HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ jasode

Ok, I watched the video and his rationale for why his guitar tabs were "fair use":

1) he wrote out the tabs himself instead of copying them from a copyrighted book and

2) he wasn't making any direct money by selling the tabs themselves; however he also acknowledges was getting indirect money via Youtube monetization of the videos that displayed the tabs on screen

Unfortunately, he was naive and probably wasn't aware of history. Back in the USENET days, the famous OLGA On-line Guitar Archive[1] was previously shutdown even though the guitar tabs contributions were made by volunteers for no money.

He was playing with copyright fire and didn't know it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-line_Guitar_Archive

⬐ wool_gather

> the famous OLGA On-line Guitar Archive[1] was previously shutdown even though the guitar tabs contributions were made by volunteers for no money.

And then, to further the travesty, those freely contributed tabs were hoovered up by commercial sites and became only available there.

⬐ kbenson

That seems like it should be illegal. Even if the commercial tabs were copyrighted, I wouldn't think they could take someone's work product without recompense. Unless maybe ownership/licensing went to OLGA on submission and they were part of damages?

⬐ wool_gather

There were no damages as far as I know: I'm not sure what the OLGA org consisted of, but I don't believe it ended up going to court. They decided the fight was too big.

I think that the situation is like this. The music publishers' whole assertion was that, because of licensing laws around sheet music, the tabs were not so much illegitimate as inherently owned by the publishers. Regardless of who created them or how. Thus OLGA couldn't publish them without licensing them. (And OLGA couldn't afford the licenses, obviously.)

But since -- again, under the publishers' legal theory -- the tabs are owned by the publishers, they could license the tabs to whoever they liked. Such as these new leeches.

And no one has had enough interest to challenge this state of affairs. It would probably take some kind of class action, gathering up a bunch of the tab authors. And I have no idea if that fight is even feasible under existing law.

⬐ bdowling

As I understand it, this is basically correct. OLGA and the tab creators couldn't publish the tabs because they didn't own the musical compositions. The only ones who could publish the tabs without being sued were the owners or licensees of the composition rights, the publishers. So effectively they owned them even though someone else did all the work to make them.

This isn't a crazy outcome and it matches up well with traditional property laws. For example, suppose Olga came to my house without my knowledge, mowed my front lawn for me, and then I come home and I eject her for trespassing. In that case I still get to enjoy my nicely mowed front lawn (i.e., the product of Olga's labor) and Olga doesn't have any right to payment because we didn't have any kind of agreement. (Note: This actually happens sometimes when painters paint the wrong house. The owner getting a free paint job is less bad than forcing the owner to pay something he didn't bargain for.)

⬐ wool_gather

> This isn't a crazy outcome and it matches up well with traditional property laws.

It isn't a crazy outcome in the context of current IP law. I personally think it's an outrageous outcome and shows a clear weakness of that state of law.

⬐ bdowling

> I personally think it's an outrageous outcome

Could you say exactly what you find outrageous about it? Is it the idea that someone could spend a lot of time and effort on something only to find out that the product of their work has no value?

⬐ 9000

> This isn't a crazy outcome and it matches up well with traditional property laws.

Yeah, but copyright is not a form of traditional property right. Intellectual "property" rights are better thought of as intellectual monopolies granted for a limited time, and this is important because intellectual works have some very different properties that separate them from physical property.

For instance, in your examples, the lawn mower cannot easily "un-mow" the lawn nor the painters "un-paint" the house. Any attempt to do so would be labor intensive. However, in the OLGA copyright case, the publishers can trivially force the infringers to no longer publish the tabs, undoing any further damage. In the lawn mower and house painting case, the labor is fundamentally tied to the physical property being infringed. However, with intellectual property, this is explicitly not the case. The tabs do not alter the original song in any way, they are merely a derivative work.

To be explicit, while the transferal of rights over the tabs to the copyright holders may be granted by a judge as part of reparation of harm done, I see no reason that the music publishers should presume to own the rights outright without the intervention of a court.

For one final example as to why we should not conflate intellectual works and physical property, if I were to trespass onto your land and paint a beautiful painting of your landscape (with supplies I own) and then leave without causing damage, do you... own the painting? Just own the copyright? Own none of it? It is definitely not clear to me that you should automatically own my painting, even if I infringed your property rights by trespassing.

⬐ bdowling

> The tabs do not alter the original song in any way, they are merely a derivative work.

If the tabs do not alter the original song in any way, then they are more like a literal copy than a derivative work. A literal copy, even one that took a long time to make, will not contain any separately copyrightable elements. A derivative work, however, may contain its own separately copyrightable elements, even if it was made without permission. For example, Fifty Shades of Grey started out as a Twilight fanfiction by E. L. James called Master of the Universe. James could not publish Master of the Universe without infringing the Twilight elements owned by Stephanie Meyer. But nor could Meyer publish Master of the Universe without infringing E. L. James's copyright in the elements that didn't come from Twilight.

