Dear all,
In a couple of threads in the last 24 hours we have had discussions about publishing of tabs on GMC for various reasons - the moderators have brought this to Kris attention and we have discussed what we can and can't do from a legal standpoint. So, here are the guidelines that came out of this - we'd be grateful if you could help us by keeping these in mind!
In general, posting a tab of a copyrighted song, even if it is your interpretation is a legal grey area. The record companies believe that they have the rights to the tabs and have on many occasions forced sites to stop publishing tabs by issuing cease and desist letters. Whilst there are fair use exclusions in copyright law, these are limited, and it is not clear how far even an educational site such as GMC could go. Claiming that a tab is your own interpretation doesn't impress the recrd companies, even though this may not have been tested in law, they will certainly try to enforce their copyright even in this case. These guidelines are about preventing GMC falling foul of any of these areas, and potentialy being told to cease and desist, or worse, being shut down for copyright infringement. So with that in mind, here are the guidelines!
1. Tabs of your own music, or music that is not copyrighted, or music for which you own the copyright are absolutely fine to post for any reason
2. Long or full length tabs of copyrighted songs are to be avoided, and shouldn't be posted in any form on GMC.
2. Small snippets of tabs - lets say a couple of bars, to ask questions on techniques, how to play, or if you have transcribed correctly are still technically copyrigh violations, so please keep these to a minimum and use them only if the purpose is clearly educational.
That's it - thanks for reading!
Regards,
Andrew, Kris and the Moderator Team
Good points, although doesn't copyright only stand for a maximum of 25 years? Or am i maistaking this for trademark? I believe copyright has to be renewed every 5 years with the initial starting copyright lasting for 5 years. So if it is a fairly old song i think copyright no longer stands on it.
Also sites like UG are in an area where the tab copyright does not apply to them so accessing tabs is fine from there. If you buy tab though could you then put some of it here on GMC you know for educational purposes because you've bought legal tab? I take it putting in the style of with similar tabs would not be illegal and doing covers for educational purposes only would also not be illegal.
Many people would like to bring down UG, but i believe the servers are in Russia- so the big American labels can't touch them.
And yeh im fairly sure its 70 years after the death of the composer.
I would propose that you could upload pdf or txt or gp files to photobucket/rapidshare or anything, that way, they aren't actually on GMC's servers. GMC would only show you what direction to look in the large interwebs.
hmm these are all very clear rules and we should stick to them as much as we can!
I pretty much understand that GMC should act according to law. And I really appreciate that.
Well, I am not from law area or anything. But, to be really fair, I don't think the copyright laws should be applied to tabs...
I mean. If I were a famous artist I would like to have as much as possible lots of people playing correct covers of my songs. Why to keep people away from learning? A tab will not be synthesized into a full song...
Good tabs are only good for the artist. More people playing. More people listening. More sold albums. More people in the shows. I think it is pretty stupid actually... Record companies should provide perfect tabs themselves...
Thanks for clarifying Andrew. No tabs, or maybe small fractions if really really necessary.
Edited,sorry,I missed few lines in your post Andrew,
it IS gray area and it wouldn't be wise to dig too deep.
Thanks for the clear answer Andrew.
Stupid copyright law. I love tabbing songs, and now I can't show them to anyone!
By the way, I´m also a lawer and you must know that publishing scans of printed music even free music isn´t also legal as you are getting profit or avoiding the publishing getting proffit for their work, it is not a copyright thing, is a publish rights thing.
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