We have received a 'take down' letter from NMPA lawyers. Tabs on MetalTabs.com will not be available for download until we resolve legal issues.

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Wow. This is really no good.

Nomad's avatar is my reaction.

Shitty!

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It's things like this and recent decisions concerning internet radio that are extremely serious and should not be taken lightly. These media giants are truly and utterly cursed in the highest way.

Fuckin' Jews.

This is fucking mortifying. Do NMPA laws still pertain to Australian sites? Fucking cunts. Fucking fucking cunts.

This is shittier than King Kong's first dump of the day.

I know, why don't we stop kids from learning music altogether?

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music sucks anyway. ban it!

ah man this is complete bullshit

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What the fuck!

I'm not letting them touch Rivers Of Gore.

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I bow before these words.

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Fuck me...I mean, FUCK me...

Nazi mothercocking cunty-fucks

How can they order you to take down tabs for bands that they clearly don't represent? I'm pretty sure Mourning Beloveth don't have a team of lawyers churning out take down orders, and I'd say that's true for 99% of the bands on this site. What business is it of theirs unless they are directly employed by specific bands or directly employed by publishing groups representing said bands? It doesn't make sense, it's as if there's a generalised onslaught against tabs regardless of who fuckin' owns 'em. In that case, they have no grounds to "order" you to do anything.

I always believed this was one site that was safe from all of this bullshit...

Arse-biscuits.

This is SCREWED! (to put it incredibly lightly)
I never thought metal tabs would bow to the bull of the NMPA.
Screw the NMPA.
I say we boycott them, don't buy anything they support. So that probably means buying no sheet music or any $^&% like that until they decide to put an end to this tyranny. And until that works, we need to rebel against them and keep putting tabs up on the internet. If metal tabs is going to stay down, I vote that we make our own websites on something like freehostia.com, where we put up all the tabs we can salvage.
I will be putting up tabs soon on my website, heavymusic.freehostia.com
I would advise everyone to do the same, and we can link to each others sites...

THIS IS SO SCREWED UP

By the way guys, you might be able to get some tabs still with google cache.

THIS IS FVCKED

+1

Mother fuckers

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I have a very great deal of trouble believing in the legality of these recent actions.

I do also...

Here is an interesting link about this crap.

Also, it should be of note that ultimate-guitar.com has received one of these letters, and decided to stand up to the douche bags. I think metal tabs should do the same.

I agree, it sounds like a lot of hot air to me. Most people, when they receive these threats, will shit half a brick and comply. But if you run it by someone who's knowledgeable of such matters they'll probably laugh. For instance:

http://thepiratebay.org/legal - I think MetalTabs is a hell of a lot more innocuous than a P2P website.

Ask a solicitor for advice. It's usually free, and if not it's pretty cheap just for a cursory assessment of the situation. If you have any legal fees, put a donation drive on the front page or something. You've got my cash, that's for sure.

stick it to the man!

WTF this is complete bs!

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I'll post about some legal matters on it the situation when i get off of work...

But hey guys it least we have each other and Aim to share shit with....

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UG is not forced to stand up to anyone...their server is located in Russia, im not too sure where this server is located. However, in Russia it is perfectly legal to have tabs on websites because they pay some sort of due at the end of each year or each month to have the right to do so. Russians dont give a fuck aslong as it lands money in the goverments pocket.(Yes this money goes to the goverment if im not mistakin)

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Ah, I see. Maybe this site should get a Russian server.
Or maybe that's not possible, I speak from ignorance...

This sucks fucking cock. I say stand up to them. Let's get members from bands to talk to them. Didn't Muhhumad of Necrophagist tab stuff out and Mike Kimbal from Dying Fetus?

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Oh man.
Mysongbook was first. Now Metaltabs. Now we have to wait. argh
when are "we" going to work again?!

Aw FUCK!! DAMIT! I'm sure you’ve all heard of taborama, In my opinion that site was the best, but the same thing happened their, in the end Jer (admin) closed it all down, and all of us heard rumors of him going to jail...? Well whatever, I’m probably not going to come on this forum again, I've been writing allot of my own music, and I finally know how to read notes, and I really appreciate all your guys help (yes its a compliment and a thank you), I hope one day ill here your guys music on TV or something, have a good life, and keep all your music ALIVE!!!

