Now the Music Industry wants guitarists to stop sharing

Liggy used our news submit to tell us about a subject that has been in discussion in the P2P Forum for quite some time now. First, the RIAA was blocking free use of music, even lossy music, from being shared on the Internet. Then, a while back, we heard rumblings of lyrics being off limits for sharing as well. This was pretty sad, that you could not use the Internet, that has become a nice source of lyrics, to read along as you listened to your favorite tracks. But now, we're finding that the pressure is on to stop the sharing of "guitar tabs" ASCII files, or sites that simply give instruction or tips on how to play the music yourself. This is of course probably legal, to stop such activity...but at the same time it seems so darned mean.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door," 'Highway to Hell" and thousands of others. The battle shares many similarities with the war between Napster and the music recording industry, but this time it involves free sites like Olga.net, GuitarTabs.com and MyGuitarTabs.com and even discussion boards on the Google Groups service like alt.guitar.tab and rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature, where amateur musicians trade 'tabs" '” music notation especially for guitar '” for songs they have figured out or have copied from music books.

Technically, I suppose it is also illegal then, for a parent to teach their child how to play "Somewhere over the Rainbow" on the piano, without paying a royalty to someone somewhere first. Or at least play it by staring at a purchased page of sheet music, heaven forbid you do it from memory! You'd be breaking the law!

We have to ask ourselves, how could this affect the music of tomorrow, how might this stunt the progression of music over the next generation? It seems with a tool like the Internet, that the music culture could really have a chance to share knowledge like never before! How sad to shut it down. What will we never hear?

It's a stretch I know, but imagine a day, when the ironically named "trade groups" have chips implanted in instruments, so that they will not play a copyrighted tune, unless connected to the Internet and you pay 99 cents first. What has happened to our music? How did something so wonderful as a song, come to be "owned" by faceless organizations? Where do they think the next true messiah of the music world will come from? We are already long overdue.

Source: NY Times