[jck_strw]

I haven't visited OLGA in awhile, so I'm not sure when this happened. When you go to their site now, you get:

OLGA is currently offline while we resolve legal issues with the archive. We greatly appreciate your support and hope to return to providing resources to the aspiring guitarist as soon as possible.

Sigh.

[Trystine]

You know the same thing happened to me when I was checking out one of my favorite tab sites, guitartabs.cc. I was reading on their site that there is some legal action being taken on them. It's a shame it's come to this because I literally learned how to play guitar off OLGA and other similar sites.

[phreaker]

I frequently visit Olga. I'm pretty sure It happened within the last couple of weeks. I've also been getting messages like this from other tab sites, but the first was Olga.

[HOWEYMAN]

I know where you are coming from, the worlds greed is getting greater everyday. Whats next?, make every bar band in America buy rights to cover songs. It's just simply rediculous. How can someone's interpretation of a song that is shared with no finacial gain be something wrong. My God, it's not like we are taking the original sheet music and selling copies on the internet. It's imterpretation. What do they they think? I'll tell ya, they think that if they eliminate tab sharing on the net, they will sell more songbooks. greed, greed, greed. it's destroying us. The root of all evil.

[phpbb]

This is the main reason why this site hosts only GD tabs, which are controlled by Ice Nine. As long as its OK with them, then the tabs remain.

[HOWEYMAN]

This is the main reason why this site hosts only GD tabs, which are controlled by Ice Nine. As long as its OK with them, then the tabs remain.

Are they Ice Nine's tabs? No. Nobody "owns" them. They are written interpretations. Who's to say I can't write down the way I believe a song is played on a sheet of paper and pass it on. The difference is that sheet of paper is now electronic and can be shared more esily with many more people. How can this be controlled? Whats next?, put tab police in every city to rush into every music teachers home and burn all there tab sheets. I'm not directing this to you phpbb. I'm just letting it out. I'm am just pissed at what's going on. It suuuuucks bad.

[hesgone95]

I gotta agree. It's really a drag. I too learned tons from OLGA and was really bummed to discover that they were down yesterday. And I'll tell you what, I won't be buying more tab books, it'll just make me try harder to learn stuff by ear.

But, didn't this happen to OLGA a few years back and then get resolved? Hopefully it'll happen that way again.

Anyway, fuck the record companies.

[phpbb]

The lyrics are clearly copywritten by ice nine and they do own them. They also own how the music is played with those lyrics. However, unlike most artists, they have published frequently that they believe in the purely non-commercial trade of music.

That notice is found here, and is required by all sites that use thier material to display:

http://www.rukind.org/html/Statement.htm

Also, unlike all of the artists who's work was displayed on OLGA and most other tab sites, Robert Hunter and John Barlow have placed all of their Grateful Dead lyrics on the web for all to see:

Robert Hunter:

http://www.dead.net/RobertHunterArchive ... mpter.html

John Barlow:

http://www.eff.org/Misc/Publications/Jo ... yrics.html

I personally believe that they understand that this great gift given us makes us deadicated fans, and we do buy their albums, buy their DVDs and go to their concerts.

Personally, I believe there are levels of interpritation. If your interpritation looks exactly like the original, its not an interpritation, its a copy. Copyright law does protect interpritation, but not copy, thus the name COPYright.

The Grateful Dead have made it hard to claim copyright issues because of the fact they post their lyrics, and have a very open policy regarding the free distribution of music, which they still debate against corporate america today.

However, suppose that when you clicked on a link for a GD tab, you were spammed by ads for online gambling, porn and viagra. I think the dead should have the right to say, thats not what we want and you are not allowed to use it.

One last thing, I bet that the entire OLGA site is already on one of those peer to peer networks, which the RIAA is having trouble suing now:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/08/01 ... load_case/

An interesting conversation, but my boss is calling me... back to work.

[strumminsix]

I know where you are coming from, the worlds greed is getting greater everyday. Whats next?, make every bar band in America buy rights to cover songs. It's just simply rediculous. How can someone's interpretation of a song that is shared with no finacial gain be something wrong. My God, it's not like we are taking the original sheet music and selling copies on the internet. It's imterpretation. What do they they think? I'll tell ya, they think that if they eliminate tab sharing on the net, they will sell more songbooks. greed, greed, greed. it's destroying us. The root of all evil.

Bars need to pay a liscences to ASCAP & BMI if they have cover bands playing.

I'm sure greed is part of it but the other part is intellectual property.

I hate greed as much as the next guy but on the other side of the coin the feeling of rage of entitlement is both prevelant and ugly.

[jackaroe1276]

I think the key here is most online tabs are interpreted by guys and gals like you and me. To be honest, most of them are incorrect at least in some small capacity. If they are incorrect in any way at all, doesn't that make it different thus not copyright infringement?

On the other hand, something similar happened to my brother in his band. He has an original jam band and has written many of their songs. He copyrighted them as well as the band name. Originally there were 3 guitarists, including one guy who was more of a hair band style lead guitarist with the cocky attitude to go with it. After a spat with his rhythm guitarist over the 80's guy he decided to move on from the band, including taking the name and his copyrighted songs. 2 months later he stumbles across a copy of a CD with his band name on it and lo and behold, one of the songs is his song. It seems his prior bandmates decided to go ahead and use the name anyway and copy one of his songs. It took a year, but they finally came to their senses and ditched the 80's freak from their band and my brother joined again.

The funny thing is, imagine a song in the vein of streing cheese or disco biscuits with CC Deville from Poison playing lead and that's what the album sounded like. He still gets a good chuckle ot of that.