The MPA

GeminiMan

Member
I must say, the MPA has become my most hated organization at this point. For those who don't know, they've now started to shut down sites providing guitar, bass, and drum tabs. They've already taken down mxtabs.net, which was probably the only decent guitar tab resource on the net that was actually useful as far as quality, accuracy, and ratings go.

I think we should just throw the MPA in a big firey pit with Jack Thompson.

G'dammit.
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Unless the tabs were copied from commercial tablature books, I don't see how they could be illegal. This is just flat out wrong and insane.
<P ID="signature"><font size="1">"Do unto others what your parents did to you."</font></P><P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by Mikey on 12/29/05 02:10 AM.</FONT></P>
 
> G'dammit.
>

MPA? RIAA perhaps? either way, they suck. If they treated their customers a little nicer, maybe they wouldn't be so bad, but to them, everyone is a potential thief, or so they make it seem.
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Isn't RIAA the recording industry?
If so, I don't see why they would bother about instrument tabs(which I admit I have no idea what they are, just that they don't sound like anything the RIAA has control over).
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> Isn't RIAA the recording industry?
> If so, I don't see why they would bother about instrument
> tabs(which I admit I have no idea what they are, just that
> they don't sound like anything the RIAA has control over).

Tabulature shows you where to put your fingers on an instrument. It's mostly for people who can't read music, or don't know their instruments well enough yet to associate sheet music with fingerings.

In the case of guitar tabs, it shows you the chord progression for the song in terms of where to put your fingers on each string. You still would need to know the actual song to know the time duration for each chord.

Since this is a paper transcript of copyrighted music, it's possible they may have control over it. Though I would expect them to start shutting down MIDI sites next if that's the case ...
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Cinnamon Pirate.com</P>
 
> Since this is a paper transcript of copyrighted music, it's
> possible they may have control over it. Though I would
> expect them to start shutting down MIDI sites next if that's
> the case ...

If that happends that will be too far...
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MPA - Music Publishers Association.

And although I'm not self-relient on tabs, I do use them for reference from time to time, and I think they're an important part of self-teaching instruments like guitar and bass as I did.

I don't really see the copywrite infringement, as a tab is simply one's take on what he or she thinks is how you play the song. They can't really show rhythm or much pattern, and most of them aren't completely accurate by any means.

I think if they're willing to come after this, MIDIs could indeed come under attack. I doubt they would get shut down, but the MPA could start fighting to charge royalty fees or somesuch. However, I find the chances of MIDIs being in trouble as very slim. Then again, I never would've suspected something like this happening to tablature sites...
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ultimate-guitar.com

countrytabs.com
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> ultimate-guitar.com

Not near the quality and ease of mxtabs, IMHO. UGTabs is probably the only other real decent site out there, though.
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