> the transferal of rights over the tabs to the copyright holders may be granted by a judge

It is unlikely that a court would ever transfer title from an infringer to a copyright owner because (1) it's not necessary, and (2) in the case of a derivative work it may be unjust. To continue my prior example, if Stephanie Meyer had sued E. L. James for publishing Master of the Universe, it would have been unjust for a court to transfer title to her because the infringing derivative work contained copyrightable elements separate from those created by Stephanie Meyer. Usually a court will just order payment of damages (money), except where damages alone would be unjust. In the case of a settlement, however, the parties may agree to whatever terms they want.

Here, as I understand it, the tabs do not contain copyrightable elements separable from those owned by the composer. If a tab contained an adaptation of one instrument to a different instrument or an adaptation of several instruments to a solo instrument, then there may be some separate copyrightable elements in that adaptation. However, if the tabs are merely one-to-one transcriptions of the guitar part of the original composition, then once you take away the original composition there is nothing left that is separately copyrightable. If that is the case, then the tab creators have no rights, even though they spent time and effort in the transcription.

> if I were to trespass onto your land and paint a beautiful painting of your landscape

This example is easy to answer. I wouldn't own the painting because it was merely left on my property (technically, I would be called an involuntary bailee). I wouldn't own the copyright to the painting because I didn't paint it. If the landscape is natural, then I don't own any copyright in it because I didn't create it (in copyright terms, I'm not the author). The landscape might include something copyrightable, however, perhaps a sculpture that I created. In that case the painting may infringe on that copyright, but I would have to make the usual arguments (literal copying, substantial similarity, etc.) and you would make the usual defenses (fair use, etc.).

⬐ marcan_42

I do wonder what the legal basis for copyrightability is here; to some extent, this sounds like the publishing companies might be making legal arguments up that would not stand up in court.

Song melodies are copyrightable, as are recordings, and lyrics. But chord progressions are not. So a guitar tab containing only chords (not lead melodies) and no guide lyrics sounds to me like it ought to be entirely fair to publish. Of course, many tabs include lyrics or other elements that verge into copyright infringement, but the idea that all tabs are necessarily derivative from the original song and subject to its copyright sounds wrong on the face of it.

⬐ Justsignedup

First of all

Thank you for analyzing. This gives fantastic context into the problem he had with his lack of copyright knowledge.

The big issue I have here is he was navigating a minefield. He and people like him are the reason YouTube exists. There has to be a better way of what YouTube is doing than just a "if you trip up a minor easily exploitable offense you are gone".

His sob story definitely left details out, but this is the way of YouTube. And YouTube gives no real support unless you go viral with your sob story.

So in the end... This is just fucking terrible.

⬐ soylentcola

A friend of mine in college (mid-90s) thought it would be cool to host a mirror of OLGA on a bit of server space he got as a computer science student as a way to help out the project.

I can't remember if the issue was a sudden spike in traffic or legal threats but I do remember that it was taken down. Still, compared to the sort of repercussions we take for granted nowadays, it almost seems quaint that all he got was a slap on the wrist and it had to be taken offline.

⬐ Grollicus

I suspect naively it shouldn't be too hard to decode an existing recording of music into the notes played. Maybe combined with some instrument discovery?

From there, it should be possible to mangle it into a tabulature?

Does that exist on github? Could be an instant olga without copyright violations.

⬐ dehrmann

I recently stumbled across some videos where a producer breaks down how some very good songs are produced. Here's one he does for a Max Martin track where you get screenshots of the track in Pro Tools:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBDJDZAo41c

> From there, it should be possible to mangle it into a tabulature?

A produced pop track might be a little extreme, but there's a lot going on in these tracks. Even if you know the chord progression, it's hard to tell if a note played by a guitar is played by the rhythm guitar, lead guitar, an overdub, something with double tracking, or even an overtone from the bass, especially when the note makes the chord an add4. The same goes for walking basslines played by the guitar.

You also arrange things differently for solo performances, live performances with a band, and produced performances, so even if you could extract a rhythm guitar tab from a recording, that might not be how you'd want to play it solo.

⬐ CMay

Celemony Melodyne has supported some form of Audio to MIDI translation for over a decade and may be the most accurate at it.

Back then:

- https://youtu.be/8zeLKMHxbN8?t=561

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ2lWslJVOc

Now:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvBYZPlitWE

⬐ akersten

> I suspect naively it shouldn't be too hard to decode an existing recording of music into the notes played.

What you expect not to be too hard to do, is actually the 'holy grail' of the field - Algorithmic Melody Transcription is the kind of thing people write entire papers on[0].

[0]: https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/pubs/PolEFGSO07-meleval.pd...

There are a few toy examples if you search "algorithmic music transcription github," one of the better-known ones is [1] (but it's limited to piano music). They're all pretty nascent. It's a real hard problem :)

[1]: https://github.com/rachhshruti/automatic-music-transcription

⬐ rwnspace

I cannot convey how much I miss OLGA. My first taste of irritating copyright laws over art was they came for Napster, but I was still pretty young so I didn't feel it much. When they came for OLGA, I was skipping school to play guitar 12+ hours a day. It was around my 15th birthday. I'm pretty sure I cried. I still have a precious folder of printouts from <2006 - I don't play guitar much now, but it only just occurred to me that OLGA is probably somewhere online... :D

⬐ pen2l

Do you miss the community element of it or what?

