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Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

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Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#71

Post by playpause »

albertzeyer wrote: post #56
willvarfar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very beginning of this excellent interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfXn_ecH5Rw that I found in the comments here, they explain this. Apparently, for this to work, they have to "affix them to a physical medium". Strongly recommend watching that video! Excellent info.

Hm, they don't really explain this, or do they? They just say "by saving those melodies to a hard drive they have affixed them to a physical medium which is all that is necessary to copyright them". So, by the same argument, they could copy the self-extracting archive to a hard drive, and then have the same thing, or not? They even say that they already store it in a compressed form on the hard drive. What if some fu…

It is to avoid FUD. It ensures no one can derail the conversation into a debate about what constitutes being ‘affixed to a physical medium’.

“But are the tunes really affixed to the medium?”

“Yes, this hard drive in my hand literally contains a bunch of MP3 files” is a lot stronger than: “Yes, in a way, because this tune-generating script technically constitutes a self-extracting archive, your honour.”

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#72

Post by gwd »

Leszek wrote: post #17
Double_a_92 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tl;dr would be nice it you post such a long article that doesn't directly seem to have anything to do with the current topic.

It's actually very relevant, the TL;DR (from memory) is that lawyers (and judges) aren't programmers, and the source of data (referred to as the "colour of the bits") is as important as the actual bits of the data. Thus "I have this bit pattern as part of a bit enumeration" is different, to the legal system, than "I have this bit pattern because I specifically created it".

> Thus "I have this bit pattern as part of a bit enumeration" is different, to the legal system, than "I have this bit pattern because I specifically created it".

Back in the Napster days, there was a company (maybe mp3.com or something? Google tells me yes!) that would let you get high-quality encoded mp3s of your CDs by downloading their program, putting your CD into the hard drive, and it would read enough of the CD to verify that that was the CD you had, then give you access to their own encoded version of it. The idea being, you own the CD; you have a right in the US to rip it & encode it; so therefore you have a right to this mp3.

They were sued by the record labels (naturally), and lost in court; because the court made a distinction between the copy that mp3.com had of the CD and the copy that an individual could have made. mp3.com were violating copyright because they were distributing their own copy, even though the bits were identical to the copy their customers already owned.

So along the same lines: "I have this bit pattern because I copied it from mp3.com's copy of a CD" is different, legally, than "I have this bit pattern because I copied it from my own CD".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#73

Post by im3w1l »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
pishpash wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the legal principle that distinguishes methods of generation? Even if enumeration is definitely on one side, there is an infinite gradation from there to human generation.

The principle is: what actually happened . "Enumerated" is a different colour than "composed by human".

The line between enumeration and a very prolific artist is blurry. What if someone instead of just enumerating them created actual songs featuring them as themata? And what if those songs were tool-assisted? But still catchy?

I see it as likely that someone will eventually try it not just as a legal strategy but because of a genuine curiosity in music and AI.

According to wikipedia

> There is a long tradition in classical music of writing music in sets of pieces that cover all the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. These sets typically consist of 24 pieces, one for each of the major and minor keys (sets that comprise all the enharmonic variants include 30 pieces).

I don't think anyone would say there is any ill intent even though it is based on an enumeration.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#74

Post by Intermernet »

tunesmith wrote: post #42

It's about fourteen kinds of ridiculous, as summarized in other threads. No rhythms, no meter, no tempo, melodies are longer than 12 notes, it's diatonic, single octave, no concept of underlying harmony, the headline is literally false, etc. Some of the copyright lawsuits are dumb and this is effective satire or performance art but that's all it is.

It's definitely satire, but it's satire in the face of comical law. That's the point. If copyright lawyers want to argue originality based on an arrangement of notes in a 12 tone scale, and in a limited number of bars, then this is a completely valid argument against such a weak argument.

The reality is that many number one songs can be tonally compared to many classical pieces, or even pieces from the last 40 years. The current state of music copyright law is an absolute joke, and deserves to be "disrupted" (destroyed).

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#75

Post by phonebucket »

vbezhenar wrote: post #61
albertzeyer wrote: post #36

The code is written in Rust. The core algorithm can be found here: https://github.com/allthemusicllc/atm-cli/blob/master/src/ut... (Specifically the function gen_sequences. It basically uses multi_cartesian_product to iterate over all permutations.) Isn't it a bit of wasted space to store the generated data on archive.org ( https://archive.org/download/allthemusicllc-datasets )? I mean, as we see, it's trivial to cre…

You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything including god. So you can claim copyright for everything.

> You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything...

Not to get too far off topic, but even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all numbers. It's possible to construct something not representable by that sequence via Cantor's diagonal argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#76

Post by jcelerier »

pishpash wrote: post #62
jcelerier wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent

Again, there is a gradation and you've not answered the question. What is the intent if a human provided 1 bit of input by flipping a coin and chose all the odd numbered melodies? What if a human provided 1 bit of input by flipping an unobservable mental coin? What about 2 bits? N bits? What if a machine generated all the "interesting" melodies via a neural network?

These questions are why we have jurors and don't just do justice decisions following straight algorithms

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

im3w1l wrote: post #73
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principle is: what actually happened . "Enumerated" is a different colour than "composed by human".

The line between enumeration and a very prolific artist is blurry. What if someone instead of just enumerating them created actual songs featuring them as themata? And what if those songs were tool-assisted? But still catchy? I see it as likely that someone will eventually try it not just as a legal strategy but because of a genuine curiosity in music and AI. According to wikipedia > There is a long tradition in clas…

That's what courts are for! Their job is to figure out the shade of colour a thing has.

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#78

Post by eb0la »

albertzeyer wrote: post #36

The code is written in Rust. The core algorithm can be found here: https://github.com/allthemusicllc/atm-cli/blob/master/src/ut... (Specifically the function gen_sequences. It basically uses multi_cartesian_product to iterate over all permutations.) Isn't it a bit of wasted space to store the generated data on archive.org ( https://archive.org/download/allthemusicllc-datasets )? I mean, as we see, it's trivial to cre…

I guess you need it stored somewhere to claim it existed on a given date...

If someone is using archive.org for this purpose, please consider donating :-)

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#79

Post by vbezhenar »

phonebucket wrote: post #75
vbezhenar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything including god. So you can claim copyright for everything.

> You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything... Not to get too far off topic, but even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all numbers. It's possible to construct something not representable by that sequence via Cantor's diagonal argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diag…

All the possible byte sequences contain all the possible programs.

All the possible programs can receive input of infinite length and output bytes of infinite length depending on input.

So if we can supply any input to any program and treat its output as part of result, does this argument still work? Is there such a number that can't be constructed by some program receiving some input?

Re: Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits

#80

Post by albertzeyer »

phonebucket wrote: post #75
vbezhenar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything including god. So you can claim copyright for everything.

> You can trivially write a program which will enumerate all the possible byte sequences in the universe. So you can claim that this tiny program contains everything... Not to get too far off topic, but even an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all numbers. It's possible to construct something not representable by that sequence via Cantor's diagonal argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diag…

Not all numbers, such as real and complex numbers. But you indeed can represent all integers, all possible programs, all digital music, digital images, digital everything. Not sure if those other music / images which cannot be digitalized are so relevant.
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