I'm not a professional musician (not even close) so my perspective might have been different if I was the average struggling musician trying to get ends to meet. But no, I wouldn't be bothered. I would perhaps be bothered if people pirated my recordings, but that's because of the work and money I put into those recordings, not because of the idealistic intellectual property itself. Making some tabs? On my part, that would hardly be any work, and I might have it all tabbed out to begin with. I might even publish them for free. People want to listen to my recordings? Great, but hopefully for a price. People want to play my songs? Great, I'm flattered, just go ahead and do it, with my tabs or some fan made tabs.
Keeping people from tabbing my songs feels a little like keeping the blueprints of my songs hostage. And unlike blueprints for machinery, it is right there in the open, ready to be derived by anyone who's got the ear for it. If someone shuts down tab websites, they're just making a lot of people do a lot of extra work (everybody tabs the same song, for only themselves), or force them to buy a tab book (there is... if there even is one). It isn't even comparable to buying a CD, and then ripping the songs for it to play on your own mp3 player and only for yourself; you buy a song, you listen to it, but then you have to buy the tabs for it on top of it, or do all the work yourself even if someone else has done it before? When someone distributes copies of a song by someone, they are illegally distributing copies of someones work that took time and money; but with distributing tabs, you did all the (derivative) work yourself.
Well, at least those people that have to tab every song they want to learn will get a better relative pitch out of it.
Keeping people from tabbing my songs feels a little like keeping the blueprints of my songs hostage. And unlike blueprints for machinery, it is right there in the open, ready to be derived by anyone who's got the ear for it. If someone shuts down tab websites, they're just making a lot of people do a lot of extra work (everybody tabs the same song, for only themselves), or force them to buy a tab book (there is... if there even is one). It isn't even comparable to buying a CD, and then ripping the songs for it to play on your own mp3 player and only for yourself; you buy a song, you listen to it, but then you have to buy the tabs for it on top of it, or do all the work yourself even if someone else has done it before? When someone distributes copies of a song by someone, they are illegally distributing copies of someones work that took time and money; but with distributing tabs, you did all the (derivative) work yourself.
Well, at least those people that have to tab every song they want to learn will get a better relative pitch out of it.