Because tabs for pretty much anything are fairly easy to find nowadays... except even better: dynamic tabs are very much in the vogue now (tabs with multiple tracks that you can instantly play and verify if it’s good by how it sounds). You can loop certain parts, slow them down, etc for effective practicing.

⬐ oxygenoxy

Can you provide any links to info on dynamic tabs?

⬐ rdbell

https://www.songsterr.com/

⬐ felipe_ii

There were a few programs that I used in the past to write and playback my own tabs.

The main program I used was TuxGuitar [1]. I felt it suited my purposes - I could work out the rhythm and positioning with this program and play files in various formats. The sound quality and features were adequate - sort of a low-fi MIDI sound where different timbres and instruments could be selected. It looks like it may not be a maintained product, but the source is available if you want to tinker with it [2].

Another program that my friends used to use is Power Tab. The original programs look to be abandoned, but it seems that an open-source implementation is actively maintained here. [3]

There is a commercial product called Guitar Pro, but I felt the open-source packages were good enough. Guitar Pro also had an active community (maybe it still does), and many users would contribute their own tabs in Guitar Pro's file format (.gp3, .gp4, etc.) which I would read and edit with TuxGuitar. It used to be pretty easy to find these files available online, but I suspect copyright holders cracked down on these communities much like they did with OLGA.

[1] http://tuxguitar.com.ar/

[2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxguitar/

[3] https://github.com/powertab/powertabeditor

⬐ adrianh

https://www.soundslice.com is easily the best for this — it syncs tabs with original source recordings, has practice tools built in and has a full-featured editor. All web-based.

(Disclaimer: I help make it)

⬐ mahmoudhossam

Rocksmith is basically guitar tabs on steroids, and it's been getting content for almost 7 years until they finally stopped a few months ago.

⬐ bjelkeman-again

It has a lot of custom made content by volunteers here. http://customsforge.com/

⬐ Aengeuad

Should be noted that they stopped working on DLC to focus on what will probably be a sequel.

https://theriffrepeater.com/rocksmith-announces-new-rocksmit...

⬐ felipe_ii

There were a few programs that I used in the past to write and playback my own tabs.

The main program I used was TuxGuitar [1]. I felt it suited my purposes - I could work out the rhythm and positioning with this program and play files in various formats. The sound quality and features were adequate - sort of a low-fi MIDI sound where different timbres and instruments could be selected. It looks like it may not be a maintained product, but the source is available if you want to tinker with it [2].

Another program that my friends used to use is Power Tab. The original programs look to be abandoned, but it seems that an open-source implementation is actively maintained here. [3]

There is a commercial product called Guitar Pro, but I felt the open-source packages were good enough. Guitar Pro also had an active community (maybe it still does), and many users would contribute their own tabs in Guitar Pro's file format (.gp3, .gp4, etc.) which I would read and edit with TuxGuitar. It used to be pretty easy to find these files available online, but I suspect copyright holders cracked down on these communities much like they did with OLGA.

[1] http://tuxguitar.com.ar/

[2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxguitar/

[3] https://github.com/powertab/powertabeditor

⬐ viraptor

It's still hard to find quality tabs that go beyond chords. Even ultimate guitar with its "official" tabs is not great - they don't match the recording or are accurate with notes, but are not possible to play (things like ghost notes on 2nd fret between two barre chords on 8th).

⬐ ulucs

Ultimate guitar just copies the most popular guitar pro tab and labels it official, they might be paying the tabber, but they are not tabbing themselves.

⬐ relix

I remember a blog post on HN a while back that discussed music notation and explained how music sheet setting is less deterministic than one might think, and how there is a big difference between good and bad setting, even if the content (the music) is the same.

"Obsessed with putting ink on paper” by LilyPond - HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1515262

Unfortunately it seems the site is offline, here's a waybackmachine version https://web.archive.org/web/20100717010107/http://lilypond.o...

⬐ adrianh

The site is still online, though it's changed a bit from the older version. Link: http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.20/Documentation/essay/the-lilypo...

⬐ dangero

In the first video he mentioned over and over that was wasn’t profiting, but now it turns out that he is profiting through Youtube monetization. That’s a huge difference.

⬐ gnopgnip

There is big difference between commercial use, and profit as far as copyright goes. Editorial, artistic, or educational is not commercial, and it gets a more favorable judgement for fair use, but profit is not prohibited.

⬐ user5994461

FYI: The is the hell of a commercial endeavor.

The usually accepted baseline is $1 per 1000 views on Youtube (raise to 2-3 for a respectable channel with a US/EU audience).

It's a myth that Youtube doesn't pay. Creators with millions of views can earn a living. Actually a pretty good living outside of the most expensive metro areas.

⬐ HenryBemis

I had a similar thought. The guy has 750k+ subscribers, and probably high viewing. That should make him some income (no idea how much though).