-No heart/Dylan (if you want to add me on msn its: maniacmanik@hotmail.com)

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What I don't understand is, if it's mandated by the site's submission policy to include the copyright information for the tab to be posted in the first place, then what problem does the NMPA have? Is that not good enough for them? I do not see a legitimate legal reason as to why the NMPA would go after tab sites. The argument that "People can get [tabs] for free on the internet, and it's hurting the songwriters" as said by MPA president Lauren Keiser from Knive's article he posted is totally irrational. I do not know ANY tab site that generates profit; it's not like we have a registration fee and a tab d/l'ing fee or whatever, THEN I would see a reason as to why the NMPA would be pissed, but if we're just putting in our own hours and time trying to figure out our favorite tunes and share our discoveries with others in a decent and functional internet environment, then what problem do they have? They certainly aren't losing any money and we certainly aren't making any.

Another thing I don't get - if Luc Lemay and Luke Kenny are allowed to post their own tabs and approved tabs from other people of their own songs (Gorguts and Berzerker respectively) on their OWN webspaces, what is the damn difference? Why aren't they going for every single piece of tablature on the internet? I think it's ridiculous that the NMPA is targeting Internet tab sites. If this was all on paper then it would all be ok, the fact that this is on the internet makes it wrong? Bullshit. It only makes tab sites easier targets because they are easy to find. The NMPA may have it's own legal reasoning as to why tab sites can be shut down, but without an actual challenge back, we could never know if this was actually legit or not. I know I'm not the only one who doesn't think it is. The argument goes that posting tabs of songs is a violation of copyright protection because they are "derivative works" of the original songs. But this site mandates input of copyright information about the song into the tab before the tab is even archived. Some of us even put warnings at the header of the tabs that go "This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research."


You're right. They have no business or legal grounds at all, they are just seeking out tab sites to destroy because 1) they are easy prey, 2) they are easy to find, 3) most of them have given in, and 4) most have never even fought back in the first place.

With that all said, I will support MetalTabs.com however I can.

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I will be licensed to practice law in less than one month. They have no case, only fear and money. NEVER buy RIAA CDs.

Gay. Fucking so dumb.

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dumb

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http://nmpa.org/contact/index.asp


Everyone should these tell fuckers to shove it...

I know how you feel but you have alot of holes in your arguement. Just because you post something and say "put copyright information on it" doesn't negate anything other than who "originally" wrote the music. But what if its not even the band labeled? Is it still "copyright protected"? And further asking the question how "protected" is it if ANYBODY can visit and see it regardless of royalties to the band?

Shouldn't a band have the right to protect who does and doesn't recieve their music? Be it by mp3 or a transcribed version in a .txt file or .html file? I'm not saying a single band on this website wouldn't allow tabs to be on this or any other website, i'm just stating "the other side" which is at times a pretty hefty thing to go over.

Now what was raised before about the legality of some other agent filing claims with no affiliation with the said victims, is a good arguement. If there are bands "covered" by the "mpa" well then thats one thing, but if there is not, then thats another entirely.


Also tab sites i imagine DO hurt sales of tab BOOKS. Why buy a tab book that is sometimes expensive as shit when you can do it on the internet for free? Sure some attempt to make the arguement, "well if a band provides a tab book i would get it because its accurate transcriptions of the songs unlike tabs". I will call bullshit all day long, and so will others. Anybody who in a right mind attempts to say that they would buy most bands tab books (if offered) over viewing internet tabs is a liar. Unless they already have a moral objection to tabs, and i'm pretty sure nobody reading this does. (Note i used the word most, because its one thing to buy a single tab book or maybe 2, its another entirely to learn songs purely by buying tab books, or the alternative, by ear)

Sure this makes me all sound like the bad guy, but the fact is i hate what they're doing just as much as the next guy, and intuition tells me they're on extremely shakey legal ground, (which this entire issue actually is).

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He who controls your eyeballs and ears controls your brain.

This is fuckin' despicable beyond belief. Goddamn those greedy cash whores. The worst part is, every other site that said they would "resolve legal issues" never did, and never went back up. This BETTER not be the fate of metal tabs. This site is easily the best metal tab site out there. The majority of the bands tabbed here would support this site, not those greedy fucks. Not to mention that the majority of bands on this site don't even have tab books. This kind of shit just pisses me off big time.

Do you guys expect to ever get the tabs back up?

It's another thing when bands don't release tab books (ala the vast majority of death metal bands)

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Absolutely, and i'm with that 100%. Because most don't, for obvious economic reasons. Which presents quite a bit of problems and further greys the area of morality and legality with tab production.

