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Comment by dangero | Hacker News Reader

In the first video he mentioned over and over that was wasn’t profiting, but now it turns out that he is profiting through Youtube monetization. That’s a huge difference.

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I had a similar thought. The guy has 750k+ subscribers, and probably high viewing. That should make him some income (no idea how much though).

The fact that he handwritten some stuff means nothing to me (I am not an IP lawyer). If I buy someone's book, and start making handwritten copies, and giving them away for free am I not breaking any IP/copyright/etc. laws?

The "for free" or "for profit" is also a valid point in the discussion, as the "fair use" is.

I am wondering on the following:

1) did he get a lawyer, and the lawyer told him that he was on the WRONG, and he changed his tune and re-working all his videos?

2) did he get a lawyer, and the lawyer told him that he was on the RIGHT, but it would be cheaper to revamp all his vids instead of chasing this in the court?

There are some things he is not telling, but it's ok. It's his business, he will play it as he wishes.

> The guy has 750k+ subscribers, and probably high viewing. That should make him some income (no idea how much though).

I have a music tech channel. I have about 1/100 of those subscribers and I get about £80-100 a month. I'm sure he's doing pretty well out of his channel.

He's also making $2k per month from patreon, [1] so if he really has had to remove all his content as a result of this, claiming he's not making any money from it seems a bit of a stretch.

[1] - https://www.patreon.com/GarethEvans

I am no IP lawyer either but I would think creating tabs is kind of a unique scenario. Think about it - you’re creating material that simply describes someone else’s material. If for example I write out a tab for a simple pop song with a 4- chord sequence and perhaps an extra chord or two in the chorus, and it’s pretty obvious what the chords are, well then, THOSE are indeed the chords; If I simply write down those chords as tablature or chord charts, I can’t imagine how someone can “own” that as IP since it simply describes something that already exists. This would be the sane as someone listening to a speech and transcribing it, then claiming they own the transcription as IP because they were (presumably) the first person to do so. I do understand that people create arrangements of others’ work which might be considered derivative work, but tablature can hardly be considered to be an arrangement.

I don't see why it should be free, he should get the permission of the person who created the music. You know, it's a job called composer. People do this for their living and create music. Now, you have one person copying it, making money with it, presumably without even asking for permission to copy parts of it.

As a software developer you wouldn't even think of copying copyrighted code of some other project. The project would need to be free/open source to do so. So, I am wondering why it should be ok for music to be copied but for software we have this distinction. After all, if the songs would be creative commons, noone would complain.

Tablature is not even close to copying someone’s musical work. It’s a description of an existing work, and in no way takes away from the original composer. In fact, it’s an incomplete description since it does not include anything else a typical music score would have. Many times a composer does not even write their own tablature nor would they even know how to.

The closest (admittedly weak) analogy I can think of in the software world is if you reverse-engineered some existing software by simply observing its behavior. That’s not copying someone’s code, but is this copying someone’s entire work? That’s similar in some ways to recording a cover of an existing song. That’s a philosophical debate I’d love to have, and a legal issue for IP lawyers.

There is big difference between commercial use, and profit as far as copyright goes. Editorial, artistic, or educational is not commercial, and it gets a more favorable judgement for fair use, but profit is not prohibited.

FYI: The is the hell of a commercial endeavor.

The usually accepted baseline is $1 per 1000 views on Youtube (raise to 2-3 for a respectable channel with a US/EU audience).

It's a myth that Youtube doesn't pay. Creators with millions of views can earn a living. Actually a pretty good living outside of the most expensive metro areas.

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