The fact that he handwritten some stuff means nothing to me (I am not an IP lawyer). If I buy someone's book, and start making handwritten copies, and giving them away for free am I not breaking any IP/copyright/etc. laws?

The "for free" or "for profit" is also a valid point in the discussion, as the "fair use" is.

I am wondering on the following:

1) did he get a lawyer, and the lawyer told him that he was on the WRONG, and he changed his tune and re-working all his videos?

2) did he get a lawyer, and the lawyer told him that he was on the RIGHT, but it would be cheaper to revamp all his vids instead of chasing this in the court?

There are some things he is not telling, but it's ok. It's his business, he will play it as he wishes.

⬐ temporallobe

I am no IP lawyer either but I would think creating tabs is kind of a unique scenario. Think about it - you’re creating material that simply describes someone else’s material. If for example I write out a tab for a simple pop song with a 4- chord sequence and perhaps an extra chord or two in the chorus, and it’s pretty obvious what the chords are, well then, THOSE are indeed the chords; If I simply write down those chords as tablature or chord charts, I can’t imagine how someone can “own” that as IP since it simply describes something that already exists. This would be the sane as someone listening to a speech and transcribing it, then claiming they own the transcription as IP because they were (presumably) the first person to do so. I do understand that people create arrangements of others’ work which might be considered derivative work, but tablature can hardly be considered to be an arrangement.

⬐ buster

I don't see why it should be free, he should get the permission of the person who created the music. You know, it's a job called composer. People do this for their living and create music. Now, you have one person copying it, making money with it, presumably without even asking for permission to copy parts of it.

As a software developer you wouldn't even think of copying copyrighted code of some other project. The project would need to be free/open source to do so. So, I am wondering why it should be ok for music to be copied but for software we have this distinction. After all, if the songs would be creative commons, noone would complain.

⬐ temporallobe

Tablature is not even close to copying someone’s musical work. It’s a description of an existing work, and in no way takes away from the original composer. In fact, it’s an incomplete description since it does not include anything else a typical music score would have. Many times a composer does not even write their own tablature nor would they even know how to.

The closest (admittedly weak) analogy I can think of in the software world is if you reverse-engineered some existing software by simply observing its behavior. That’s not copying someone’s code, but is this copying someone’s entire work? That’s similar in some ways to recording a cover of an existing song. That’s a philosophical debate I’d love to have, and a legal issue for IP lawyers.

⬐ djaychela

> The guy has 750k+ subscribers, and probably high viewing. That should make him some income (no idea how much though).

I have a music tech channel. I have about 1/100 of those subscribers and I get about £80-100 a month. I'm sure he's doing pretty well out of his channel.

He's also making $2k per month from patreon, [1] so if he really has had to remove all his content as a result of this, claiming he's not making any money from it seems a bit of a stretch.

[1] - https://www.patreon.com/GarethEvans

⬐ jonplackett

The problem is the same as all legal stuff these days be it patents or whatever.

Who has the money decides what is fair and what goes. Everyone else, however much of a case or point they have, tough luck.

⬐ ducaale

an interesting take on YouTube's Copyright System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

⬐ tarr11

TLDR: He used guitar tabs in his videos and on his website which the copyright owners claimed.

He now has to remove the guitar tabs in order for the claim to be removed.

⬐ croes

You left out the part, that the publishers made money with his channel because of youtube's content id system.

⬐ fergbrain

How is that relevant? They were only paid for the audio license. Tabs are a separate copyright.

⬐ projektfu

Indeed, it should be going through ASCAP alone, and BMI shouldn’t be getting a cut.

⬐ croes

Because it sounded like he made profit of the works of others, but it's the other way around. They made profit of his work.

⬐ marcinzm

No, they made a profit of their work which he used via indirect license. He then also used other works (tabs) which he did not pay for. He in turn made money from Youtube monetization and patreon.

⬐ croes

Yes, but the TLDR sounded like, only he made money and the publishers got nothing.

⬐ marcinzm

The TLDR said absolutely nothing about money for anyone involved. It didn't even imply it for any party involved. In fact it didn't even mention the music but only tabs.

⬐ croes

Tabs imply copyright violation implies someone is making money especially if it's on youtube.

⬐ fergbrain

Not quite, they were paid a licensing fee for the audio that he used. They were not paid for the tabs/sheet music, because that would require a _separate_ license.

For example, when Taylor Swift plays her song "My Tears Ricochet" there's essentially two things that separately copyrighted: 1) The musical notes and words in that particular order, and 2) the performance itself (e.g. Taylor Swift performing it). [1]

Using the performance itself is what YouTube typically has a licensing arrangement for. If you weren't on YouTube, you'd need to license it separately through ASCAP and pay them directly. Also, when you do license it you don't have carte blanche rights to do whatever you want with it, the license will come with limitations on where you can use it ("sync rights"[1]), both technology-wise (e.g. TV, radio, internet, mobile, etc) and sometimes even geographically (e.g. North America, Europe, USA/Canada, etc).

