COPYRIGHT! What?!?! Someones taking my tab

Have you ever stumbled across a tab that looks oddly like yours? And with further inspection IT IS!!. Not even a single reference where this guy got this tab. He took my tab directly from UU and my thread.
Mine- http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/f...Johnson-Tab-Chords-Lyrics&p=327727#post327727

His- http://www.ukulele-tabs.com/uke-songs/jack-johnson/upside-down-with-picking-uke-tab-15511.html
This is my first tab and someone takes it? Jack Johnson is cool and all but just taking it.
I'm not offended that he is shearing my tab on another site, but not acknowledge the person who really did do it makes me mad. Does anyone no what to do, or ever been in my situation. I could use some help. Thanks

Did you contact him? maybe even send him a link to this thread.

No, I never even heard of this guy. I was just looking for a different song by Jack Johnson when i came across it.

He's the fourth-highest ranked submitter on that site with 178 tabs. I guess that's how you get numbers like that.

Ukulele Buddy said:

Have you ever stumbled across a tab that looks oddly like yours? And with further inspection IT IS!!. Not even a single reference where this guy got this tab. He took my tab directly from UU and my thread.
Mine- http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/f...Johnson-Tab-Chords-Lyrics&p=327727#post327727

His- http://www.ukulele-tabs.com/uke-songs/jack-johnson/upside-down-with-picking-uke-tab-15511.html
This is my first tab and someone takes it? Jack Johnson is cool and all but just taking it.
I'm not offended that he is shearing my tab on another site, but not acknowledge the person who really did do it makes me mad. Does anyone no what to do, or ever been in my situation. I could use some help. Thanks

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Hey that's not so good. Maybe do what hoosier says and ask him if he'll put your name on it or something like that? One of the problems of posting anything on an easily accessible public internet forum is that anyone can see (and take) anything they want!

CopyWRONG is more like it

I can't really see how you can be upset about someone copying a tab of a song you didn't write. Not trying to cause any trouble but, I'm just sayin...

Ya, i can see what you mean, but its my own version of this song. He just took it without changing a thing. If he were to improve it in anyway it would have been fine but he didn't. Just copy and paste.

Were the tabs copyrighted? Can they even be copyrighted?
I do agree the credit should be given where due.

I could see how irritating that could be, but like said above, ya can't claim a copyrighted song. And even if it were original, and ya never copyrighted it, it's gone.. But still irritating none the less. The writer of the song would have more of a gripe IMHO. Also just sayin..

I would be careful about how upset I got about this. Check into the evolving laws about copyright infringement (chord charts might be OK where tabs might be a problem). You might not want your name on it if the songwriter or publisher decides you are infringing by publishing your tab.

–Lori

Lori said:

I would be careful about how upset I got about this. Check into the evolving laws about copyright infringement (chord charts might be OK where tabs might be a problem). You might not want your name on it if the songwriter or publisher decides you are infringing by publishing your tab.

–Lori

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I agree with Lori here...

If you continue posting tabs on the internet, get used to people taking them and posting them elsewhere. I don't even think twice about it. Besides, people are learning the song you tabbed, and isn't that why you tabbed it in the first place?

Ukulele Buddy said:

Have you ever stumbled across a tab that looks oddly like yours? And with further inspection IT IS!!. Not even a single reference where this guy got this tab. He took my tab directly from UU and my thread.
Mine- http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/f...Johnson-Tab-Chords-Lyrics&p=327727#post327727

His- http://www.ukulele-tabs.com/uke-songs/jack-johnson/upside-down-with-picking-uke-tab-15511.html
This is my first tab and someone takes it? Jack Johnson is cool and all but just taking it.
I'm not offended that he is shearing my tab on another site, but not acknowledge the person who really did do it makes me mad. Does anyone no what to do, or ever been in my situation. I could use some help. Thanks

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They look different to me. His song has a bunch of xs in it

haolejohn said:

They look different to me. His song has a bunch of xs in it

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The site was down for a while because a problem with British copyright infringement or something. When the site reopened, the majority of the lyrics were replaced with x's. A lot of the tabs/chords sheets are contributed from players from different countries. I think UU member Ukulele Tabs manages the site. Anyways, here's the post about Ukulele Tabs.

Tudorp said:

I could see how irritating that could be, but like said above, ya can't claim a copyrighted song.

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Well... he's not claiming copyright on the song itself per se, but on the reverse engineered tabs. At best you've got 'derivation', and different countries deal with derivative work in different ways.

And even if it were original, and ya never copyrighted it, it's gone.

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(If you're in a Berne signatory country, which all but about 14 countries are: ) Unless you transfer the rights - as some artists do to their recording companies, there are no forms to fill or fees to pay. Copyright is automatic, you don't have to declare any "(C) Copyright whetu industries ltd 2010 - infinity. All Rights Reserved" nonsense, that requirement stopped about 20 years ago. It helps, granted, but it's not required You have to specifically say "I release this to the public domain or under [insert some creative commons or similar licence here]" to give up some/all of the provisions of copyright law.

To the OP: Next time you'll want to put in some license that declares along the lines of:
This is a reverse engineered/derivitive tab notation music sheet to be used for the purposes of education. No copyright infringement of the original work is intended, conveyed or implied. I release it under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

If the original copyright holder comes a'knockin, the above won't help. But it should work towards having people share nicely while attributing you for your work. If you really want to get serious about it, consult a lawyer who specialises in internet/international copyright to draw you up something a bit more waterproof. Otherwise, make like Seeso says and get used to it

nscafe's right though, ukulele-tabs is chronically full of copy-and-pasters. I've modded down plenty of submissions there as they were c&p'd straight from a guitar site - no translation, just raw guitar tab!

I think with tabs, the less it is associated with you, the safer.

kissing said:

I think with tabs, the less it is associated with you, the safer.

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In short, possible blessing in disguise.

I'd second on that for sure!!!!

Copyright is a huge PitA for people who care about music more than they care about business.

In the UK our PRS (the body that licenses music for public performance) tries to wring money even out of venues where only non-copyright traditional music is played - folk music, traditional Irish dance music etc. Apparently, because of the risible concept that someone can copyright their arrangement of a tune, even traditional music from hundreds of years ago gets scratched by the greedy, grasping claws of parasitic business.

Makes me furious.

The music business is becoming increasingly leech-like. Real creativity is swamped under derivative junk full of samples and remixes and rewrites of earlier work. People have the bare-faced cheek to release some sample-drenched PoS where the original composers/artists are mentioned in passing if at all, and then try to claim copyright. These people are killing real music.

In fact, the music business is killing real music.

Off to take a cold shower and wipe the steam off my glasses.

Grrrrr.