![]() ![]() In early 2006, the Music Publishers’ Association and the National Music Publishers’ Association sent cease-and-desist letters to several large sites, including and MxTabs as well as Guitar Tab Universe. The advertising revenue he generated was enough to cover the costs of running the site. Eventually the site averaged 360,000 unique visitors per month. The user commonly looks for the tabs of a song that he already has heard or has a recording of and using the tabs as a guide, he is able to reconstruct the playing of the song in an approximate form.īalch started the site in 1999 while he was in college and learning how to play guitar. These tabs most often only have one part of the song–for instance, the guitar solo, the bass part, or the chorus. ![]() The text is easily written and displayed using typewritten characters and can be posted online, downloaded and printed with ease. Figure 1 below is an example of such a tablature, or “tabs” as they are also known as. The text represents the fingerings a guitarist may use to play a song. Balch ran Guitar Tab Universe, an online repository of guitar tablature, an annotation system that reduces to simple text how to play songs. Rob Balch may consider himself to be a facilitator of online music education, but others consider him to be a copyright infringer. And who, especially among small websites, has the deep pockets to fight the NMPA/MPA?” “An attack on this website is really an attack on every one of you who have told someone (in person, or via the written word, telephone, or e-mail) how you play a song on guitar. Policy solutions are considered to resolve the tension between the public’s desire to use such tablatures and the copyright owners of the original artists. The case that may have gone to court is discussed here, ranging from the appropriate legal claims of copyright infringement to the fair-use-defense arguments that would have been made. Litigation has been side-stepped with the arrival of new creative means to continue operation. Abstract–Guitar tablature Web sites have been the subject of recent cease-and-desist letters, forcing most to shut down.
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