In 1996, EMI Publishing filed a complaint with UNLV, claiming that the archive was in breach of copyright law with songs they had the rights to.
Then in 1998, after a new home for the site was found, OLGA received a similar copyright complaint from the Harry Fox Agency (HFA).
In June 2006 they received a take down letter from lawyers representing the NMPA and the MPA[3], although by this time temporary clones of the archive had started to appear on sites such as Renegade Olga.
[4] To be a candidate for the archive, a file was required to be the author's own work (i.e., interpretation of how to play the song) and cannot have been derived from a published music book, otherwise inclusion in OLGA would have constituted a copyright violation.
[6] In the letter it is stated that OLGA "makes available tablature versions of copyrighted musical compositions owned or controlled by members of the NMPA and MPA" [7] Although originally a notice on the site suggested that the shutdown would only be temporary while OLGA attempted to resolve legal issues, the long time archivist for the site has indicated that the situation is permanent.