No Hack Lead This Time

Even before the epic legal struggle between the music recording industry and the Napsters of the world, there was the battle between music publishers and Internet sites that posted song chords for guitarists. In fact, one of the first articles I ever wrote in tech journalism -- I was at Network World at the time -- was about this dispute over alleged copyright infringement. Here's a link to the article. Go ahead and click on the link, if only just to see what a hack lead I wrote. I shudder myself to read it. Have you had your little laugh? I'm glad. The reason I'm even thinking of this is the news reported here of a recent deal that finally may put an end to the hostilities begun more than a decade ago:

Because of an agreement in March between MusicNotes, an online music publisher, and the Harry Fox Agency, which represents 31,000 music publishers, guitar tablature -- a popular system for teaching and learning guitar -- will enter the legitimate business realm for the first time. Last year popular sites like Olga.net, MxTabs.net and others -- where users post tablature, usually called "guitar tabs," for rock songs -- suspended operations after the music publishing industry threatened them with copyright infringement lawsuits. Under the new initiative, MxTabs, which is owned by MusicNotes, will share an undisclosed portion of advertising revenue with music publishers, who in turn will give a portion to artists.

I'm not terribly surprised that the legal struggle lasted so long, but I'm downright amazed that most of those tablature sites stayed up as long as they did. They were facing litigation back in 1996, yet many -- maybe most -- remained in operation until last year. And even until now, finding tabs online has remained relatively easy. What's behind the agreement? The music publishers finally sobered up and realized 1) they'd never be able to prevent chords, tablature, etc. from being posted online, and 2) they were staring a revenue opportunity -- sharing advertising dollars with the tab-posting sites they've previously been trying to shut down -- in the face. According to the Times article, many details must be worked out. But it sounds as if they're heading toward a win-win.