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GuitarZone.com:Site support

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GuitarZone.com Supports MuSATO

GuitarZone.com (GZ) keeps its cost low and is supported exclusively by advertising. We at GZ do not accept donations.

PLEASE BE SURE TO READ THIS ENTIRE PAGE.

ALL CONTENT AND SERVICES ON GZ ARE COMPLETELY FREE. This includes member registration as well as all membership benefits. Note: All teachers here are prohibited from charging any fee (directly or indirectly) when they teach a lesson which they have created in GZ's "Learning Center". In other words, when a student takes a lesson in the "Learning Center", he or she will never have to pay to learn.

GZ currently donates webhosting space and bandwidth to MuSATO, (the) Music Student and Teacher Organization. We here at GZ strongly believe in what MuSATO stands for and we fully support their mission. We also allow MuSATO to use this donation page, hosted by GuitarZone.com, for their own fund-raising purposes. Please read on and decide for yourself whether you would like to donate to MuSATO.

GuitarZone.com does not receive any compensation from MuSATO.

Welcome to the MuSATO Donations Page

MuSATO is a charitable organization dedicated to protecting the rights of music students and teachers both online and, in some indirect ways, offline as well.

All donations made here to MuSATO go directly into the 'MuSATO Fund' (minus PayPal transaction fees, currently '2.9% + US$0.30').

The fund is and will continue to be used exclusively for these two purposes:
1) To fund public awareness campaigns regarding current and ongoing threats to free online music education websites and resources as well as attacks against the concept of free online music education in general.
2) To pay for legal research and counsel, if necessary, when free online music education is threatened. MuSATO is here to defend your rights as a musician looking to collaborate and improve your skills online, for free.

Current Assignment:

Presently, the area of focus for MuSATO's public awareness campaigns is restricted to the distribution of information to both the musician community as well as the public in general regarding recent legal threats made by the MPA (Music Publishers' Association) against several of the Internet's largest guitar websites. The MPA claims much of the tablature contained on those websites infringes on copyrights. MuSATO's official position on this issue is that the MPA leadership has conspired to intimidate many website owners through a variety of tactics in efforts to scare them away from standing up for their own rights as well as those of the patrons of their websites. Some of the MPA's actions include providing provocative and irrationale quotes to the BBC stating that people who have "unlicensed" guitar tablature websites should be jailed. A jail sentence is rediculous and, since there is no precedent for this in case law, they are pretty much making their own rules up as they go. Judge, jury and executioner. They have also threatened a website's ISP instead of the website directly so that the website would have to, per the DMCA, decide within a very short time frame whether to comply with the demands or else face not only any damages and fees incurred itself, but ALSO all damages and fees incurred if their ISP is sued. That is an unnecessary below the belt action. If they want to target a website, they should contact the owner directly. In the end this works well for the MPA though. A small website owner probably barely has enough money to defend him or herself, and is more likely to fold to even clearly unfounded demands once the financial risks grow significantly and become more or less incalcuable all of the sudden. How is the owner to know how the ISP will manage its legal costs when it's likely the ISP will not have to pay the bill (and the ISP knows this)? In addition to these previous scare tactics, the MPA itself does not return phonecalls. It is possible to talk to their lawyers, but their lawyers answer very simple direct questions in their typical language (full of ambiguity), if at all. And, if a website owners offers to have discussions and work towards a licensing agreement, the response is that no licensing agreement is possible, and that therefore discussion is futile. It's a completely unilateral decision. Now with the website owner facing many ruthless threats and unnecessary potential liabilities while still not getting any straight answers about what the MPA actually wants (short of a complete shutdown, which is unacceptable), most website owners seem to want to run for the proverbial hills.

If you care about this issue and you do not want to accept this type of unfair behavior by the MPA, please donate to MuSATO.

If you care about your rights to fairly learn music online for free from other guitarists, please donate to MuSATO.

Please donate to MuSATO. Any amount is greatly appreciated. Even as little as US$5.

<paypal>Please support the MuSATO Fund:</paypal>

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Thank you very much for your attention to this cause.

We may make a Donor Recognition Page listing the donations including donor names but only if given express permission to do so. If you do not respond to the e-mail we send to each donor, we will default to listing your name as 'anonymous'.
Note: Donors may also indicate that they made the donations on behalf of other people, causes, etc.

The information below is just a start and is in no way comprehensive BUT... right 'off the bat' we'd like to recognize:

Donor Recognition

Name - Amount

Bill Graham - $50
John M. - $20
Martin S. - $5
Randall Smith - $5
Shawn P. - $5    (on behalf of "striving guitarists everywhere")

And many 'anonymous' donations. Thank you again to everyone!