The
On-Line Guitar Archive (
http://www.olga.net) was born out of the need to
archive usenet articles posted on the
alt.guitar and
rec.music.makers.guitar newsgroups -- It's an
online repository of
music, by
musicians, for
musicians. At one point
OLGA held nearly 35,000
tablature and
chord files. Now it contains under 5000, but
submissions are still rolling in and files continue to be moved from the old to new
archive.
A Brief History
Created in 1992 by James Bender, the original
OLGA was hosted by the
University of Nevada,
Las Vegas. In 1996,
EMI contacted the
University of Nevada and
alleged that OLGA was infringing on
copyright. Rather than face
legal troubles,
OLGA was asked to leave.
In 1998, The Harry Fox Agency threatened OLGA with legal action if it didn't shut down -- again, breech of copyright was the allegation. OLGA shut down, but didn't quit -- OLGA incorporated as a charitable organization in order to accept donations.
In an attempt to move beyond these legal squabbles, diet-olga was born.
It could be strongly argued that
files containing
copyrighted lyrics infringe upon the
rights of the
copyright holders. Solution? Remove the
lyrics -- It's much less clear cut that there's anything wrong with an individual's by-ear
transcription of a
song, especially if it's only their
interpretation.
With this in mind, OLGA modified their submission requirements and re-opened.
OLGA's submission requirements boil down to the following:
- It's not lifted from a copyrighted source.
- It's in plain ascii text.
- Lyrics are excluded.
- It's either tablature or a chord file.