Spyke wrote
Now... I disagree here.
What makes tabs copyrighted material? Are the majority of them (i didn't follow the link so I don't know about this context) not merely an individuals representation of the said work? The creator of the tabs sat down and figured it out and then wrote it down, he hasn't copied the tabs from the artists sheet / tab music, and it is therefore flawed.
Tabs are just another way of representing a composition which IS copyrighted.
And long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, before the Internet was as pervasive as it is now, publishers used to boost their income by selling sheet music for an album - and that nearly always included tabs. Once somebody puts tabs in the public domain the opportunity to sell such books (or an electronic version thereof) disappears.
As a general note, I regard tabs out there in internet-land with some caution. I can't count how many I've downloaded and then found to be erroneous. This is not universal, and I always tip my hat to people who DO put a tab "out there" that is accurate, has been checked, that gives details of the chords and tunings used etc etc (all of which you used to get in the aforementioned books).
On an even more general note, free tabs and the resulting loss of sales can constitute a threat to an artist's income. These threats are starting to mount up now and I think we all need to consider the value that an artist and the artist's work holds for us. Buying officially released CDs, buying sheet music are ways to contribute to a situation where it is worth the artist's while to carry on producing the art. Most of the musicians we revere don't have earnings in the Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger leagues.
There's a Richard Thompson song book coming out later this year. It has been written out by a skilled musician and transcriber appointed by Thompson. He has proof-read the transcriptions and checked them against what he himself plays.
Thompson makes a living, but he's not buying private islands and country mansions. (He once said that his income is comparable to a bank manager's but he doesn't have to wear a tie). He needs to make enough money to provide for his old age, to put his kids through school, to be able to feed his family etc. Thompson owns the publishing rights to most of his songs. For me it is worth waiting for and then buying this kind of book rather than relying on freely available tabs because
1) Most of the freely available tabs are fundamentally incorrect and nearly all of them leave out a great deal of detail as regards fills and licks. This way I get accurate tabs, correctly written out and checked out by the man himself. This, in turn, will give some insight into his style and technique. That should be worth something.
2) It's a way of funding an artist whose work means something to me. (in a small way, admittedly, but if enough of his fans do these small things it ends up being a biggish deal to him)
The record business is not what it used to be (assuming it ever was what it used to be) and artists need to make money (for the same reason we all need to make money). For me we are starting to returning to the situation that pertained a couple of centuries ago where musicians relied at least in part on patronage in order to be able to compose and perform (eg Mozart, eg Beethoven).
Finally, no matter what we might think we know what record and publishing companies are capable of and it is Allan and Norio who would bear the brunt of any legal action. We might think it a fight worth fighting and that the record companies are full of it - but that would be settled in court by lawyers and the record companies can afford lots of lawyers and afford to retain them for a long time.