In order to perform the work yourself in public, you actually need different permissions called performing rights [2]. These licenses will typically allow you to perform the work using a musical instrument and/or your voice. You'll often pay different amounts if you charge for your performance or not, if the performance is professional versus amateur. Also, you're not typically allowed to reproduce the sheet music or lyrics physically, either for sale or to give away. I suspect you'd also pay more for imprinting the words on a screen (e.g. sing-a-long style).

All this complicated licensing is not part of the copyright law itself, it's separate is really more about contract law. Copyright law allows the copyright owner to assign rights, the owners have elected to assign them in a way designed to extract the most amount of profit from their asset.

I'm not saying I like the way the copyright system works (I don't), but that's how the law is written.

Also, I'm not a lawyer...just someone passionately upset about copyright and patent law.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronization_rights [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performing_rights

⬐ grugagag

But who owns the tabs, the original song ‘owner’ or some website like guitartabs or something like that? If the latter hurry up and publish the multiplication table and claim copyright! /s

⬐ 542458

FWIW it’s generally considered to be the former - some tab sites operate in a legally grey manner, but in recent years some have begone paying licensing fees for the right to create and display tabs. In that case I could see those sites having a strong incentive to pursue people reposting the same stuff without paying the fee.

⬐ im3w1l

What about licensing the tabs?

⬐ IvyMike

He talks about this around timestamp 6:00

⬐ im3w1l

Thanks for the timestamp. So basically he is saying that there is way too much admin involved and he wished there was a one-stop-shop middle man to handle it for him.

Sounds like a good opportunity.

⬐ Rebelgecko

I don't really understand how ASCAP works, but I do know solo composers that were able to figure things out and the licensing work doesn't seem to unmanageable for a single person to handle

⬐ shi314

I think his main point was he was using copyrighted content under fair use but because he can't afford a lawsuit, he has to accept to their ridiculous terms and if he accepts their ridiculous terms, it's difficult to proceed like he is currently because it's too much admin costs involved.

⬐ DanBC

Commercial use makes it harder for this to be fair use, and he's a commercial user.

⬐ drivebycomment

That seems like an excuse. He is almost certainly infringing the copyright and he and his lawyers know it.

⬐ turnerc

Thanks for the tldr, It sounds like a pretty reasonable request then.

⬐ AdmiralAsshat

I can understand how we got here, but the idea of a guitar tab being copyrighted is strange to me. It's not like you can do a "clean room implementation" of a guitar tab: if you're transcribing the music accurately, the resulting tab should look indistinguishable from the copyrighted one. So how would you be able to tell whether it was infringing or not?

⬐ throw_m239339

> I can understand how we got here, but the idea of a guitar tab being copyrighted is strange to me. It's not like you can do a "clean room implementation" of a guitar tab: if you're transcribing the music accurately, the resulting tab should look indistinguishable from the copyrighted one. So how would you be able to tell whether it was infringing or not?

Unfortunately transcribing music to a tab or a sheet is subject to copyright. Even transcribing the lyrics of a song is. In fact music sheets are a very lucrative business.

Some sheets are also impossible to find because copyright holders refuse to re-publish them and will sue you if you try to transcribe that music yourself and publish it for free.

⬐ TimTheTinker

This is why the fake books became such a thing.

No band living off performance fees from local bars and restaurants is going to have the time or money to track down and pay copyright owners for the sheet music or performance fees for the songs they’re covering. It’s the most they can do to get a mechanical license for covers on albums they record—and that often would go to the producer or publisher anyway.

⬐ derefr

This makes me wonder about the dynamics of copyright. As far as I understand it, copyright only really matters if you first create/obtain an infringing work, and then introduce said infringing work into the market somehow (by distributing it, selling it, broadcasting it, etc.)

Copyright doesn’t seem to have much to say about infringing works created in private for private use, that never interact with the market. They’re infringing in theory, but in practice no copyright-holder has ever(?) gone after such infringement, because it’s just impractical to find out about it.

Now imagine an ML model that, when fed audio, emits perfect tabulature corresponding to said audio—without actually being overfit enough to contain an embedding of any real tabs; and where all the training data to the model was public-domain.

If an end-user of such a model applied it to a song, and what the model ended up synthesizing out was a copyrighted tab, then the end-user—and not the creator of the model—would be the one responsible for infringing upon the work, right? But, since that particular tab doesn’t exist anywhere except on their computer, then—if they just used it for practice, rather than publishing it—it’d be a private creation for private use, “invisible” to the copyright system.

It seems to me that, as long as the ML model didn’t actively advertise its ability to infringe on the copyrights of these particular tabs; or guide users into doing so; then it’d be safe to sell the model (or software that embeds it), right? Even safe to sell it as fit-for-purpose for being an aid in learning/practicing music.

⬐ DanBC

> Copyright doesn’t seem to have much to say about infringing works created in private for private use, that never interact with the market. They’re infringing in theory, but in practice no copyright-holder has ever(?) gone after such infringement, because it’s just impractical to find out about it.

Copyright has lot to say about private copying. Have a look for "format shifting" and "time shifting", both of which have complex accretions of law and regulation and guidance to make them lawful or unlawful.

