I am very upset at OLGA shutting down. OLGA is the On-Line Guitar Archive and has been a superb resource for myself and many other musicians for several years. OLGA has chord charts, traditional song transcriptions, and several other resources that are still available, but the main attraction of the site is gone. The biggest part of OLGA was the archive of transcribed songs. These songs were transcribed for free by guitarists and posted so others could learn to play the songs. Sometimes these transciptions were perfect, and other times they were awful. It varied on the author. At the top of each transcription was a disclaimer, stating basically that it was only to be used for personal study.
Recently, the Harry Fox Agency has forced OLGA and all of its mirror sites to shut down due to copyright battles. The way I see it is that this greedy organization is going against all things that the music industry should want. First of all, many people including myself have said that we spend more money on CDs using OLGA because we need to hear the songs with the transcriptions. Right there the industry is making money. Second, as was noted by one petition signer, HFA could also be hurting the musical talent pool in the future. With OLGA, it's easy for guitarists to learn to play, and to improve by learning new songs. Taking that away could mean less people who learn to play, and less people who learn to play well. Anyway, that's all kind of just a side note. The real reason they should leave it alone is because of one simple thing: it's music. Music isn't about some rich burnout sitting in his mansion collecting twelve cent royalty checks from sheet music. It's not about trying to make a buck off of everything you do. It's supposed to be about all of the good things in life (with the exception of those satanic death metal bands) and it's supposed to be shared freely. That's the way it all started and that's the way it should be. Look at Woodstock for example: the most legendary musical event of them all...for free. Now they throw one every couple of years, commercialize it, and charge people an arm and a leg. I'm not even going to go into that though. The point is that people offering their personal transcriptions of songs is not a crime. A lot of times, you have to by the real sheet music if you want to learn the song anyway. Most of the transcribers aren't professional musicians. They're just sharing the way they play it. What's next? Prohibiting guitarists to teach each other licks? This whole thing is just outright ridiculous.
If this has made any impact on you, or you'd like to read more about it please visit the OLGA site. They have had over thirteen thousand people sign their petition so far, and you can read their comments. Obviously this is an issue which is hurting a lot of people, and killing spirits. No its not as bad as a lot of the other things in the world, but it is a problem that can be fixed. So if you've got a minute, sign the petition. It's free and it's for a good cause.