Restricting the flow of art, or saving money?

As if illegal file-sharing wasn't a big enough burden to deal with, it seems the naysayers of free distribution of art have decided to tackle another issue. No, the RIAA is not involved in this one. No, the MPA (Music Publishers' Association) and NMPA (National Music Publishers' Association) are the main attackers in this extension of online music war. Their main complaint concerns the production and sharing of guitar tablature and online sheet music. They insist that such user-based websites infringe on copyrights and take away revenue from published guitar tablature books and sheet music. Such targeted sites include TabCrawler.com, which has not been shut down yet, whereas Guitar Tab Universe has obviously been contacted and prompted to make changes.

As a guitarist, I have personal experience with such guitar tab sites. Before I realized I didn't need literature to teach me how to play a song, I would occasionally visit such websites and find tablature to the desired song and try to play it. The thing is, these websites are user-contributed. They aren't the official transcripts of what was recorded by the artist on the album. This has its pros and cons: It encourages music listeners and players to become more involved with the music and write out how they think it sounds to post on such websites for others to see and tweak, but it also leads to numerous inaccuracies in the music and, in some eyes, illegal acts of copyright infringement.

These websites are designed to give interested players a general overview of how a song is thought to be played, with much of the performance left up to personal interpretation. Depending on the intricacy of the song the tab can be really close to how the actual song sounds, or perilously wrong. If one wants to know how the song was actually played, then published, artist endorsed tablature books can be purchased. Personally, while I dabbled in tab websites, I also bought several published books by artists including Incubus, Led Zeppelin, Weezer (from the Blue Album), and Jimi Hendrix. When I purchased these books, it wasn't because I was concerned about the possible legal ramifications of getting tablature from an unofficial online source. No, it was because I wanted an accurate representation of the music and I wanted to know exactly how it was played. When you are in the early stages of playing an instrument like the guitar, at least in my case, there is great thrill in learning how to play music from your favorite artists and personal heroes (I was so stoked on learning how to play, or at least try to play, Jimmy Page's solos). While the pleasure derived from playing other artists' music has significantly declined since my early playing days, I still have a blast rocking out to other music that I didn't personally create. It's just fun playing along to music that you love to listen to!

It seems that the argument resides here: Are open forums in which people converse with others about how to correctly played a recorded artist's songs illegal? Should it be considered copyright infringement and should it be stopped? There are legitimate concerns on both ends of the argument. For example, according to an article in The Independent, sheet music publishing in Britain is a £50 million a year industry. The question is, are these websites cutting into profit and seriously hurting sales? As of now there are no solid figures, which makes me question why this is an arising issue. Tab sites have been around since the Internet became popular. The last time I visited any guitar tab website was at least four years ago, back when there was seemingly no problem at all. If it is a real problem, why did they wait so long to address it and take action?

I fully understand that the sales taken away from these websites could hurt many people financially. However, I fail to see what the fuss is about. Sheet music publishing will be fine when it is all said and done, because serious musicians intent on learning songs will go to the official, certified source, not some amateur guitar tab website. Please note that this issue does not deal with only guitar tablature but classical music and all other kinds as well. It seems that guitar tab websites are the most targeted right now because, well, everyone plays guitar. That's a given.

This issue sounds eerily familiar to the RIAA's quest to sue everyone with a computer that has music on it, and it may be getting a little redundant. Will we always live in a world of legal battles concerning music and copyright, or will universal access become the wave of future? I sure hope the latter wins the fight.