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Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

This is beautifully designed, huge improvement to the current tabs market available for guitarists. Congrats on a great product!

edit: I am curious about one thing -- how do you plan on handling copyright down the road?

2nd edit: Feature request, if you hover over chords, it'd be cool if it showed the finger placement

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The transcription/tab output itself can not be copyright - sweat of the brow.

There is the question of whether a useful user resource can be maintained if/when the host video is taken down - can the tab stand alone without the original audio?

I think so - reduced utility, of course, but legally on solid ground and still better than tabs alone.

Tablature copyright is generally owned by a publishing company, often protecting rights to tab books. Read up on the history of the OnLine Guitar Archive [1] (OLGA), one of the first internet copyright fights I became aware of a couple of years after I got online. Despite the fact that these were user created and shared tabs, often of middling quality, EMI felt they owned copyright and pursued various incarnations of the archive for years. The current crop of ugly, SEO spammed offshore tab and ringtone sites are the result instead of beautiful tools to learn music like Soundslice. Unless the creator has made agreements for publishing rights I'm afraid this great resource is going the way of so many before it while these copyright dinosaurs guard their last remaining treasure.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-line_Guitar_Archive

YouTube is not the service provider when the video is accessed as an integrated part of the OP's website. That YouTube take action against infringement doesn't mean that you're not infringing by embedding copyright content available there on your own site (particularly as it's commercial).

http://www.out-law.com/page-7235, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/29/guitar_sites_under_f... give details of take downs, a few years ago, around the provision of guitar tabs. Note that the MPA moved the next year to make specific provision for licensing of guitar tabs, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/04/legal-guitar-tabs....

I suspect Capo, http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/Capo/, operates the way it appears to because they can circumvent many things (that copyright in the music or production of the tracks would restrict) by using the users purchased tracks as the source for the information.

Soundslice looks awesome but if they've not yet consulted with copyright experts then I fear they may be looking at a lawsuit imminently.

Choosing Yesterday [which is beautifully played] as one of the example tracks was pretty ballsy. FWIW the YouTube video links to Bandcamp where an album of covers are available - Bandcamp are obviously aware of this sort of issue, they can't sell unlicensed covers lawfully. Bandcamp T&C (http://bandcamp.com/faq#mixtape) specifically rule out the use of their service for covers. $0.091 is the current fee per digital play of the track (audio only), sync fees can be more or less; see eg Limelight or HFA or BMI.

http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2012/03/on-posting-cover-songs... covers the licensing requirements quite well.

Sweat of the brow is not currently and never has been a defense to copyright. Otherwise, copyright on books could be evaded by simply copying a book word for word.

The original composer owns the copyright on the arrangement itself. Your imperfect transcription is a separate derivative work but is still subject to the copyright of the original.

So the question remains: how do you plan on dealing with the copyright issues?

But if you can survive the copyright issues, the site itself is impressive.

I'm not the poster/site author, and we're saying the same thing. My claim is that since YouTube ultimately is responding to copyright complaints, SoundSlice is no worse than a tab-sharing site with regard to infringement. I don't see how they can be liable.

I'm not following this thread; Are you suggesting that him sharing tabs isn't subject to copyright? Tabs sharing websites have to pay royalties, and have had to for several years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature#Legal_issues

You're not saying the same thing at all. You're talking about Youtube performances, and rprasad is talking about tablature. Current tab-sharing sites are very much in a gray area at this point, and the SoundSlice founders have to deal with that somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature#Legal_issues

> The MPA had been pushing for websites offering free tablatures to be shut down. MPA president Lauren Keiser said that their goal is for owners of free tablature services to face fines and even imprisonment.

Have you tried guitar pro? It doesn't have any video component, but as far as tab software goes, this isn't even comparable.

but as far as html5 tools for guitar tabs goes, this is certainly a huge step forward.

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