You're right that rights holders don't bother going after people recording a tv programme to watch later, or ripping a CD to an MP3 player.

⬐ jameshart

So on the surface, it seems like that would be fine, right?

There's a piece of software called 'Capo', for example, that assists with the process of transcription, albeit not generating tab directly, but which analyzes a piece of music and helps you pick out and transcribe notes as tab - and for personal use, of course there's no problem doing so. It should be okay if it went further and attempted to autogenerate tabs. It does chords already, for example.

And writing the tab out, for your own purposes, from a recording you have bought, is not infringing copyright on the original any more than listening to a copyrighted recording you have bought through speakers in your own home is infringing - I mean, it's possible that it could be considered 'format shifting' a work, like copying a vinyl onto a tape, but really it's more akin to just taking really detailed notes as you listen...

And having a software tool that helps you do it seems like a reasonable thing to use, so how could it be infringing?

In a way, if some ML software existed that could generate accurate tab from an audio file, then that software, plus a guitar, is just a really low-fidelity digital-to-analog converter pipeline for turning the original recording into audio. Just the same as an AAC codec + pair of headphones. The codec turns the original compressed data into a series of numbers representing audio samples, which a speaker turns into sounds; the Tab-transcribing ML turns the original data into a series of numbers representing which strings and frets to play, which a guitar player turns into sounds.

So on that basis, it seems hard to argue that the existence of such an ML model is a copyright circumvention device, any more than you could argue that a speaker is a copyright infringement device.

But...

What if the way you trained the ML model in the first place, for example, was by feeding it copyrighted guitar tabs of copyrighted recordings? In particular, what if it was only for a very limited repertoire - say you just trained it on Hendrix recordings, and official licensed Hendrix tabs?

Then, if you hand it something other than a Jimi Hendrix guitar performance, it might not be very good (although I bet the results would be interesting!) - but if you hand it any original Hendrix recording, the same recording of Little Wing that was used in training it, for example - then there's a really good chance it would just reproduce the official tab of Little Wing.

The legal question might be, does the ML model embody the knowledge of how to produce a good tab from a recording, or just contain the memory of, and ability to reproduce, the copyrighted work?

And when it comes to something like music, that gets very close to asking the question of, when it comes to a musical performer producing a song that sounds similar to a copyrighted work they were influenced by:

Do they embody the knowledge of how to write a song that sounds like that or are they just reproducing their memory of the previous copyrighted work?

Which gets to the 'originality' test in copyright law. And applying that in the case of an AI piece of software sounds... challenging.

But on the other hand, it's pretty clear, for example, that when you hand an audio file to the AAC codec and it produces audio from it, that you can't argue that the codec is just reproducing the memory of the right sounds to make, prompted by the audio file - but on the other hand, it's not like the codec is bringing nothing to the table in terms of figuring out how to turn the 1s and 0s on disk into sounds.

⬐ derefr

I mean, I did explicitly try to avoid this by saying that the ML model was trained only on public-domain songs. (Interestingly, it's pretty easy to generate an infinite amount of free public-domain audio, and its tablature, together, by writing a combinatoric DAW generative-audio system; and to feed in noise and distortion on top, the same way ReCAPTCHA fed noise and distortion on top of the street-address-picture words it wanted analyzed. Remember: since you have the original DAW project, you can generate the "solution" tabs directly from that.)

But even if you used copyrighted inputs, that raises a tangential question that's even more interesting to me: if you get a human musician to transcribe your song into tabs... and that human musician learned tablature using copyrighted tabs... then is the musician's mind (or anyone who employs it), in some sense, infringing?

Food for thought :)

⬐ TheOtherHobbes

Technically even making a copy of a CD for your own use counts as copyright infringement. When cars had CD players people would often make CDRs of their favourite CDs, and now people rip CDs to files.

In theory all of this is illegal - because you don't buy the music with a CD, you buy a license to listen to the music from that particular run of the CD.

Automated transcription - already a solved problem for solo piano and guitar, and partially solved for more complex source separation applications - would follow the same rules.

So - technically an infringement, but you wouldn't be sued for private use.

Sooner or later this will turn into an actual court case. Until then, the law on automated transcription is ambiguous. IANAL but I would guess it depend on whether a transcription product is sold as a "music ripper" for other people's work, or as a study aid for your own playing.

And of course CD/stream ripper software has never been illegal. There have been various short-lived DRM efforts, but none of them seem to stick for long.

Now it's fairly easy to rip Spotify playback, but no one seems to mind. But if you started running your own Spotify competitor they might - even on a small scale.

⬐ user5994461

You're very very wrong. Don't believe blindly everything that the music companies want you to believe.

You don't buy the right to listen to a CD, you buy a copy of the CD and the music for use as you wish.

Many European countries have an explicit right to private copy, you can copy/transform/archive anything you have for personal use. There is a tax on storage media that goes to the labels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

I believe the US has something similar (you can do whatever you want with the copy that you own) but an American would be better place to comment on that.

What you generally don't have (across jurisdictions) is the right to make copies and distribute them.

