Has anybody else heard about this?

The end result is that it would no longer be allowed to sing a copyrighted song, because you are publicising the lyrics, without paying a licence fee. Sheer, utter nonsense.
The music industry mafia sees that it is losing it's grip - and you can't give all the tabbers concrete boots, so set the lawyers on them.
What it needs is for everyone - literally everyone - to boycott buying any form of music for one month, say December, and see how long it takes for them to compromise.

Don't worry guys. :)

When David, Nick, and all the other mods are carted off to jail we'll use the time honoured solution and bake them a cake with a file in it. 8)

All we need to do is find out what sort of file they'd prefer....... wav or mp3... :wink:

Personally I treat all TABs and the like in the same way I treat software games demos. Like a free sample.

However, if I liked the song enough to want to perform it in public then I would cheerfully pay for the privilege. When it comes to private performances (which is actually all I do) then it varies. Usually if I like it enough then I'll buy an authorised songbook (yes, I have actually bought quite a few, and I eventually even buy most of my software!! :shock: ). Then the creator at least gets some reward.

Personally, I don't think that I have a right to steal a song, just because it's easy to do so. If I'd written the song, or was a publisher who had paid for the rights and was involved in promoting it for the benefit of both myself and the author, I'd get a little tired of seeing it stolen.

I've had my designs quite blatantly stolen (both for furniture and for original three dimension wooden puzzles). Believe me, it's not such fun when you're the other side of the fence.

Maybe they need to make it cheaper, easier and more generally user friendly to get the material legally? Some changes to the way it's currently structured seem to be needed. The model seems out of date now. You'll never get 100% compliance, or even close, but taking the heavy handed legalistic road is often a good way to drive the public a lot closer to 100% non-compliance...... :evil:

Cheers, Chris.

Hmm....

Well I don't know what the upshot of all that will be, but I did just buy the upgrade to Guitar-Pro 5 for $29. For being one of the first 1000 to buy or upgrade I got the entire guitar-pro tab catalogue, more than 40,000 tabs. It was an 117 mb download but it's fantastic.

I mean I'd pay that much for a fake book with 40,000 songs in it.

The end result is that it would no longer be allowed to sing a copyrighted song, because you are publicising the lyrics, without paying a licence fee. Sheer, utter nonsense.
The music industry mafia sees that it is losing it's grip - and you can't give all the tabbers concrete boots, so set the lawyers on them.
What it needs is for everyone - literally everyone - to boycott buying any form of music for one month, say December, and see how long it takes for them to compromise.

Sounds like a plan :D ,but I think the music industry is doing a fine job of putting themselves out of business any way :P

Hmm....

Well I don't know what the upshot of all that will be, but I did just buy the upgrade to Guitar-Pro 5 for $29. For being one of the first 1000 to buy or upgrade I got the entire guitar-pro tab catalogue, more than 40,000 tabs. It was an 117 mb download but it's fantastic.

I mean I'd pay that much for a fake book with 40,000 songs in it.
I upgraded the other day. The new engine is much better than plain old midi - I'm just beginning to see the new things in V5, as well. Nice job, they've done.
And 40000+ gp files to boot!!! It's the entire "Mysongbook.com" library! :lol: :lol: :lol:

I wonder how many of those song writters got their training by listening to the radio, working out a song, and playing it, or by using a Fake Book, or tabs?

Of course, if the song writers would put up a web page where I could by the real music for something reasonable, I'd go there instead of a tab site where half of the tabs are wrong. For the same reasons I buy CD's direct from artists and download legal music from artist web-sites -- because I do believe in supporting the artist.

But that would require the music industry businessmen to realize that their business model is changing. Which won't ever happen. They're still trying to figure out how to do away with 8-track recorders.

I wonder how many of those song writters got their training by listening to the radio, working out a song, and playing it, or by using a Fake Book, or tabs?

Since I've just started this guitar learning business this year, I'd never heard of tabs before now. Let alone tab sites and software to decipher them.

Back in the 70's when my band was learning all the covers we played, we had to either use LP's (not Les Pauls) or 8-tracks OR the radio to learn them. Recently, I talked to one of my guitarists from back then and asked him how he did it back then, especially today when we have so many more tools to use....i.e. Internet, tabs, any reproduction software with the ability to slow down without losing pitch, great assests such as you people and a host of other resources available to learn.

I have to give them guys credit for being able to pull the guts out of a song, reproduce it and play it live while being recognizable, and with only the ancient technologies compared to today.

Cheers to all you pros! 8)

I wonder how many of those song writters got their training by listening to the radio, working out a song, and playing it, or by using a Fake Book, or tabs?

All of them, one way or another. :D :D

It's one of the points around which all protection of "intellectual property" revolves. How much protection is reasonable, practical, and ethical and for how long?

I had my designs ripped, but where did I get the expertise to build and design things in the first place? From studying (and copying) what others did before me. We all do it constantly, from learning to speak and walk as babies on upwards. So after feeling mildly pissed off, I shrugged and moved on. :)

I could have registered my designs but the protection for that kind of design is minimal. And it's not worth the time and expense involved, unless there is big money involved in whatever you're seeking to protect.

We have different personal and community standards for a variety of creative work, where it's hard to pin down the "thing" that's being stolen. Books, software, music, scientific research, and designs in general are all treated somewhat differently. Books are even supplied "free to read" in libraries (an initiative which was originally intended for philanthropic educational reasons) and photocopiers are actually supplied to help rip the author off even more efficently! :?

