On July 15 I said it was coming. Tom Maszerowski shows us it is here!
OLGA.net, The On-Line Guitar Archive has been served a take-down notice from the NMPA and MPA (whatever the hell they are) referencing the DMCA as grounds. OLGA’s crime: making text files with the chords of songs available for download. How this violates the DMCA beats me. [Source]
For those that have have never visited OLGA, it has been around for ages and is an incredible resource for aspiring musicians. For all practical purposes, it is an education site more than anything else. Regular people interpret, not copy, songs showing the guitar chord changes, riffs and lyrics. The site has inspired me to buy CDs by the artists so that I had the actual music to play along as I learned the song.
This is an atrocity in the name of a lawyer pocketing some dough because the idea that OLGA deprives any artist of revenue is ridiculous. OLGA is a easy target to set a legal precedence in order to tackle the sites that actually make a profit from selling lyrics online.
Its interesting that they’re also targeting the other tab archives.
Frankly, I didn’t know until yesterday that OLGA was back online after the Harry Fox garbage of the 90s… I guess I’m not that plugged in anymore.