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One of their arguments is that when using programs like guitar pro and powertab, you are able to play it back and it sounds like the original song. Therefore you have made a copy

It's only the archive that is locked down I noticed. Pending tabs, incomplete and so forth are still available for download.

What next, sue anime fan art for duplicating the work of artists?

What angers me the most about this is the moronic assumption that in a world where nothing was free we’d really have BOUGHT a book for EVERY freaking tab that we used from this site (not even mentioning the fact that here we can pick specific songs – the ones we really want to learn). Hey, I support the bands I like just like everybody else here, but I’m not Bill Gates : I can only devote so much to CDs, concerts, instruments/equipment and… tab books (I have 25 of them - EXCLUDING classical scores - and I think thats a lot considering that I've now become pretty good at tabbing songs )…

Besides that, I’m very puzzled as to how playing songs that you learned without an official tab book hurts the bands. I can’t recall how many times I played a song to non-metalheads who thought metal sucked, but who started to like it because now it was played live in front of them – and yes, who since became metal fans, bought CDs, went to concerts, etc. I’m talking about my guitar students here mostly, but it also happened quite a few times when I was in high school. Not only it’s not hurting the bands in any way, it’s free promotion ! Sorry, but it doesn't hurt the bands, it's only a blow to those who're trying to benefit from them and aren't good enough at commerce (it would have hurt composers in Beethoven's time, but this is just not true anymore).

To sell your product, it’s simple, you have to make it more appealing than the competition (and not just “appear” more appealing); the newspapers have the same problem nowadays with blogs. One day the media giants will have to realize that their product stinks, if only because they are ordering us to buy it after they’ve crushed the competition.

The idea behind copyright law is that a musician's right to income is protected. Logically, if no income is derived from tab book sales due to no such book existing then there is no income to protect.

The NMPA's jurisdiction in our case should only extend to songs that have published transcriptions. I fail to see how the remainder of tabs on this site are subject to copyright legislation. It smacks of denotating a nuclear device in order to destroy a bee hive.

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Oh for fucks sake. This is shit.

Its the end of it. Look at msb, they got contacted a year ago or so about this and their tabs still havent been made available anew

So the best solution is to simply remove either the bands with tab books or those under the NMPA's jurisdiction.

The problem is that the NPMA consider the whole site as falling under their jurisdiction.

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Ever see those copyright commercials in the beggining of some movies?
I just had a funny thought

You wouldn't keep a movie rental, would you?
You wouldn't take someone's purse, would you?
You wouldn't jack a car, would you?
You wouldn't transcribe songs to tablature, would you?

Tablature is Stealing.

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What the fuck?

NMPA can shove it, bitch.

lol

johnmansley and sycophant and TM and teh nub should defend our case
then NOMAD will stab MNPA in the throat

it is so strange that this is illegal...

first, all tabs are not from existing bandmembers...
second, are those tabs not kind of promo material for bands, this way bands got known better... people might buy CDs, go to concerts...
third, all tab text files cannot be heard... so why is it illegal...

there are 100000s of tabsites... why are the tabs in this site closed for public?, (first of all it's metal...almost no-one listens to metal...)

maybe 1% of all music listeners...


It is strange, it's all about money for that organization... that they can get profit, for closing such sites...

very lame

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The mpa doesn't make money by closing sites first of all. The probably spend bizzilions of dollars just printing out and mailing cease and dissist letters.
Also regardless of what you feel the indirect effect of tab sites is, is pretty trivial to the fact of the matter. It effects tab book sales and protecting an artists "right" to protect how their material gets reproduced. Also what does former bandmembers have to do with anything? And yes band members HAVE submitted tabs. Nearly all the At the Gates tabs were from one of the guitarists. Also in context to promotion. When did the band say it was ok for you or somebody else to reproduce their music via a bunch of dashes and numbers to promote their music? Its similar to people making knock off tshirts and selling them. Sure it adds that extra bit that the person is making money, but aren't those tshirts representing and promoting the band? In turn seeing more shows, cds, and blah blah blah even if they aren't making a direct commission off the tshirt sales?

Also John Mansley: Don't you think that if there weren't the compition with tab sites there would be a drastic increase in demand for tab books by artists? Therefore making production of tab books and giving artists more money for their music than they do now. Because of the compition from tab sites (right or wrong) there is little reason for a band to produce tab books, therefore this "is" income to protect, and thats income thats not able to come in on their own material even if they attempted to. If you see the point i'm attempting to derive. A monopoly over the market via free trade of tablatures.

