I had not thought about this before, but it is actually a pretty interesting parallel to other digital assets, with a twist. In this case musicians write down a version of a song they like using "guitar tabs." Anyone who ever went to the piano and picked the chords and melody line for a piece of music know what this is like. Guitar Tabulature is a specific way to do that, focused on a non-traditional notation. today there are a number of internet sites that have 1000's of these on-line.

And music publishers are not happy. In their opinion, these are all derivative works. They've apparently come to an agreement around splitting the advertising revenue on the sites with the publishers, and ultimately the composers. Hope it works. Its one more example of our world coming to grips with the notion that just because we can create the tab, and put it on the internet doesn't mean that we can ignore the rights of the author.

I know I'm sensitive to this kind of story, but it is nevertheless amazing to see the notion of copyright so visible in popular culture (YouTube, now this...)