Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song • Hacker News Board

Re: Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

#21

Post by goodness » Tue, Feb 09, 2010, 8:04 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #19

goodness wrote: post #9

"...was the product of intense creative labor" I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time. The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times.

> I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time. > The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times. Read the story. The authors actually did a lot of work on Happy Birthday. (They…

I read the story. It claims to be "a product of a highly focused, laborious effort to write a song that was extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting and emotionally expressive, undertaken by a composer and an educator who happened to be sisters."

I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. If the song was still "good morning to all" then it would be just another song. The only reason it has any monetary value is because it became associated with birthdays.

Re: Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

#22

Post by fatdog789 » Tue, Feb 09, 2010, 11:45 PM UTC

goodness wrote: post #14

lmkg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main differences between copyrights and patents is that in order to infringe on a copyright, you have to be willfully imitating it. Coincidentally creating an identical work is not copyright violation if you didn't know about it.

I'm no lawyer, but that doesn't seem consistent with any other law in the US. Ignorance is never an excuse. Also, the first result from a google search for 'copyright infringement willful' yields this: http://www.ladas.com/NII/CopyrightInfringement.html which says: 'Copyright infringement is determined without regard to the intent or the state of mind of the infringer; "innocent" infringement is infringement nonethel…

I am a lawyer, and I can tell you that you're wrong.

Copyright infringement is entirely dependent on the state of mind of the infringer: you have to know that a work exists, and deliberate copy from that work, in order to be guilty of copyright infringment. The reason: it's possible for people to independently come up with the same "art", especially in music, so infringement is infringement only if its deliberate.

Courts have come up with degrees of deliberateness, ranging from intentional to accidental. (Yes, that defeats the point of using the word "deliberate".) Accidental infringement (knowing of a work in the back of your mind, and copying it, without conscious decision) usually results in minimal damages.

On another note, any person who hires a law firm (ladas.com) that doesn't understand basic copyright law deserves to lose their case.

Re: Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

#23

Post by gojomo » Wed, Feb 10, 2010, 12:44 AM UTC

goodness wrote: post #20

cduan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance of the law is never an excuse, but ignorance of the facts is frequently an excuse. "Innocent" copyright infringement can occur when you think it is legal to copy something (e.g. the copyright has expired, it is fair use, etc.), but it turns out that you are mistaken. However, for copyright to apply, you actually have to copy something. If you coincidentally come up with the exact same song that someone else…

If this is really the case, then it seems to be a loophole for a reverse scenario. You write a computer algorithm to generate vast collections of music. Since the computer, pretty much by definition, is ignorant of other music then you can claim copyright over everything it generates. Wait for it to produce "copies" of popular melodies and then you can publish cheap clones or license popular songs to people for a fra…

Courts are not computers; they apply subtle judgments based on a total reading of scenario.

If your intent was to discover and then market tunes identical to popular copyrighted tunes, a court can view the totality of your system as 'copying' existing works. If your two corporations exist to obscure the real intent of the people behind them, a court can treat them as co-defendants.

Re: Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

#24

Post by anamax » Wed, Feb 10, 2010, 4:28 PM UTC

goodness wrote: post #21

anamax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time. > The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times. Read the story. The authors actually did a lot of work on Happy Birthday. (They…

I read the story. It claims to be "a product of a highly focused, laborious effort to write a song that was extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting and emotionally expressive, undertaken by a composer and an educator who happened to be sisters." I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. If the song was still "goo…

> I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort."

Having read accounts of said effort, I wonder what you think qualifies as laborious. They did days of testing with groups of kids.

> And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits.

And no one said that it has fantastic musical merits. Instead, they say that it has fantastic kid music merits.

That's a hard market to crack. Lots of people try to write Barney, but few actually pull it off.

There are lots of songs that could have become the standard. That one did, by design and labor.