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Music Publishers against Tablature Sharing

Guitar tablature sites where users exchange tips on how to play songs are now facing a copyright lawsuits threat by music publishers. The situation is very much alike to the war between Napster and the music-recording industry, but this time it involves free sites like Olga and GuitarTabs.com, where amateur musicians trade "tabs", music notation especially for guitar.

The threat comes from music publishers like Sony/ATV, which holds the rights to the songs of John Mayer, and EMI, which publishes Christina Aguilera`s music. Lauren Keiser, a president of the Music Publishers` Association said: "People can get it for free on the Internet, and it`s hurting the songwriters".

So far, the MPA and the National Music Publishers` Association have shut down several Web sites or have pressured them to remove all of their tabs, but users have quickly migrated to other sites. According to an Internet statistics service, Ultimate-Guitar.com had 1.4 million visitors in July, twice the number from a year earlier. The tablature sites argue that they are merely conduits for an online discussion about guitar techniques and that their services help the industry.