CanadaRAM said:
There are two lines to cross, one is public performance: where, as posted earlier, a commercial establishment (pub, dance hall, restaurant, shopping mall - whether live band or recorded) pays a royalty to cover the performance rights in their venue, and
the second is publication of the lyrics. Since you are reducing this to absurd levels, technically this would be when you write the lyrics down and hand them to a friend. But that is of course absurd. The action being discussed is against lyrics sites that have thousands of lyrics being published to millions of web viewers. Nobody could possibly argue that these sites don't have an impact on the publishers of the sheet music.
I wasn't trying to be a jerk or anything, but sometimes breaking down a complex issue into is simpler parts can be a good tool to analyze the issue as a whole. First, there are several issues at play here. For the public performance aspect, I curious as to how that plays out. Like my poetry example. I'm under the impression (and it may be incorrect so please let me know) that it is perfectly legitimate to recite copyrighted poetry at a public poetry reading, say in a coffee house or on campus somewhere. How does that differ from reading others lyrics out loud at such an event or even singing those lyrics at say an open-mic event? If there is no comercial interest/profit by such actions I fail to see how this is a problem(this would be different from the wedding DJ example, as the DJ/venue is making a profit from said works).
Second is the issue of publishing the lyrics. I think the main problem here is the nature of the internet. In one sense it's seen as a quasi-legitmate form of media (e.g. blogs fighting for the rights of freedom of the press). While on the other hand it's more of a communication device. I would tend to categorize this site in more of the second vein seeing as how we are essentially carring out an online chat, publicly with (potentially) thousands of participants. It's called a forum for a reason, an homage of the Greek forum where citizens would gather to discuss the news/politics/gossip etc. of the day. Macrumors is merely a virtual extension of that phenomena (the type of thing that the founders had in mind when they established freedoms of speech, and public assembly- ok, not the virtual part but I think they'd approve none-the-less).
If we interperet the lyrics sites as the first class then I can see how this would become a problem in terms of copyright law. There would be virtually no difference between these sites and the NY Times publishing (without permission of the author) the lyrics to a song and what these sites are doing (essentially since they both generate a profit from advertising). However, if we see these sites as a virtual collection of people publicly reciting said works in a massive lot (owned by lyrics.com--or whoever which paid for the property by placing billboards around the property), then the issue becomes more clouded, and possibly legitimate, since the content is produced by a collection of thousands of individual accounts of the copyrighted works. I admit this is kind of absurd.
Finally, the example of sheet music is a somewhat separate issue. In one sense tablature is just doing the same thing only in a unique language. Also online tablature is not really a replacment for sheet music, as others have pointed out. To even really play the song from tab, you have to sit there with the recording (that you have purchased) to be able to play the song. It is very much an educational tool for people trying to teach themselves how to play guitar/bass. You will often times see entry's that have a very similar form to a short macrumors thread where people will say this is how I think it is, followed by someone else saying, yeah... but I think the bridge section is more like this...etc. It is very much a discussion only in a very special language that could fall under the freedom of speech/assembly arguments. As others have said, this is not a replacment for the official published sheet music. If people want the correct, official version, they'll buy it.
Another way to look at the tablature issue is in the context of translation. If, for example, we all purchased a book written in French, and then had a community effort to translate that work into English would this be a problem? Sure we're not going to pay for the English version, and thereby depriving the publisher/translator/author of that revenue, however we did purchase the original work in French and thereby compensated the appropriate parties at that time. Why should we compensate the translator when we are doing his work ourselves? Musically, the analogy would work like this: the actual peformance of the music (the CD) is the french book (one that we have all purchased), and the sheet music would be the store copy of the translated work. I see no problem with individuals giving their own opinions as to how to produce the same performance as the original performer.
Anyways, sorry for the long post, but this issue has got me fired up!
