I've been reading up on arrangement laws and I've noticed that it is quite strict even on making sheet music arrangements. I was wondering how has Ichigos managed to not infringe on copyright laws. Does Ichigos pay royalties to the copyright holders currently? Is it just because Ichigos is just too small for the publishers to care? From what I've read, any music arranged must receive the approval of the original composer; the fact that they are provided free for the public or not does not matter.

http://www.singstrong.org/articles/41-the-legality-of-arrangements

Just asking cause I don't want any possible legal issues if I was to make my own webpage to organize the arrangements I've made.

I'm very curious about this too, as - to be quite honest - the majority of the reason why I do not do transcriptions/arrangements anymore is because I personally don't want to deal with legal issues. (I haven't been in that business for a few years now, so I doubt that'll be a problem.)

I think it's only bad if you're charging for the transcriptions or arrangements.

I've been reading up on arrangement laws and I've noticed that it is quite strict even on making sheet music arrangements. I was wondering how has Ichigos managed to not infringe on copyright laws. Does Ichigos pay royalties to the copyright holders currently? Is it just because Ichigos is just too small for the publishers to care? From what I've read, any music arranged must receive the approval of the original composer; the fact that they are provided free for the public or not does not matter.

http://www.singstrong.org/articles/41-the-legality-of-arrangements

Just asking cause I don't want any possible legal issues if I was to make my own webpage to organize the arrangements I've made.

Fair Use and Education play a very strong role in all of this (we are considered an educational website in the public eye). Since all products are owned by the community (that is, the community made the product, not a set of known, paid staff members) and the fact that performing such pieces for money is the only way to infringe on rights under these two notions. Additionally, a legal holder of said piece's copyright would need to file a formal complaint before any action could be taken; which, given the right level of required documentation by due process, it is possible that the copyright holder may just "let the discrepancy" go.

I did some further research into this issue:

It does state that though fair use and education is allowed, never should an entire piece be arranged and that only small sections of the piece may be arranged in different ways as a classroom example. However, I believe it is because there are so many different people arranging on ichigos and most are under aliases with fake information in the Ichigos database, it makes it impossible to lay charges as the law also states that only the original arranger may be charged for infringements and only then can other parties be charged for partials such as helping the realization of the arrangements. Money would not be an issue as a website does not necessarily require people to buy an arrangement in order to make money so long as it has enough traffic.

This should set off a warning for the arrangers who have their personal websites with their arrangements with their true contact information listed on it as it does count as infringement of copyright and the fines are now less than $750 per piece. Though no one person may be able to create a library big enough for the copyright holders to care, you never know if any of them will stumble upon your site in a bad mood one day.

Does anyone think the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) may have an effect on this?

http://www.dailytech.com/CES+2012+CEA+Prez+Blasts+Copyright+Extremists+Stop +Online+Piracy+Act/article23726.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Greatly. SOPA will kill mashups and intellectual property derivatives without legal permission. In a way, this site may be censored if the bill is passed as we're sharing such content whom license owners like Crunchy Roll and Funimation own and advocate.

Several guitar tab sites (like Ichigos, they are a not-for-profit organization who do it for free out of passion) have been sent cease and desist letters by NMPA/MPA. Ultimate-Guitar.com is shielded because they are from Russia, and not in the U.S. Hypothetically, should anime and video game arrangements become "mainstream," MPA/NMPA will surely go after this site and many others.

SOPA is like releasing a combination of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Kim-Jong-Il on the internet. Whoever made it up deserves a painful demise.

Would reforming Ichigos under Canadian or Chinese Jurisdiction work for preventing it from closing down? Also, what if people just make music arrangements similar to downloading emulated games. Would a simple warning saying "The available library is solely for educational purposes and that it should be downloaded and used only in parts or as a sample..." while offering the entire sheet music be a loop holle around this? It seems to prevent the emulator sites offering free ds games and stuff from getting shut down.

Downloading ROMs (aka emulated games) is actually highly illegal and is punishable by US law up to 25k and/or 5 years in federal prison for ownership. There's a lot of lies out on the internet regarding this -- such as the 48 hour demo rule, the unoffical cracker versions, and the personal backup copy (which can be legal, if-and-only-if you can prove that you own a copy of the game in question, along with the equipment to perform the backup), but the only legal loophole for this is when the copyright expires. If I remember correctly only once the Intellectual Property suffers a nullification would it be legal. Video games haven't been around long enough for the IPs to have expired. We're just now starting to see music from the 40s enter the Public Domain.

The migration of laws would require Gand to physically move the servers (not going to happen). Even if the server moved happened, he lives in the US. It's very unlikely for a site to exist when its Systems Admin can't even legally view and manage the site. Ichigos would have to be inherited, and I'm not sure what kind of stance the staff would take with that kind of a shift in the command chain.

Besides, they could make it so Ichigos won't pop up on search engines in the United States, and you won't be able to connect with the site by typing in the name. Now, there are ways around that. You could type in the IP for example, but they can block it so it never loads (See: internet in China.). So sites outside of America are in danger of this too (Like Joshua Agarrado's site). And with the countries that follow us, it could really screw things over for everybody.