Now music industry goes after guitarists' Web sites

The Internet put the music industry and many of its listeners at odds thanks to the popularity of services such as Napster and Grokster.

Now the industry is squaring off against a surprising new opponent: musicians.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs such as Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Highway to Hell and thousands of others.

The battle this time involves free sites such as Olga.net, GuitarTabs.com and MyGuitarTabs.com and even discussion boards on the Google Groups service such as rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature and alt.guitar.tab, where amateur musicians trade "tabs" — music notation especially for guitar — for songs they have figured out or have copied from music books.

"People can get it for free on the Internet, and it's hurting the songwriters," said Lauren Keiser, president of the Music Publishers' Association and chief executive of Carl Fischer, a music publisher in New York.

Keiser said that before the early '90s, the most popular printed tablatures typically sold 25,000 copies in a year. Now they sell 5,000 copies at most.

But Mike Happoldt, a member of the '90s band Sublime whose music is sold in sheet music books, said he sympathizes with the tab sites.

"I think this is greed on the publishers' parts," said Happoldt. "I guess in a way I might be losing money from these sites, but as a musician I look at it more as a service."