Much creative work has some sort of timed protection before it passes into the "public domain" and everybody gets free use. And in the past, even if people felt comfortable ripping stuff off there was a natural delay in the time it took for information to pass around. This gave a window of opportunity to earn some money for your efforts.

However, with the electronic age this buffer has pretty much vanished altogether. I live in the country in West Australia (a pretty geographically isolated spot). But when Windows XP came out, despite all the fancy activation/registration crap, the kid next door was running a fully functioning pirate copy in less than a week from release date.

Dumping on the corporate big guns of the music industry is good fun, but it's something of a red herring. All creative artists need some protection for their work. We should be repecting other musicians not ripping them off. Hey, next year it might be your song they're all stealing! :twisted:

It probably comes down to the conscience of the individual and what each of us think is fair practise. I try to pay for what I use, but I have to admit that the more financially secure I've become the easier it is to be able to afford the morality I've always wanted! :wink: :wink:

Cheers, Chris

"when Windows XP came out, despite all the fancy activation/registration crap, the kid next door was running a fully functioning pirate copy in less than a week from release date."

you really are out in the "boonies"
i had a working copy 6 months "before" the release date :lol:

you really are out in the "boonies"
i had a working copy 6 months "before" the release date :lol:

:shock: :shock: :D

I'm clearly living in a deprived area. Send aid packages ASAP. 8)

Cheers, Chris.

"I'm clearly living in a deprived area. Send aid packages ASAP."

LOL nice try, those of us that have viewed the squalor you live in from your website pics aren't buying that for a moment.

Well , all this cry and ballyhoo , i would say not required...

Simple - when music industry isnt able to shut down gnutella network and programmes like shareaza , bearshare , limewire ..etc then TAB files and sites shutting is one big cat scratching on the pole type issue :lol:

I am sure this news will die out ..
oh my coke ..fizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz - 1 minute later -- poppp......2 minutes later .--b..b....bb...................and nothing then

So you see you just opened the bottle :wink:

Rahul

Back in the ol Napster days when this stuff started.. I used to download a Metallica song everyday just to spite them, for the principle.

Funny thing about that. When Metallica started suing downloaders of Metallica songs was when I stopped listening or buying any Metallica CD's. You go from being a voice of rebellion and angst to being the man and you've lost your credibility with me. Can't even look at those guys any more.

All creative artists need some protection for their work. We should be repecting other musicians not ripping them off. Hey, next year it might be your song they're all stealing!

Here are the questions that aren't being answered:

1) what is the net economic effect of this use? If it is that the band/songwriter gets more exposure, and is more in demand for another song writting gig or another concert, or more songs are being covered in bars paying royalties back to the ip holders, then they are probably making a lot more than they are losing, so the copying is helping them, not hurting them.

2) If the net is in fact negative, which I am not ready to concede, to what extent is this a harm to the creative artists rather than a harm to the IP holder -- which are almost never the same. Frankly, I don't ever want to ever harm the artists, but in my view, the quicker we get these non-production, non-necessasry ancient media companies out from between artists and consumers, the quicker the artists will actually get a fair shake.

3) Even if the net economic effect is negative and the harm is entirely shouldered by the artists, can we please drop the idea that copyright infringement is theft. Please. It's not. It's copyright infringment. No "property" changes hands in these cases. Making unlicensed use of electrons is not taking something material from one person's domain of exclusive use and transfering it illegally to another person. The IP holder may not have gotten every penny they're entitled to from licenses, but they had nothing of value taken from them that they have lost the use of. It's not theft.

Not to say it's not wrong, but the sooner the whole world drops the hyperbolic rhetoric the sooner we can have some real discussions about questions like "since the purpose of copyright is to give a limited government protection of monopoly for the exclusive purpose of inducing profit while protecting the public's ability to make use of the product once it enters public domain, to what extent are current IP laws hurting creative efforts given that nothing enters the public domain anymore? How can we have a new Disney (a company that was created by making new interpretations of public domain works) when there is no public domain anymore?

Hmm....

Well I don't know what the upshot of all that will be, but I did just buy the upgrade to Guitar-Pro 5 for $29. For being one of the first 1000 to buy or upgrade I got the entire guitar-pro tab catalogue, more than 40,000 tabs. It was an 117 mb download but it's fantastic.

I mean I'd pay that much for a fake book with 40,000 songs in it.
I upgraded the other day. The new engine is much better than plain old midi - I'm just beginning to see the new things in V5, as well. Nice job, they've done.
And 40000+ gp files to boot!!! It's the entire "Mysongbook.com" library! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Darn it. You guys made me go just now to buy the program. What with all of this talk of crackdown on tab sites and lyric sites in the air it's time to jump up and get what's there before it gets even harder to find. Not that they could ever make any of it go away but they could make it more annoying and difficult to find. There is still the catalog of tabs available so either I'm under the 1000 limit they set or it's a pretend 1000 person limit to get guys like me off the fence. Of course, ahem, I already have version 4 and 5 and all of the tabs but haven't used them. Tried version 4 and found it annoyingly tin sounding - via the midi music. Reading your discussion made me go look and see that they have a more pleasing sounding system. Sounds promising. I prefer those versions where you can go and complain if something isn't right.

And I completely agree with everyone who says that it's ridiculous to go after lyric and tab sites. Those sort of sites help keep the interest and enthusiasm up for the product they do sell. I go and find lyrics when I only know a line of a song or when I have the CD and the lyrics are either not there or rendered in a 'artistic' way which makes reading them impossible. Finding tabs online helps me learn which gets me into the store to buy the magazines/books and CDs. 8)