a very real value to all of us.

[zaiga]

So to find 30 good tunes, the industry has collectively rejected 9,999,970. If we listen to everything written, around the clock, we'd only catch about 10% of the 'good' stuff - and we'd hear over 30,000 bad ones for each winner.

That screening function has a very real value to all of us.

A website with a ranking system, number of downloads, etc, etc, and word-of-mouth may replace that.

Thinking of that, I think it could actually be fun, browsing the internet to find that nugget of gold, that great unknown band, or great song you didn't know and share this experience with your friends, rather than listening to what the record companies execs think we want to hear.

[Ricochet]

We've already got that opportunity and have had for several years.