[Diogenesian]

Almost all those people charge for the PDFs. They know the PDF is more useful, that's why the video is free.

I don't think your software is (or should be) illegal. But it's a form of theft, and incredibly unethical. These people worked very hard on these tabs and don't make much money. You (and kiaansaraiya and neogenix) should be ashamed of yourselves. You don't deserve your guitar if you steal tabs from working musicians.

[altmanaltman]

It's much more simple than that. You are not stealing their tabs, you are stealing/downloading their youtube videos which falls under copyright. Forget about the tabs, the first step is illegal and theft already. It doesn't matter how much money or work the creator does, you should not steal other people's work like this and I am sure youtube doesn't allow this on their tos

[rc5150]

"you don't deserve your guitar if you steal tabs from working musicians"

the same "working" musicians who didn't write the music they're making tabs for, didn't get any permission from the original artists, and in many cases aren't actually playing/tabbing the parts as originally written.

A "working" musician is someone who doesn't monetize someone else's work, regardless of how super hard it must be to write a PDF.

I'd say someone should take your guitar away but I'd bet money you're not doing anything groundbreaking with it anyway.

[earthnail]

But then the solution is to just ignore these musicians.

But if you do find that they made something valuable that you can’t find elsewhere, then you should compensate them for that. Because yes, it is a lot of work.

[rc5150]

The solution? Put in the work to learn how to play by ear, build chords from the tonic by identifying intervals and scale degrees. So when Youtube, on a whim, decides to DMCA all these "musicians" churning out tabs of popular songs, you wont be beholden to them.

But I know, its easier to just pull up a tab.

[garbagepatch]

The people making the video are already making the information public, you are just making it more convenient. This strikes me as similar to downloading public court documents from a government site to make them available outside of their for-profit service.

[breaker-kind]

counterargument -- these people are making money off of transcribing other people's parts, with no profits shared with the composers.

[shermantanktop]

No.

In some cases, the composer makes the video, and is sharing their own work.

In other cases, the transcribed part is not a composed part, and the composer who is listed (Lennon/McCartney) did not write or perform it (e.g. Ringo's drums).

In yet other cases, the composer was long dead before the recording was made, and the melody being transcribed is meaningfully different than the one they composed. Common in jazz.

"Composer" is a 19th century idea, enshrined in copyright law in the 1920's in order to protect the people who made sheet music for piano players to play in their parlor. Musical expression deserves attribution and protection, but let's not pretend the name on the liner notes is a Beethoven with a long quill creating a work of genius out of their solo effort.

[Diogenesian]

That's a bad counterargument. Transcribing is transformative. Copying a video into a PDF is not.

[almostjazz]

I'm not a lawyer but based on some googling it seems like the overwhelming consensus is that selling transcribed sheet music or tabs if you do not have permission from the copyright holder of the song is illegal.

https://www.thatgreatcomposer.com/blog/is-it-legal-to-transc...

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/96352/dual-question-...

https://www.drumforum.org/threads/what-is-the-legal-basis-fo...

[akramachamarei]

As an occasional amateur music transcriber I'd say the goal of transcription is not transformation. If I'm transforming, I've failed :)

Inevitably the transcriber makes decisions in how to deviate from the reference recording, be it omission of instruments, microchanges in tempo and pitch or articulation. In theory a good transcription is an exact graphical representation of the abstract sonic intent of the artist.

Of course, if you are combining voices, changing chords, it approaches an arrangement which is a more creative endeavor.

[dahart]

> Transcribing is transformative.

Not under US Copyright Law, it isn’t. Transcribing is derivative, not transformative.

BTW, if it was transformative, it’d be fair use and legal, and you’d be contradicting yourself.