Olga is off-line for legal issues

[boyle]

Lets just pray that others don't get shut down soon. I have prepared a tab booklet with like everykind of music I play with tons of bands; its a huge binder. I bet it will be worth 100's of dollars soon. hahaa

Haha, I've got a fairly decent collection that I have printed off as well. Soon as I go back to school in 2 weeks, I'm going to be printing more off like crazy.

MXTABS.net was just shut down recently, I don't know how recently, but it was within the past 2 months. I just visited there site for a tab that I had bookmarked and this message is posted....

"7 years ago, Mxtabs was started as a hobby by an aspiring drummer attempting to learn his favorite songs. Over the years, the tab site blossomed into a valuable resource for thousands of musicians. We've enjoyed hearing the success stories of thousands of guitar, bass, and drum players who have increased their skills and grown through their use of this website.

Unfortunately, it is now time to close the doors of Mxtabs. Most of you are aware of the claims made by the MPA and sheet music organizations that tablature is illegal. We dispute this view, and state firmly that it was never our intention to do anything illegal. On the contrary, we believed that we were helping the music industry and in particular, musicians. As we have mentioned before, Mxtabs accounts for over $3000 per month in sales of licensed sheet music via links from our tabs. However, since it appears that no sheet music companies are planning on offering any sort of tab licensing, and have no interest in negotiations, we have chosen to close our doors rather than continue to aggravate the industry. To this date, we have not received any threatening letters, but are closing on our own volition. Mxtabs was reopened in February with the hope of receiving some sort of response; with the lack of that response, it is sadly time to close.

We hope that you will be able to further your skills in some other way, and if possible, produce change! Tabs are an incredibly valuable tool for beginning musicians, and they should be utilized, rather than being destroyed. Please stand up for your rights to interpret the music you hear! And please promote tab licensing as a possible way of working with the sheet music industry.

Lastly, if you would like to support the idea that was Mxtabs, please visit the new music review and music news site, Sputnik Music, which was formed out of the community forums.

Best wishes, and good luck,

Mxtabs 1999-2006"


And as far as the artists wanting to get every concievable penny out of their work, I've heard it has more to do with their lawyers than the artists themselves. Heartless bastards....

[mlb1399]

Well I guess it's time for me to start saving every possible tab I can think of on my computer. I just dont get this line of thinking. Most musicians looking to perfect a song will by a cd or dvd to play along to in order to get the rhythm down.

[taparoo]

Though I guess it ultimately will lead to the existance of better musicians as we will need to figure songs out by ear if we don't want to go buy the tab book/sheet music.

[colorado5117]

Olga has put up all the legal paperwork they recieved. It appears dmbtabs would clearly fit under the definition of illegal by the NMPA and MPA. Funny, by their definition, if you are sitting around listening to a song and write down the notes (in any form), that piece of paper is illegal, unless its just a couple notes and you add a commentary (this is the the E major scale).