While most guitar tablature websites have been shut down during the past 6 months, including mxtabs, guitartabs.cc, guitartabs.com, taborama.com and mysongbook Ultimate-Guitar.Com is still online.

The Ultimate-Guitar.Com Story

Ultimate-Guitar.Com is a bit different from any other websites. They are based in Russia, thus none of US laws and authorities can force them to make anything.  However, they do respect the rights of the musicians (not copyright holders, which is a big difference), thus they made some steps to ensure that they [musicians] are getting paid for the tablatures they have.

Ultimate-Guitar.Com website is absolutely legal tablature archive which activity is based on a Russian Organization on Collective Management of Rights of Authors and Other Rightholders in Multimedia, Digital Networks & Visual Arts (ROMS)' license. ROMS is the national Russian organization providing professional collective management of authors’ property rights and protection of interests of rightsholders in cases of use of their works in digital interactive networks, including the Internet. 

They pay royalties quarterly thru ROMS.

At the same time, they have tried to get in touch with all big US publishers, and we've got no response. They are NOT interested to do anything about this. The only thing they care -- is to shut down all tabs websites with no alternative to offer. From an economic standpoint, MPA activity will led to no results. Until they can offer a license to such websites or at least decided on a price per tablature, there will be dozens new tablature websites every month. Can they see this? I guess not.