I'd say money is only a side product of copyright protection. Its literally what it says. Copying protection. Its preventing a person from outside of the bands control from reproducing and disseminating "their" material without their knowledge and consent. Hell its almost not even up to the band either, more like Labels in which the music was originally produced on.

Also why is it somehow better to protect "classical" and "baroque" composers music than to protect another bands music? This is just a question posed to stir up thoughts. Is it somehow fundamentally ok to ear tab and hand out copies of other bands music where as doing that for say Vivaldi, Bach, or Beethoven's music is not?

It appears to me that no matter how "logical" one attempts to break it down thats almost never going to solve a case like this or even produce much ground work. If one wants to one could break down the entire "process" and it would appear to be just a bunch of fucking ascii "art" that just happens to mean something in combination with guitar/bass/drums.

The only real way i can see to attack this by some sort of court decision deciding that the transcripition of ear translation to notes is free domain. That the combination of notes even if its from a song produced by a band is free domain to the public. Which, it probably should be. This would remove all bullshit "copyright" stuff people put on tabs, which shouldn't even be there anyway. Nobody gave anybody (for the most part) the right to put that nonsense on there as it is.

Just a simple statement or understanding that this happens to be "similar" to a bands work and that YOU, YOURSELF produced and wrote the tab.

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oh well im sure itll work out and in the mean time youve all got some drama

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I'de like to see what UG does, I've been a mod there for years and Eugeny (the owner) will definetly take it up.
Let's first see what happens there. Does anyone know of any record of previous legal battles between tab websites and these guys?

These guys are like organised crime. And organisation of rich fucks afraid to lose a bit of money on their copyrighted songs. Just look at their personal profiles, what a bunch of wankers.

They are just internet lawyers.

We aren't making money from tabs though, and clearly we aren't stealing it from the bands considering about 10% or less of the bands on this site actually have tab books. I've spoken to many bands I've tabbed through email etc. and they are more than happy to have me make tabs for them.



Thats bullshit. Your point can possibly relate to about half of the thousands of bands hosted on the internet. Can you imagine Vlad Tepes releasing a tab book? Birdflesh? Ulver? December Wolves? Rompeprop? Repulsion? All these bands have dedicated but small underground followings, the money put into tab books would be a complete waste, money time and effort, printing, authoring. And what about bands like Repulsion that have recently seen a surgence of tabs by fans, but are actually defunct? Is the lead singer gonna call up and go "Hey Mike, yeah, it's me, Joey, how's shit been? Yeah sorry I havn't called for 20 years, but wanna release a tab book? Yeah? YEAH? AWESOME!". And what a dumb point to make about if there are tabs what is the point of tab books. People will always buy official merch. People will always make mistakes in tabbing anothers song. If a band is searching the internerd looking for its own tabs and sees a bunch of bullshit or mistake ridden tabs it's not gonna go "Well gee man, looks like our fanbase can't play guitar anyway, we better not release a book!" but it is gonna go "Wow, look how hard they tried, lets get some official tab books happening!" And again only the bigger bands are gonna do that anyway.

Correct... most of the people bitching and crying about the tabs being down have under 50 post...i mean shit there are a hell of alot more tabs sites to go too. Hopefully everything will work out for us here without any trouble however.

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why are bands adding these bandtabs to their websites then? which I have tabbed??

is there any discussion going to those metal bands, why tabs cannot be made?

I know popular bands are complaining, but I never heard metal bands are complaining...

and there are not many people who buy tab books, even if these tabs are gone... still nobody buys it...

then next thing, some bands don't exist anymore, do'n have any merchandise, don't have websites, don't live anymore...

and still tabs of those bands are forbidden, why is that then?

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I'm a real one. But I know jackshit about copyright laws

Actually, I'm a bachelor in laws, have my masters in a different area. Shame Dutch laws don't really apply. In that case most problems are solved with a Heineken at the table.

well ill ask a friend of mine, he is into this shit too... lol

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I agree, I think they just assume everyone will listen to their threats and help them out that easily.

It's not like every webmaster can afford to get into a legal battle with them.

Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Bach are all in the public domain. It's perfectly fine to pass around transcriptions of their work without getting permission; who would you be getting it from? Just like anybody can publish a copy of a Shakespeare play, or why there are so many TV adaptations of books by long-dead writers.

