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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

#121

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> an infinitely long byte sequence cannot represent all numbers

Okay, all natural numbers then. I don't think that changes the argument.

(Reals are a funny thing because any format you choose has numbers that are infinitely long in that format. Which is basically the same thing you said.)

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

#122

Post by simonh »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #101
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.

Claiming copyright of everything won't save you from producing all that child pornography and hate speech, not to mention unauthorized copies of state secrets. ;)

For the state secrets, the state would have to identify the specific strings that constitute the violation, so that's unlikely to be a problem in practice.

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

#123

Post by paulddraper »

dmurray wrote: post #81
phonebucket wrote: post #75

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... 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…

It doesn't contain the floating point representation of that number, which would be infinitely long, but it does contain the UTF8-encoded constructive proof that uniquely identifies that number.

Incorrect.

Most real numbers have infinite-length constructive proofs.

Uncountable is uncountable is uncountable. If any correspondence/encoding existed between naturals and reals, the reals would be countable. (But they are not, so it is fool's errand to search for such an encoding.)

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

#125

Post by gammadens »

arghwhat wrote: post #94
albertzeyer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code actually can produce every possible melody in MIDI. They simply have not stored every possible melody explicitly (uncompressed) on a hard drive (which is impossible, as the size is infinity). However, if you interpret the program itself as a self-extracting compressed archive, they actually have stored every possible melody (in a compressed way). So the question reduces to how much the type of compression ma…

More correctly, it can produce every possible monophonic sequence of tones given infinite time, which in the article was further limited to monophonic 12-tone sequences across a single octave (any other limitations I missed?). A melody contains more than a sequence of tones. The most heartless definition would at the very least include rhythm . For every sequence of tones they output, they only produce one out of hun…

Part of me wonders if the next step with this is some sort of DL model. I wonder if, trained on one set of melodies (defined in the intuitive sense) it would generate existing copyrighted melodies not in the training set.

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

#126

Post by dri_ft »

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…

Saying 'I don't actually have that melody written down anywhere, but I easily could have, if I'd run this program' feels a bit like saying 'I don't have that melody written down anywhere, but I easily could have if I'd just thought of it first'.

You may say that in fact having the code that generates the data is effectively the same as having the data. This may convince reasonable, rational people, but the fact that we're dealing with the law that we are should tell you that we're not dealing with reasonable, rational people.

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

#127

Post by paulddraper »

vbezhenar wrote: post #79
phonebucket wrote: post #75

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... 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?

> All the possible byte sequences contain all the possible programs.

Correct.

> Is there such a number that can't be constructed by some program receiving some input?

Yes. Most numbers are not representable by a program...unless you allowed a program to be infinite length, in which case the first statement is no longer true.

There's nothing particularly unique about a digit-based encoding for Cantor's diagonal argument.

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

#128

Post by simonh »

fphhotchips wrote: post #104
goto11 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can write a program which can generate your name and your sexual preference (among a lot of garbage data). Does that mean this can no longer be considered private information subject to privacy laws? You can use a ridiculous argument for many things.

Yes, of course it means that. I might randomly generate data to test with. Doesn't mean it's private and needs to be treated as such if I accidentally and unknowingly stumble across real info.

You could be helpful and provide a means for people to request their accidentally reproduced private data be redacted. See example below[0].

[0]https://github.com/danielmiessler/SecLists/pull/155

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

#129

Post by virgilp »

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".

It's a bit more complicated than that. Provenance is critical... but then can you claim copyright infringement based on 8-note, 12-beat sequences? Surely e.g. Katy Perry claimed that her song is original, but courts decided (based on expert opinion) that it's too similar for this to be true. "My 8-note sequence was first, so you probably copied it!" is, unfortunately, a thing - I would have no problem if Marcus Gray proved provenance - but he didn't. The entire proof of provenance is based on "I was first, and yours is similar".

I would think that after this project is complete, at the very least arguments like those that lost the "Dark Horse" case should become not-acceptable in courts. Let Marcus Gray actually prove provenance, not infer/ speculate it - and all would be fine.

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

#130

Post by danbruc »

virgilp wrote: post #117
nck4222 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, the library of Babel owns the copyright on every piece of literature that could be written, which would be a terrible idea. https://libraryofbabel.info/

They don't pre-generate all the "books", right? So they can't claim the copyright (it's not "affixed to a physical medium")

So what is the difference between a program that views some text by reading it from a huge file and a program that views the same text by generating it on the fly? Especially if the file is generated by the very same process that happens on the fly in the second case? Why would you even have to actually build one of the two programs, enumerating all possible character sequences of some given length is a somewhat obvious idea and actually implementing that idea, especially if the text is only generated on the fly, does not bring the text into existence substantially more than just pondering the idea.

I guess for matters of copyright you have to produce a specific artifact, just blindly enumerating all possible artifacts is not good enough. Which would also mean that the existence of all those MIDI files will not make a difference.

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