Guitar music and copyrights on the internet
Chris Anderson recently wrote a great article called Free. He does a convincing job explaining why things on the web are basically free, and industries who (willingly or otherwise) distribute products on the web are basically seeing prices of those products spiral downwards towards zero. Infinite storage space plus zero distribution costs equals, well, free. The music industry is always offered up as the first example of this phenomenon, but other industries like print media, traditional publishing, and eventually film are also seeing major ramifications. I highly recommend Anderson’s article as it serves as a great state of where things are and where they’re headed.
What does this have to do with guitar? A lot. The whole “if it’s on the web, it’s free” mentality has permeated the area of online guitar music in a major way. On the one hand, this is great. With a couple of clicks you can search and find guitar music to just about any song in existence. And through services like YouTube, it’s become quite easy to find guitar lessons of all shapes and sizes. But what of the owners of the songs? And the makers of the videos? A massive grey area has been created, and I’m not quite sure if anyone has adequately addressed the ethics of the matter yet.
Someone with a whole lot more knowledge than I is going to have to tackle that matter before the grey area is cleared away*, but I’m going to address a couple of practical things here.
Guitar chords on the Internet: what’s the harm in guitar chords? Does the person who wrote a song literally own the letters that are written over the lyrics? Personally I think this is relatively harmless. I take the same approach that I take with online lyrics in general. I sort of look the other way, roll my eyes that much if not most of it is wrong, and try to point people towards better resources that are both correct and that give credit and payment to the copyright holder.
Guitar tablature websites: You’re getting more serious with tablature, because this is essentially online sheet music. Sheet music is absolutely owned by the publisher of the song (that’s why the owners of songs are called “publishers”). Not much of a grey area anymore. And besides, many online tablature sites put up very poor transcriptions of songs. Bottom line: acquire guitar music legally. You are doing yourself a favor in that you’re getting more accurate versions of the songs, and you’re doing the artist a favor by giving them proper credit and payment for the music they’ve created that you love.
YouTube videos: This is a huge grey area. There are YouTube videos that are obviously pulled straight off a television show, an artist’s DVD, or a professionally shot music video. In most cases, these videos are illegal, but in many cases the artists and labels don’t mind that you’re using them. Many YouTube videos are live performances. Did the videographer obtain proper permission? Who knows?
So I have a general policy regarding YouTube videos. I do not embed anything that looks like proper permission wasn’t obtained. If someone’s posted a live video, I’m assuming that the person has obtained proper permission.*
I actually think Lawrence Lessig is pretty close with his logic, and think the Creative Commons idea holds some potential. Until those ideas get hashed out further (and widely accepted and put into practice), we’re going to have to hang out in this grey area…
If you enjoyed this post you might like these:
- Learn these five songs to improve your guitar technique
- It’s a great time to play guitar
- Keeping it positive
- Guitar for the Absolute Beginner, # 1: Make a practice plan to ensure your success
- Look what I got in the mail this week: The PRS Angelus acoustic
