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Tabulature = Copyright Infringement

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Mabs2:
As some of you may know, I'm a beginning guitarist...

It's just come to my attention that one of my favorite tabulature (sheet music for dummies, kind of) (MXTabs) websites has been shut down by the National Music Publisher's Association (NMPA)...

Come to find out, another of my favorite sites (Guitar Tab Universe) is currently under attack by the NMPA...
This is very disheartening for me, as I don't have the ability yet to learn songs by ear...so this has basically put a halt to my learning.
I didn't think this belonged in THR's Legal and Political, so I figured I'd just post it here and ask everyone's opinion.

My opinion as a musician is this:  Music is for everyone.  If I were in the position where I thought others wanted to play my music, I would put the tabulature up myself (as many bands and musicians do on their own websites...heck, most of the tabulature you'd see on those two sites were from the official artist's site).

The only restriction I believe there should be on tabulature is that a person can't go out and claim the music as his creation and make records/etc....and that really has nothing to do with tabulature, as a person can do this without it.

Maybe my views are flawed, I dunno.  I'd like some other opinions.

Felonious Monk/Fignozzle:
This really chafes my chaps.
More domination and control from those who are rapidly losing their grip on the wallets of the creative process.  

Bastards.

crt360:
I hear you, man.  When I started learning how to play guitar, PCs and Internet stuff didn't exist yet.  Good tab was rare and hard to get.  A few magazines had a little and there were some books, but most of them were pretty crappy and oversimplified stuff.  I fortunately already had years of piano and violin training, so learning by ear was not too difficult for me, but 24 hr access to tab for songs I wanted to learn would have been awesome.  There is no good argument for NMPA's effort to shut down guitar tab sites.  It's not like the music publishers provide an alternative, accurate, official product that you could buy.  Not to mention that there are enough musicians who can pick most works apart by ear that it really only discriminates against newer musicians who need all the encouragement they can get to keep playing.

cosine:
My beliefs on tab sharing:

If the tab is copied verbatim from a book of tab I can buy at any music store and is copyrighted (something the artist is probably receiving royalties for), it shouldn't be shared. If it  is a transcription done by any regular Joe and put up on the Internet it should be perfectly legal share. What's the difference then as if I transcribed it myself or had a buddy transcribe it for me or just took a copy of a transcription my friend did for himself?

Mabs2:

--- Quote from: cosine ---My beliefs on tab sharing:

If the tab is copied verbatim from a book of tab I can buy at any music store and is copyrighted (something the artist is probably receiving royalties for), it shouldn't be shared. If it  is a transcription done by any regular Joe and put up on the Internet it should be perfectly legal share. What's the difference then as if I transcribed it myself or had a buddy transcribe it for me or just took a copy of a transcription my friend did for himself?Most of the tabulature around is either, as I said, taken from official websites (Cat Steven's website comes to mind, tabulature for nearly every song, and is the same character by character on most tab sites), or done by some Joe Schmoe (often times there will be comments along the lines as "I'm a bit fuzzy on this part.").

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