Anyway, this all requires such a funny interpretation of copyright law that I don't put much stock in it. They're going to get to a point where they have to prove that illegal copies of available materials have been made and distributed for profit, and while the latter is simple (this site has ads which generate revenue), the rest is very difficult, and would necessarily make the following illegal:

'Unlicensed' cover bands (who make money playing songs without permission; of course, if this does happen it would be the best possible result of all this bullshit. Fuck cover bands)
'Unlicensed' live covers (because a calculable portion of the ticket revenue would go to the cover)
Guitar instructors teaching copyrighted songs to students without having a legal copy of its official transcription
etc.

But the real big thing for me is that I know of many cases where a lab that developed a certain drug failed to secure the rights to that drug, because they could not prove in court that their discovery would not have been made by other labs working in their usual way. They'll eventually have to prove that tabs are copies of something, and that's not going to be possible. But until that point they're going to intimidate a lot of small sites.

This is just current bandmembers, for Reptile and Behind the Curtains of Night-Phantasmagoria are transcribed by Jamie Stinson (Astennu).


Perhaps NMPA is confusing us with Tabspedia stealing everything from us.

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Well, the arrangement of notes in music cannot be copyrighted. It's like copyrighting the alphabet.

If you learn a song by ear and don't write it down, that's fine. If you teach it to someone by showing them, that's fine too, right?

What about the guitar magazines? They have tab in there all the time from professional transcribers. They still have mistakes in them. It's someone's interpretation of a song that is tabbed (with permission) to generate money and I'm assuming that royalties are in there somewhere. It's by no means "Official" tab, is it?

So, if I buy a guitarworld magazine and learn it from there, then that's fine too. If I show my friend how to play it, then that is, what? Copyright infringement?

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Do we have to change the website name now?

From metaltabs to

metaltabsaredown?

Down with tabs? Up your ass!

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I agree with that point 150% and that my intent really wasn't to say that these underground bands would all of a sudden have an outstanding market for tab books. And i see now that i didn't quite word it as well as i had hoped. I think in my original post i said something about it being completely unlikely to exist because of lack of demand. But other bands much more so. Lets say maiden, and so on. Yes they have tab books, but unless you are a "dire hard" fan, or feel like "wasting money" why would you feel the incentive to buy it?

I'm not saying in every case there will be a demand to buy tab books, but in a bunch of the more "high profile" cases it seems naive to think that internet tabs do not prevent sales of tab books.


Also thanks for bringing that point up PST i completely forgot to mention that. About websites having ads and the money that is brought in as a result of that advertisement. Whether profits are made off of "others works" or not, a website still makes money based off its advertisements which it gets from the traffic that is brought to the site for what? "Anothers work"

Regardless of whether or not we are "internet lawyers" or not its still worthy of talking about and developing the idea behind ownership and applying that to many of things that are up to debate. If anything other than providing personal growth and knowledge about various topics.

Anyways back on track.
Yeah pst i thought they could be public domain but you in a way answers exactly what i was trying to get across at the end. Ownership of the materials. What exactly is copyrighted and requires protection and what not about those works? The interpretations and ownerships of varations to those pieces. In otherwords those companies who produce the sheet music for those scores have rights to those VERSIONS that they produce. Therefore seeking royalties and alll benefits from producing it.

Should not the same apply to tabs? After further thinking about it after posting the last time, it definitely appears to me that we should remove ownership of tabs from artists. Because how it is now, thats what it is. Society and even us have basically said the artists "own" (like partytime said) the arrangements of notes, and this is the key behind the change needed. If the artists no longer have ownership over somebodys personal recording of something they have heard (a tab) then there is literally no arguement present and nothing NMPA can do about it. This doesn't apply to mp3s and cds for obvious reasons. The band put forth money and effort to produce something. The act of copying a cd and/or mp3 reproduces something that somebody else produced. If a band didn't produce the tab who says they should have any credit for the tab what so ever?

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Muhammed has tabbed out some Necrophagist songs, and Kelly Conlon transcribing at least one Monstrosity song. I'm sure there are several others I've forgotten.

Mike Kimball used to be a very active tabber, he did a bunch of Slayer, Exodus, Cannibal Corpse, Pantera, and other bands. He's even done a couple of songs since joining Dying Fetus (one CC song, IIRC).

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What I was trying to say is that the NMPA seems to be obsessing over – what IMO are – imaginary losses. They seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that a free product creates an artificial demand for said product – a demand that is very likely to vanish as soon as someone comes out with the brilliant idea to impose a price on it.

