OLGA Shut Down. Again.
The Times reports that the Online Guitar Archive, or OLGA, a fan-created database of guitar chords and tablature for popular songs, has been shut down again due to complaints of copyright infringement.
OLGA was first shut down ten years ago, when a complaint from EMI caused UNLV to kick the site off its servers. I was a teenage keyboard player, and had been using OLGA (and the USENET posts out of which it grew) as an online fakebook since 1992 or so. It seemed totally unjust that a noncommercial resource created by and for amateur musicians could be destroyed by one letter from a lawyer. It was my outrage at this apparent injustice, in part, that led me to start learning about copyright law. While I no longer think the copyright holders’ allegations of infringement were entirely without merit, I still feel the sting of losing access to music available nowhere else, at any price.
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