Mxtabs.net claims to have 104,264 tabs online at the moment. At $2,500 per infringement, that's a potential $260,660,000 fine. Yopsa.
Well...consider that lots of them are incorrect, there are many songs with multiple incorrect versions, and there are also drum tabs, and I've never seen an official drum tab book.
One other point about lyrics sites is that they allow people to discover songs by artists that they could only remember a few words from after hearing on the radio, or something like that. So yeah, this is stupid and the music industry is just shooting itself in the foot again.
That's normally how I find out who a song is by before I download it.
Whether you download or buy the song is really irrelevant. You didn't download
because you found the lyrics, all the site really did was introduce you to an artist you didn't know before.
I think it's a lot harder to attribute album sales to how many sites have posted your lyrics instead of how many sites have posted bittorrents of the album.
Also, what about review sites that quote lines or sometimes entire verses? It's definitely a lot easier than saying "that line from 3:56-3:58". Or Songmeanings.net where lyrics are posted so people can discuss them?