Yes, it’s would be naive to think that no one will ever choose to download a bunch of tabs for free instead of buying a book (especially when the tabs have been copied directly from the book ! – now that’s lame…), but it’s equally naive to think that every time someone downloads a tab off the net this person would have actually bought it had he/she been forced to choose between 1- paying for it or 2- reserve the money for something else.

I feel exactly the same way regarding P2P and songs; there is just no way I would have paid for every song/tab/book I got for free on the net, and in almost every case I simply wouldn’t have known about the artists and/or wouldn’t have cared at all about them, when now I do. Besides, I find that what I get for free I don’t use much (if at all) – I don't know for the others, but in my case I find that it tends to induce laziness. This is why I do not hesitate to buy something I’m interested in every time I judge that my money is well spent (recently the Emperor and Necrophagist tab books) and when I feel that the artist is well worth encouraging. I paid for it -> I use it; it's that simple.

(I’m also perfectly aware that we can still get tabs from other sites like Powertabs or RoG; this is just not the point - I'm not whining, I swear ! )

Most definitely true and its in my opinion a case of jumping on the bandwagon with anti-piracy. And as i see it all sorts of companies are jumping at "lost profits" from profit that would have by no means been as high as they proclaim. This holds true in movies, games, programs, and especially music. There is still a sizeable loss had that alternative never been created. (piracy as we know it).

This is just a classic battle of things changing and the realization of how important the internet really is. Its not "just the internet" like so many dull whitted people attempt to claim. Whether its a forum or an online store.

If anything, i think people should calm down a little and remember that generally how things should be have a way of working themselves into the way things happen.

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and what if metaltabs contact all these bands, and let those bands add the tabs to their website,

and metaltabs make links to the tabs...

I think it's quite legal that way, so metaltabs still can exist, with the permission from bands, cause it's their own site/space... and their material, but tabbed by a musician from here...

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this is bull cc has a link to metaltabs on their site so i don't know why these people can make decisions for us all we are doing is trying to learn songs i don't understand how that is copyrited and shit

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I'm not a lawyer on the internet or real life, so sorry if I came off as one. My last post was me trying to reason with the current situation; it sucks having put so many hours of work in tabbing the songs I did only to find out now that they are down due to some vague ill-fitting "legality" issues. I certainly hope everything works out man, if there's anything that we can do to help, let us know.

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Ain't that a bitch? You worked hard producing something and you don't even own the rights to that product.

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your an asshole sometimes..he was merely sharing his sorrowful state. I still love you tho .

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how can they officially prove that the songs are the songs that we are tabbing?
Because the tabs aren't absolutely Official. and technically speaking those names could just be...... i dunno

this was poorly worded but i hope you all understand what im getting at

maybe because we have uh a section in which we list the bands name...then that section drops into another section in which it list the bands cds and under that we have the song names, and beside it we have that tab up for download if its available.

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How am i an asshole? I was completely feeling his plight as well as everybody else that has put time an effort to creating tablatures by ear and the NMPA and others claiming they have no rights them. Thats complete bullshit. It's utter ridiculous that you can't produce something "based off of" something else and not have the rights to your own production.

And JOAM you're about half right.

And proaz thats not the point. I pointed that out to you last night and your "warez website." Just because you have it listed as one thing doesn't make it the truth nor credible in any sense of the word. What about those shitty tabs that you come across that are not even remotely right? Shoudl these people be fined and thrown in jail for spreading this around?

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haha i took what you said the wrong way man my bad, i thought you were being a smart ass lmao...


Anyway ok let me play internet lawyer since i'll be a lawyer a couple of years from now here it goes:

Copyright - Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally "the right to copy" an original creation. In most cases, these rights are of limited duration. The symbol for copyright is ©, and in some jurisdictions may alternatively be written as either (c) or (C).

Also by reading this piece of information it may expand your brain a little to the reality of copyright Right Here :
10 Myths About Copyright this information is correct.

Also read this is you still don't feel refreshed enough on the information already given. Intellectual Property Law

:::::::::::::::
As you can see "particular expression"(Wikki, Copyright)...from this what comes to mind about an expression? Lets see painting, songs, and o yea someones guitar work. A lot of individuals thoughts process's proclaim, "Hey anyone can make that up its our instrument, and we tabbed it by ear". Well it doesn't work that way especially considering that the bands name, their albums, and their songs are listed on the website. Even though you tabbed it out "by ear" you still ripped the idea off the bands copyrighted song. Therefore infringing upon a copyright that exist in our commodity of a world.

