Tablature legality

Notation
#1

Hey all!
Just getting to thinking (as only 5 am at the end of a night shift can do,) about the absolute lack of tablature on this website and the legality of it all.

As I remember from university (audio engineering/recording arts,) I studied a fair bit of the laws regarding performing arts and recordings, and as far as I know (read: I am not a lawyer,) it is only illegal to reproduce COPYRIGHTED materials. As for my understanding (as well as helpful disclaimers from places like 8notes, ultimate-guitar, horntabs, and tab911,) my understanding of tablature is as follows;

Any person’s written transcription produced free of charge and distributed free of charge of copyrighted music is LEGAL, as it is an interpretation, and not a reproduction, allowed under fair use regulations and education and learning regulations.

Reproduction or distribution of copyrighted music/score/tablature is much more a grey area. Again, there are exceptions under fair use, but from what I understand, it is ILLEGAL.

So, listening and writing/using a program to create a NEW tablature (without copying a copyrighted existing tab) of existing recorded songs (copyrighted or otherwise) is LEGAL as long as there is NO financial gain from doing so, and the source is acknowledged.

However

Uploading copies of copyrighted material (such as a published version of any tablature, or even tabs from Kyle’s book,) is ILLEGAL without written permission from the author or publisher.

So, the topics I would like to open for discussion are as follows:

  1. Does anyone who has a stronger understanding of the law or who has done more research than I have have anything to add?
  2. Why are we not all uploading any original tablature we have created, so we can share it as a team!
  3. Why don’t we create a collection of recordings of ourselves playing any public domain folk songs (occidental or orientation,) and pair them with our own tablature to inspire and challenge each other
  4. Does anyone know of a place we could upload and store said mp3s and tablature for all shamisenners to enjoy?

Thoughts, comments, hashtags, concerns?

#2

I think the idea of making your own tabs and sharing them sounds awesome. The topic of copyright has been up a few times. In Sweden you can go to jail depending on the amount of songs. But we have something that is a bit stronger than copyright here which gives the creator of any art/music the exclusive right to decide if someone can copy any of it at all. So writing your own tab of someone else’s song without asking for permission is illegal.

I guess Dropbox could work for storage?

#3

So would there then be any possibility of creating a bilingual (English and japanese) request sheet, basically requesting permission to use it as educational material?

I could draft one up, and we could archive it on the wiki page, so if anyone wanted to post tabs, they could just copy and paste it into an email to the company/songwriter/artist/agent/whoever.

I feel like with a simple form letter we would be more likely to get positive responses, and we could save the emails somewhere on the wiki as well as our proof of legal right. I just think, with so many people interested in yoshida brothers, baby metal, pomyu, ghibli, anime themes, etc. that we should learn the songs we like and tab them for other enthusiasts.

I feel as well that there is no difference between sharing a tab and posting an instructional video on YouTube (which many of us have done,) as all of this is for educational purpose (which is actually protected. There are tons of allowances in international copyright law for educational and cultural understanding use.)

#4

Hey Travis, I’ve been transcribing and tabbing out music for bachido members for a while (Nitaboh song, Kitaro, Bad Apple, Kodo etc. to name a few.) However to get around all the legal stuff I always just ask people here to PM me and I send it to them privately. However I have tons of original stuff I could share here!

#5

Or say…transcriptions of old classical music like Bach (who has been dead long enough that the laws don’t apply anymore!)

#6

Ok, so how can those of us who believe we are in accordance with acceptable and fair use policies attain a copy from the divine Shamikami? Would it be best just to trade them over emails, or is there a way to host them somewhere? I’m not too familiar with web hosting or file sharing, unfortunately, I’ve been out of touch with the internet for too long haha.

Either way, I , for one, am interested in all of your transcriptions.

#7

Travis, PM me your reg e mail. I might have it already but send it to me anyway if you can!

#8

Done and done!

#9

Oh Kevin! You sent me Kodo already, but if you have other scores could you send them my way too? My email is my first name dot my last name at gmail. (All lower case, I forget if that matters)

#10

On the topic. Kevin you should make tabs for your OWN songs! Stuff like Miasma and Lions Always. Perhaps it would be interesting for the schoolhouse as well?

#11

Aaahh! Excellent point by Karl!

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