CD rippers have never been illegal. They are illegal in a few places if they circumvent copy protection mechanisms and even there it depends on the details.

You can have a look at the legal FAQ of VLC media player that debunks some of the myths. https://www.videolan.org/legal.html

⬐ derefr

You own the CD, and you can do with the CD as you wish; but that doesn't mean that you've been transferred an unlimited-rights license to the songs on the CD. Owning the CD is not the same as owning the songs, in the sense of e.g. having paid to have those songs produced for you as a work-for-hire.

For example, you can't take the CD into a radio station and have them play it to everyone in your city. Buying the CD did not give you a broadcast right to the songs on the CD.

This is the reason that Netflix can physically own a bunch of copies of a movie on DVDs/Blu-rays, and yet still won't necessarily be able to offer that movie for streaming. Streaming the movie to other people, is a separate IP right, that you don't acquire just by buying physical media containing a copy of the movie.

⬐ retsibsi

In this case the tabs (those of his that I've used, anyway) are not note-for-note transcriptions, but arrangements for solo guitar. Basically he takes the melody, chord progression and other distinctive features of the song, and puts it all together in a way that is playable and sounds good on a single guitar without a singer.

Although this kind of arranging can be done quite formulaically, when done well it is usually a genuinely creative process involving plenty of choices on the part of the arranger. I dabble (badly) with an acoustic guitar, and quality solo arrangements that aren't too hard to play are a very valuable thing. The best arrangement I've created for myself could be generously described as mediocre, despite being based on the official sheet music.

⬐ bdowling

> the idea of a guitar tab being copyrighted is strange to me.

The copyright lies in the musical composition itself. A graphical representation of that musical composition, whether in the form of classical sheet music or guitar tablature, may infringe that copyright if it is not licensed or made by the composer.

Note: This may be more complicated when the tablature is made from a recording by a musician other than the original composer because the musician may have added embelishments, accents, or stylistic elements that are not part of the original composition but are separately copyrightable. In that case then a tablature may infringe on two persons' copyrights, those of the original composer and those of the recording musician.

> So how would you be able to tell whether it was infringing or not?

You tell the same way that you can tell whether any item is infringing: If it was not made by or under license from the copyright owner, then it may be infringing.

⬐ SahAssar

A performance and it's composition are under two different copyrights. Think of it as a book and it's audiobook.

The copyright holders think that what Graeth was doing was like taking a audiobook, listening to it and transcribing the whole book and then profiting from it.

It's not copying the performance, sure, but it is taking a roundabout way to copy another copyrighted work.

⬐ TheOtherHobbes

Every piece of has a number of different musical copyrights. The rights to the song itself - usually represented by sheet music in any form, so tab will do - is one of them. The rights to a specific recording are a different one.

So it doesn't matter if you transcribe the music by ear. You're still transcribing *someone else's composition" - and they still own the copyright.

This is true even if you get it substantially wrong - but then it's useless anyway, in a teaching context where the whole point is for it not to be wrong.

⬐ turnerc

I think it's more that he was earning income from the guitar tabs, since the original song is copyrighted would it not count as a derivative work?

⬐ robinduckett

If I took a published book, fixed all the grammatical errors and maybe even sometimes improved the sentence structure or changed a few minor words to improve the readability of a sentence without changing the meaning, who owns the copyright to my creation?

I would argue that the original author retained the copyright and mine is a derivative work.

If I took a film, and re-enacted the scenes, does my film infringe upon the original film?

This is a bit ambiguous, if the film were presented as parody for example, but you'd still out of courtesy, contact the copyright owners and see if they / their lawyers think it's infringing before spending years doing so

If I took someone's game, recreated it from scratch, and made a youtube video tutorial, "how to make this game including indistinguishable graphics, textures and gameplay" would the resulting video be infringing?

Even more ambiguous than the last example - if the language stated "similar to" and the resultant product was distinguishable in some way, I think it wouldn't infringe.

My gut feel is that guitar tabs is simplified sheet music - and sheet music is copyrightable, because even if the the play style of the artist is slightly different from the original, the arrangement of the music is what is copyrightable, and the original authors deserve at least some of the proceeds from the use of that copyright

⬐ temporallobe

I disagree with your book comparison. Tabs describe a piece of music, in particular, a specific part of it (guitar). A rewritten book based on another book is not a description in this sense. In my (non-legal) opinion, tablature should not be copyrightable because several people could write the same exact sequences without each other’s knowledge and there would be no way to prove who created the work first.

⬐ ChristianGeek

But in this case he’s not writing his own song that just happens to sound exactly like another song (which is an entirely new can of legal worms); he’s stating that his intention is to create a print representation of an existing song. So your argument falls apart on those grounds.

⬐ temporallobe

My argument doesn’t fall apart at all. Creating a “print representation”, in this case tablature, of an existing song is and should be perfectly legal. If no one was allowed to transcribe someone else’s music, be it chord charts, musical scores, or tablature, then musicians could not function unless they all played by ear and memorized everything. The issue here is that he’s monetizing the tabs, which brings into question who “owns” the tabs. Nobody does, because copyright law does not define tablature as derivative work, although lots of music publishing industry lawyers would have you believe otherwise.