There is away around this(half ass way). There are three rules in which you can infringe upon a copyright with the law on your side. However, two in particular stand out in this situation, "The Amount and substantiality of the portion used."(Radcliffe, Fair Use). You can use small riffs as an example to show individuals how a certain piece goes . Take the following for example:

Tuning Drop B
|-------------|
|-------------|
|-------------|
|----000-421-|
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Riff 1 - Machine Head "The Blood The Sweat The Tears"
Machine Head © 1999


This example of Machine Heads song is perfectly legal if your using it without getting an economic gain from it.(Money if your an idiot) Therefore the courts would find the above "FAIR USE" of someone else's copyright.


The other rule is "Must not incur and economic loss"(my old law book), this rule is a bit tricky considering how the music industry is, this could either work with them or against them. First off this rule will more and likely work for them considering their filthy fucking rich and can higher lawyers better than Johnny Cochran and hell if he got O.J off where fucked. A lot of individuals go "All bands don't have tab books". Still what if the music industry released them in the future? That could be definitely used as a defense in any trail, if the case made it that far. It's a two sided sword for one the band doesn't have any tab books; but then the music industry would just go, "Hey where releasing them". Guess what tho even with this little piece of information they still hold the copyright to the song.


I don't support the shit don't get me wrong. I mean without the free tabs on the internet i doubt i would have ever picked up a guitar. Especially considering the location i live in, bum fucking Egypt where you can get a Tim McGraw tab book before Pantera. If you really don't like it say fuck it and call your congressman in your state, if you live in the U.S. that is. Congress makes the laws enough people call, and guess what you have congress men pushing for a law to protect tablature.(and no way in hell enough people would call)

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Ok during these period Pst with Beethoven, Vivaldi, and Bach there were no copyright laws. Back during those times it was actually considered praise if someone stole your music and so forth and used it in one of their pieces. Therefore being so old and no laws existing at the time its perfectly legal, and besides who in hell would the copyrighted work belong to?



Its a really different situation. These guys have not failed to get copyright of their work. With the situation you listed it seems to be a company failure for not securing the patent for their hard intellectual work. I mean how can such a discovery be proven that it wasn't mechanically, and intellectually feasible to get the same results in another lab just as good? Thats impossible considering most labs involved in medicine are up to date and have it least decent financing, and commercial support from business.

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you know how next to the riffs given, there is a lttle x6 or something to signify repetition, since noone actually writes it all out?
is that a loop hole, since we're not writing out the songs, merely portions of them?

Yes I do, Taborama.com got shut down but it had ALOT more tabs, and ALLLOOOOT bigger forum, all the tabo members where making there own tab sites and forums, but everyone just kinda got bored, and after a while, everyone just kinda gave up ya know? thats why me and a few others from taborama came to this site, but now this ones down? I mean come the fuck on.

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No you retard. You need to look into how things become public domain. There are beatles songs if i'm not mistaken now that are public domain (or at least they were talking about beatles songs and elvis songs). Generally in music it has occured after time has passed and the songs have been incorporated into the culture. I believe patents expire after 20 years although you can get extensions.(which most do) and there are alot that are going up in smoke as a result.

And response to your second paragraph. PST is right. The entire case is proving that a tab is something that was copied. They will have to argue that by ear transcribing a song its actually a copy of the song that was illegally made.

And refering to the drug industry, that IS true. I've heard it from my chem professor who works at the patent office in DC dealing with patents from drug companies. That is one insanely ruthlessly tough business i tell you what. (getting a patent for a drug)

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dude your an idiot fucking read your history book about the time of fucking BEETHOVEN! there were no copyright laws ughhhh thats all i was talking about this is way before people new what public domain was...

dude they ARE COPYING TABS WTF? i mean we just cannot make the law fit our little nest egg.

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No shit. But that has nothing to do with WHY something is public domain.

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THAT IS WHY IT HAS BEEN PUBLIC DOMAIN! Untill they made the fucking law people didn't no what public domain was. All those guys stuff has always been free to use with no problems. I never mentioned new shit from this day in age like you mentioned the "Beatles"

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We are both right but you are arguing something that has NO relievance to the case. It wasn't the fact that THEY are public domain as much as MUSIC can be public domain.

You're looking at it from the literal point of view, and thats not how it was intended.

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It has relievane to the discussion! Jesus Christ why must you persist? ASSHOLE!

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No it doesn't. Tell me what production of something before 1923 has anything to do with internet tablature? It does not.

I withdraw what i said at first about public domain. That was more or less my observation of how intellectual works become public domain over time, but after doing a little looking around i found a page that spells it out a quite well.

Apparently this person at a UNC college did their homework.
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm

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I was answering PST QUESTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On how and why ITS BEEN COPIED OVER THE YEARS SINCE THEIR TIME!

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PST never had a question. haha (at least one that wasn't rhetorical )

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Well an reply to his statement.....

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Like i said like 3 posts ago.



You still missed what the ORIGINAL post that i mentioned bach and all them was about. It wasn't the fact that they are ancient as hell it was pointing to the fact that music can and IS public domain (able to reproduced) in certain ways. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was INDEED before 1923 because tabs haven't existed that long.

So i repose the question. What does pre-copyright laws have to do with the current situation?

And apparently i'm an asshole because i'm persistant in a disscussion. I'm not exactly sure if thats an appropriate discription to describe my retorts to your ramblings.

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.....its not the fact they are ancient as hell either...i was merely stating some facts...then you called me retarded and offended me!

However i will take this as a draw and not defeat and call us even!

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!!
So you pointed out a personal attack. I soweys.
haha. Forgot i slipped that one in there.
It was a pst moment.

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Thats right bitch apologize!

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Good luck Nomad. Thanks for letting the rest of us know about this. I would like to see MT remain unchanged, but I will understand no matter what the final outcome. If I were a Lawyer I could maybe help more but in this case I can only offer my loyal support.

Again, thanks for telling us about this and thanks you for hosting my favorite web site of all time all these years.

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Well what about guys, like Zac from Cephalic Carnage, tabbing their own songs and posting them here?
It's pretty evident most of these bands want their shit to be learned by others because it's flattering. Most of the small record companies owning the rights to the cds probably wouldn't care either. I highly doubt Matt Jacobson from Relapse could give a shit that Nile, Dying Fetus, Pig Destroyer, etc. tabs exist.

Does the NMPA think they own evey sound ever recorded or something?

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well how you will explain this then...

in the irish folk music, there are 10000s of bands who are copying numbers from older bands... they steal the tune and make their own creation of the song...

if you talk about copyright, how is the copyright in those cases then...

Second...
Here we just talk about tabs, (in text written), produced by tab makers, which is kinda ownership of tabmakers... so in fact we own this product (the Tab), first it's not the original tab, so if original tabs were posted on Metaltabs I can understand the copyright protection... but these are all self-made tabs...

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If people who were descendants of Beethoven, Bach, and Vivaldi could step forward, their music would not be in public domain. Don't start stupid arguments if your whole point is easily negated. In fact, if you're going to argue over something I said, just wait for me to come by and insult everybody and don't even worry about it.

Very few Irish bands have had a copyright on their songs, and with no copyright there's no copyright infringement. But a similar idea applies: how can they enforce a 'right' when there doesn't have to be any copying to have the exact same notes (i.e. if somebody can just listen to a tune and play it)? They can't. They can only enforce it if somebody copies the song or if it gets covered in a context in which the cover itself is making the band money, both of which have been the traditional domain of this argument, for that very reason. So this is a big, gay diversion, presumably for something of which we're oblivious, but which will be fucking awful.

The crux is that whichever way you look at the law, something has to be copyrighted in order for copyright law to be enforced. In this case, many of the bands on this site don't have tab books and so the tabs posted here are not a copy, they are "original works", for want of a better expression.

I find it highly doubtful that the potential existence of a copyright would be enforceable. Transferring accounting law to this area - and of course, in all likelihood this will not be applicable; merely useful as an example - it would have to be shown that the future copyright was "probable", not possible or remote. For instance, a publishing company would have to prove that a tablature book is currently a work in progress, or that an intention to initiate the transcription process is in place. I would find it doubtful that a legal right exists over the transcriptions if both of these conditions are not met.

Of course, the above paragraph only pertains to the possibility of arguing for the legal enforcement of a future copyright. I would still be astonished if a potential copyright is enforceable even if the above conditions were satisfied. The point still remains that the copyright doesn't physically exist and so is not enforceable.

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Good luck Nomad, with all of this...


tmfreak, it almost sounds you work for that NMPA company??

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