⬐ claudeganon

> If I took a film, and re-enacted the scenes, does my film infringe upon the original film?

There’s a good movie about this premise:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Kind_Rewind

⬐ andi999

First hour is brilliant, then they didnt know where to go from there so can skip the last 30min (in my opinion)

⬐ claudeganon

Yeah, it’s good, not great. I think it’s light and fun enough to give a watch.

⬐ sergeykish

If I sing a song copyright belongs to author. If I play a music copyright belongs to author. If I read book copyright belongs to author. If I draw a character copyright belongs to author. If I play a scene copyright belongs to author.

Obviously there is a difference between copyright and infringement. Or DMCA should take down playgrounds.

Can one make a business by printing copyrighted music score/tabs? No.

Can one educate playing music with copyrighted tabs? Yes, fair use allows with limitations [1], somewhat similar to libraries not ready for digital age.

[1] https://nafme.org/my-classroom/copyright/copyright-law-what-...

⬐ aaron-santos

In the book analogy it's closer to transcribing an audio book.

In the film analogy, it's closer to Shrek Retold[1](ignoring parody).

[1] Shrek Retold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM70TROZQsI

⬐ dylan604

> If I took a film, and re-enacted the scenes, does my film infringe upon the original film?

You'd be infringing on the copyright of the script.

⬐ andi999

You need to delete the FBI warning! And be kind, rewind

⬐ giancarlostoro

> If I took someone's game, recreated it from scratch, and made a youtube video tutorial, "how to make this game including indistinguishable graphics, textures and gameplay" would the resulting video be infringing?

Key on this one is indistinguishable but there are many Minecraft clone type games by fans and Satisfactory is basically Factorio in 3D and the authors admit being inspired by Factorio. The other reality is that its also at the copyright owners discretion to make it an issue. Course if its fully original graphics it makes it harder to argue for copyright infringement I am sure.

⬐ seaish

Those aren't very good examples. They're way different and I don't think anyone is claiming satisfactory is infringing anything.

I would go to OpenRCT2, which specifically has you copy over the graphics from a genuine copy of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, and OpenTTD, which includes new graphics in place of the ones from Transport Tycoon Deluxe. However, no one actually knows if this is enough of a difference to matter. It's more about convincing the original creator to ignore it than actually being legally robust.

And then for non-game software we have Java in Android.

⬐ bdowling

> who owns the copyright to my creation?

It is better to think about whose rights would be infringed if your edited version were published. If you were to publish your edited version, then you would infringe the original author's rights in the original. However, if the original author were to publish your edited version, then he would infringe your rights in your edits.

> if the language stated "similar to" and the resultant product was distinguishable in some way, I think it wouldn't infringe.

The question of infringement isn't whether the alleged copy is distinguishable from the original, it is whether the copy contains elements that are "substantially similar" to copyrighted elements of the original. (Note: "Substantial similarity" is a specific legal term of art in copyright law.)

⬐ retsibsi

I think you're right about straight transcriptions (which the person you replied to was indeed talking about), but the guy in the OP link creates his own arrangements for solo guitar. Although these use all the essential features of the original song, they are very different from note-for-note transcriptions of the recording.

⬐ ChristianGeek

So now he’s violating the songwriter’s copyright instead of the artist’s.

⬐ retsibsi

Possibly; I don't know the law. I didn't mean that as any kind of legal defence, just a note that the discussion around direct transcription/reproduction doesn't have so much direct relevance here.

⬐ andi999

Actually afaik in Germany the music itself (not just the perfomance) is protected. If you go on stage and sing a song you have to pay the (holder of the) composer(s copyright)

⬐ unreal37

Or just took a book from English and translated it into French. Who owns the copyright on that?

The original author. Translation is not creating a new work.

https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...

⬐ slim

if I create subtitles for a film in a different language, who's the author?

⬐ kadoban

You, but it's a derived work, you can't distribute it legally without permission from whoever owns copyright on the film. (not a lawyer)

⬐ sergeykish

You can't distribute song text either. The difference is most of the people are not musically literate, easier to oppress.

⬐ matkoniecz

It is trickier than you present - both original author and translator own copyright, and you need get permission from both (unless you are in one of cases where copyright does not matter).

In some cases original copyright expired but translator copyright still applies.

⬐ gnopgnip

To put another way, if you do not have permission of the original author it is a derivative work, there is no valid copyright(at least in the US, but also in many other countries). It is only if the translation(or any derivative work) was made with permission that it is protected by copyright

⬐ matkoniecz

Are you sure? I agree that if original work has an active copyright then in usual case you need permission from whoever owns it.

But if I make translation, then I may be unable to distribute i. But in exactly the same way original author would need to have my permission to distribute translation.

⬐ gnopgnip

>Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, an adaptation of that work. The owner of a copyright is generally the author or someone who has obtained the exclusive rights from the author. In any case where a copyrighted work is used without the permission of the copyright owner, copyright protection will not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully

https://copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

⬐ yuvalr1

This is the background story from two days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24571038